Wig Making

Double Drawn vs Single Drawn Hair: A Wig Maker's Buying Guide

06 SEP 2026 · BY THE IRANIANHAIR TEAM · 7 MIN READ

"Drawn" is one of those trade words that sounds like a hair property but is actually a labor process — and understanding it properly changes how you buy raw material. This guide explains what drawing is, what double drawn really costs and why, which finished pieces genuinely need it, and the buying strategy that lets wig makers get double-drawn results without paying double-drawn prices.

What Drawing Actually Is

Hair on a head never grows to one uniform length — every ponytail contains strands at every stage of the growth cycle. Drawing is the hand-sorting process that deals with that reality. The tools are simple: drawing mats (two boards with rows of upright pins) and patient hands pulling strands through, length by length.

• Single drawn: the ponytail is sorted lightly — very short strands out, the natural spread kept. A "60 cm" single drawn bundle is 60 cm at its longest, with a body of hair running shorter. The bundle tapers toward the ends, the way growing hair does.
• Double drawn: the sorters go back through and pull out most of the shorter strands, so the large majority of hairs in the bundle are at or near the stated length. The ends look nearly as full as the roots.

Definitions vary by workshop — one factory's "double drawn" is 70% full-length, another's is 90% (sometimes sold as "super double drawn"). Like hair grades, the label has no official standard — always ask for the percentage, not the phrase.

Why Double Drawn Costs 30–60% More

Two costs stack. First, labor: drawing is slow handwork, measured in hours per kilogram. Second — the one buyers forget — yield loss: the shorter hairs pulled from a double drawn bundle have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is a cheaper, shorter lot. When you buy 1 kg of double drawn 60 cm, you are effectively paying for the extra kilograms of hair that were sorted out of it. That is why the premium is structural, not negotiable marketing.

Which One Your Piece Actually Needs

• Full lace wigs & mega hair for volume-focused markets: blunt, full-ended styles need double drawn (or in-house drawing) — a tapered bundle reads as "thin ends" in a bob or a one-length finish.
• Toppers & medical pieces: natural movement is the whole point — topper makers often prefer single drawn or lightly drawn hair precisely because uniform ends look manufactured next to the client's own hair.
• Layered and natural-finish wigs: the stylist cuts layers in anyway — paying the double drawn premium and then cutting it off is money left on the table.

The Smart Way to Buy: Draw It Yourself

Serious wig manufacturers rarely buy expensive pre-drawn bundles for production. They buy raw lots with a known natural length distribution and draw in-house — to their own percentage, their own quality bar, with the short-sorted hair feeding their shorter product lines instead of being lost in a supplier's margin.

This is exactly how our packages are built to be bought. Every lot on the live board is village-collected virgin hair in natural distribution — typically 45–75 cm, with the real spread listed per package (a 20 kg lot might run ~70% around 60 cm, ~20% at 50–55 cm, and small shares at the extremes). You see the distribution on video before paying, you draw to whatever standard your product needs, and the shorter draw-out becomes sellable material, not waste. Our wigs-per-kilogram guide shows the production math from there.

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