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What a closure and a frontal actually are
Both are pieces of lace with hair hand-tied into them, strand by strand. They exist to cover the place where your own hair would otherwise have to be left out and blended. Every other difference between them follows from size and position.
A closure sits at the crown. It is a square or a rectangle of lace — 2x6, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6 or 7x7 inches — placed behind the front hairline, with wefted hair in front of it. You get one part, wherever that part was made, and the lace never touches your edges.
A frontal sits on the hairline. It is a band running ear to ear, 13 inches wide and either 4 or 6 inches deep. Because it replaces your whole front hairline, you can part anywhere across it and wear the hair completely off your face.
A 360 wraps the whole perimeter. Lace all the way around the head, roughly a 22-inch band, with a wefted crown. It is the only one of the three that allows a genuine high ponytail. Mayvenn does not carry 360 frontals — it is included in this guide because the term comes up constantly and nobody explains it clearly.
The knots are the thing everyone is really asking about. Each strand is tied into the lace with a tiny knot, and those knots read as dark dots against light lace. Bleaching them, tinting the lace and plucking the hairline are the three jobs that turn a piece that looks like a hairpiece into one that looks like a scalp. All three are covered further down.
The decision
Closure or frontal?
Most guides either skip this comparison or treat the two as interchangeable mid-instructions. They are not interchangeable, and this is the decision that most often gets regretted.
| Lace closure | Lace frontal | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it sits | Behind the front hairline, at the crown | On the front hairline, ear to ear |
| Sizes | 2x6, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, 7x7 inches | 13x4 or 13x6 inches |
| Parting | One part, wherever it was made. Bigger sizes move it further | Part anywhere across the front, including off-face styles |
| Ponytail | No | Low and mid ponytails only. A true high ponytail needs a 360 |
| Price here | From $49 | From $87 |
| Install | Faster. Less lace to lay and less customizing | Longer. Plucking, bleaching knots and melting the full hairline |
| Your edges | Sits back from the hairline, so little tension on the edges | Sits on the hairline. Needs adhesive discipline and rest between installs |
| Upkeep | Lower. Lace stays cleaner for longer | Higher. Front lace collects oil and product first |
| Best for | A first install, a fixed part, low maintenance | Slicked-back styles, changing the part often, hair off the face |
If you are not sure, buy the closure. It is cheaper, faster, gentler on your edges and its lace stays clean longer, and a fixed middle or side part covers most of what people actually wear day to day. Move up to a frontal when the styles you want need the hair off your face.
To scale
Every size, drawn on a head
Sizes are usually described in prose or a table, which is why so many people order the wrong one. Here is each piece drawn in position, seen from above, at the size it actually is.
Prices are the lowest current price in each size — texture and hair length move it from there. All closures and all frontals are grouped by size.
The same thing in numbers
What each size actually gives you
Parting freedom is the only property that really separates the closure sizes. Everything else — price, install time, how much lace you have to melt — moves with it.
| Size | Parting you get | Lace available | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2x6 Closure | One long part, front to back. Middle or deep side, fixed | Transparent | $49 |
| 4x4 Closure | A fixed middle or side part with a little room either way | Transparent, some HD | $49 |
| 5x5 Closure | Part anywhere in a five-inch square. Can move week to week | Transparent, some HD | $77 |
| 6x6 Closure | Six inches in every direction. Near-frontal freedom at the crown | HD only | $118 |
| 7x7 Closure | Deep side parts, pulled-back styles, full crown coverage | HD only | $143 |
| 13x4 Frontal | Anywhere across the front hairline, ear to ear | HD and transparent | $87 |
| 13x6 Frontal | Ear to ear, plus two more inches of depth for deep parts | HD only | $160 |
A note on the labels: nominal sizes are not perfectly standardized across the industry, and a 5x5 from one seller can finish slightly smaller than another. Measure the lace you receive rather than trusting the number if you are cutting it close on a part placement.
Lace
HD, transparent, Swiss and French
Four lace types get named in this category and most comparisons only cover two of them. Here are all four, including the ones we do not sell, so the shelf makes sense wherever you are standing.
HD
Thinnest, most invisible, most fragile
A finer weave that presses closer to the skin and photographs almost undetectably. The trade is durability: thin lace tears at the perimeter and survives fewer installs, and it is less forgiving of repeated bleaching. Best when the hairline has to be flawless. Worst when you want ten reinstalls.
Transparent
The durable default
Thicker than HD, neutral in tone, and much harder to tear. Tinted to your skin it disappears well enough for everything short of a close-up. This is the lace to buy if the unit is going to be worn hard, reinstalled often, or handled by someone still learning to lay it.
Swiss
Soft, breathable, delicate
A soft, fine lace used on higher-end units. It is comfortable and sits well, and it is the most fragile of the four. You will see it on wigs more than on closures. We do not carry it.
French
Coarser and tougher
Thicker and more elastic than Swiss, so it lasts noticeably longer and is harder to see through. It is the durable end of the spectrum and it is almost always left out of HD-versus-transparent comparisons, which is why people are surprised by it. We do not carry it either.
The claim worth ignoring: that HD lace needs no tinting on any skin tone. It is thinner, not invisible. At the lightest and deepest tones it still reads, and tinting takes two minutes. Tint the lace to your skin before every first wear, whatever it is made of. Mayvenn carries HD and transparent lace only.
Pairing
How many bundles go with a closure or a frontal
Mayvenn recommends 2 bundles for installs up to 14 inches and 3 bundles for 16 inches and longer, paired with a closure or frontal. The closure or frontal covers the leave-out, so you do not need an extra bundle for it, and the count is the same for every closure and frontal size.
The piece does not change the bundle count. The length does. A closure and a frontal both cover part of the head that would otherwise be filled with wefts, so you buy the same number of bundles with either one.
What drives the number is length. Two bundles up to 14 inches, three at 16 inches and longer. Every Mayvenn bundle is 100 grams, and the count is the same for every texture.
So buy the bundles for your length and the piece for your parting. They are two separate decisions, and treating them as one is how people end up with a frontal they did not need.
The bundle calculator works the count out in three taps, and the hair bundles guide covers length, texture and grade in full.
Attachment
Sewn or glued, and what actually damages edges
Nearly every guide in this category blames glue for edge damage and recommends sewing instead. That is the wrong diagnosis, and following it will not protect your hairline.
Sewing. The piece is sewn onto a braided-down base along with the wefts. No adhesive touches your skin. The risk is entirely tension: braids pulled too tight, or an install left in past eight weeks, is what takes edges out. A sewn install done tightly will damage a hairline faster than a glued one done carefully.
Gluing. Adhesive bonds the lace directly to prepped skin along the hairline. It gives the flattest, most melted result, and it is why frontals read so well in photographs. The damage people attribute to glue almost always happens at the other end — peeling a bonded lace off dry, or stripping it with alcohol, pulls the hairs it is stuck to.
The rule that matters: use the remover made for the adhesive you used, saturate the bond and wait for it to release on its own. Never pull. If the lace resists, it is not ready.
The hybrid most people land on. Sew the body of the piece in and use a small amount of adhesive only at the front edge, so the lace lies flat without a full bond across the hairline. Cleanse the skin with rubbing alcohol on a cotton pad first — adhesive does not bond to oil, and oil is what makes an install lift at the corners by day three.
Rest the hairline between installs. Whatever method you use, take the piece down at six to eight weeks and give your own edges a couple of weeks before the next one. That interval does more for a hairline than the sewn-versus-glued argument ever will.
Customizing
How to bleach the knots on a closure or frontal
Knots are the tiny points where each strand is tied into the lace, and against light lace they read as dark dots. Bleaching lightens them so the lace reads as scalp. Skip this and the best lay in the world will still look like a hairpiece in daylight.
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Protect the hair
Lay the piece face down on a flat surface or a mannequin head. Braid or bundle the hair away from the lace and pin the baby hairs back so no bleach reaches them. Only the underside of the lace gets product.
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Mix thick, not runny
Bleach powder with 20 volume developer, mixed to a paste that holds its shape on the brush. Thirty volume if the knots are very dark. Never 40 — it works faster than you can watch it and it is the usual cause of a ruined frontal.
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Apply to the lace only
Paint the paste over the knots on the underside of the lace, thin enough that it does not soak through into the hair. Cover with cling film to hold the heat in and keep it damp.
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Stop at honey blonde
Check at ten minutes and every five after that. Rinse when the knots are a warm honey blonde, usually between fifteen and twenty-five minutes. Do not chase platinum — past honey you are bleaching the lace, not the knots.
-
Neutralize and condition
Rinse thoroughly with cool water, shampoo with a neutralizing or clarifying shampoo to stop the process, then deep condition the hair only. Let the piece air dry completely on a mannequin head before it goes anywhere near your head.
The part nobody says out loud: bleaching weakens lace. Every round makes the knots more likely to shed and the lace more likely to tear at the perimeter. A piece realistically takes it once, twice at a push. If you plan to reinstall a unit many times, buy it pre-bleached and never touch it again, or accept slightly visible knots on transparent lace and keep the lace intact.
Customizing
How to pluck a hairline without making a bald spot
Straight from the packet, a closure or frontal has a uniform, dense hairline — which is the one thing a real hairline never has. Plucking thins the front so the density fades in rather than starting like a wall. It is also the step that is most often taken too far.
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Pin the unit down and see the knots
Mount the piece on a mannequin head, pin the hair back off the lace, and work in good light. You are aiming at individual knots, not handfuls.
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Start an inch back, not at the edge
Begin about an inch behind the front edge and work forward. Plucking the very edge first is what creates the bald strip people cannot undo.
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Three or four hairs at a time
Use tweezers and take three or four hairs per pull, spaced out, never a cluster from one spot. Move around the hairline rather than finishing one area before starting the next.
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Leave the corners and the perimeter dense
The temples and the outer edges of the piece should stay denser than the middle of the hairline. Thinning them is what makes an install read as receding.
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Then make baby hairs, separately
Baby hairs are a different job from plucking. Take the shortest hairs at the very front, trim a few to an inch or so, and lay them with a light gel and an edge brush once the unit is installed.
A density target, since nobody gives one: aim for roughly half the original density in the first quarter inch of the hairline, fading back to full density about an inch in. Past that and you are into scalp. Stop while it still looks slightly too dense — it always looks thinner once it is on a head and the hair falls forward.
Plain English
The words on the product page, explained
These terms get used across every listing in the category and defined on almost none of them.
| Term | What it means | Why you care |
|---|---|---|
| Knots | The tiny knot where each strand is tied into the lace. | Dark knots read as dots. Bleaching them is what makes lace look like scalp. |
| Pre-bleached knots | The knots were lightened at the factory. | Saves you the riskiest step, and spares the lace a round of bleach it cannot get back. |
| Pre-plucked | The hairline density was already thinned before it shipped. | Less work, but check how far it was taken. Over-plucked cannot be undone. |
| Baby hair | The shortest hairs at the very front edge, styled into wisps. | A separate job from plucking. This is the part that sells the hairline. |
| Density | How much hair is tied into the piece, given as a percentage. | 130 to 150 percent reads natural. 180 and up reads full and deliberately glamorous. |
| Free part | No part is sewn in. You make it wherever you want inside the lace. | What most closures are now. Older three-part and middle-part pieces are fixed. |
| Ear tabs | The reinforced sections at the temples on a wig. | They cover your own sideburns and, level on both sides, they tell you the unit is on straight. |
| Melting | Getting the lace to sit flat enough that the edge disappears into skin. | Tinting, a clean bond and a good edge trim do this. No product does it on its own. |
Afterwards
Washing lace, tinting lace, and how long a piece lasts
Wash every one to two weeks. Product and oil build up on lace far faster than on hair, and cloudy lace is what makes an install read as an install. Dilute a sulfate-free shampoo in a spray bottle, mist the lace, and rinse with a low-pressure stream of cool water. Never scrub the knots.
Dry it flat and fully. Pat with a microfiber towel, never rub, and let the piece air dry on a mannequin head before it is worn or stored. A damp piece in a drawer is how a good frontal becomes a smell.
Tint the lace to your skin, not to a shade you read about. A light dusting of foundation or a lace tint spray on the underside, built up in thin layers, matched in daylight. This matters more than HD versus transparent and takes two minutes.
How long it lasts. Take it down at six to eight weeks. With careful removal, gentle washing and at most one round of bleach, a good closure will go back in several times across a year or more. Frontals last less well than closures for the same care, because the lace sits on the hairline where it takes the most oil, the most adhesive and the most handling.
The full routine, including how to clean lace between washes, is in the hair care guide.
Before you buy
What actually goes wrong
Four failures account for most of the disappointment in this category, and all four are decided before the piece is ever installed.
01
Buying the size for the photo, not the part
A 4x4 cannot give you a part that moves, and a 7x7 is wasted money if you wear a fixed middle part. Decide where your part lives first, then buy the smallest size that covers it.
02
Over-bleaching
Chasing platinum knots with 40 volume developer is the single most common way a frontal is destroyed in the first hour. Honey blonde, 20 volume, once.
03
Over-plucking
You cannot put hair back into lace. Every pull is permanent, and the result always looks thinner on a head than it does on a mannequin. Stop early.
04
Cutting the lace in a straight line
A straight cut edge catches the light and reads as a line across the forehead. Cut in a shallow zigzag, following the shape of your own hairline, and leave a little lace rather than cutting into the knots.
If a piece arrives and is not right, send it back rather than trying to fix it with bleach. Ours come back within 30 days — unopened for a refund, opened for store credit.
Questions
Closure and frontal questions, answered
4x4 vs 5x5 closure: which should I get?
Get a 4x4 if you wear one fixed middle or side part. It is the easiest size to blend and starts at $49 at Mayvenn. Get a 5x5 if you like to move your part. It gives you an inch more lace in every direction, so the part can go deeper or shift mid-week, and starts at $77.
Closure or frontal for a first sew-in?
A closure. It sits behind the hairline instead of on it, so there is less lace to lay, less plucking and bleaching, and far less tension on your edges. It is also cheaper: Mayvenn closures start at $49 and 13x4 frontals at $87. Move to a frontal once you want slicked-back styles or a part anywhere across the front.
HD or transparent lace for dark skin?
Either works, but neither disappears on deep skin without tinting. HD lace is thinner, so once tinted it melts more easily and photographs almost invisibly. Transparent lace is thicker and more durable, and it tints well too. For a first install or frequent reinstalls, choose tinted transparent. For a flawless hairline, choose HD. At Mayvenn, 6x6 and 7x7 closures come in HD only.
What is a lace closure?
A square or rectangle of lace with hair hand-tied into it, placed at the crown behind your front hairline, with wefted hair in front of it. It closes off an install so none of your own hair has to be left out. Sizes run 2x6, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6 and 7x7 inches.
What is the difference between a closure and a frontal?
Position and width. A closure sits behind the hairline at the crown and gives you one part. A frontal is 13 inches wide and runs ear to ear along the front hairline, so you can part anywhere and wear the hair off your face. Closures cost less, install faster and are gentler on your edges.
What closure size should I get?
Decide where your part lives, then buy the smallest size that covers it. 2x6 for one fixed long part. 4x4 for a fixed middle or side part. 5x5 if you want the part to move. 6x6 or 7x7 for deep side parts and pulled-back styles.
Can you put a closure in a ponytail?
No. A closure sits at the crown with wefts in front of it, so pulling the hair back exposes them. A frontal handles a low or mid ponytail. Only a 360, which runs lace around the whole perimeter, supports a true high ponytail, and Mayvenn does not carry 360 frontals.
HD lace or transparent lace?
HD if the hairline has to be flawless and the unit will not be reinstalled many times. Transparent if you want durability, plan to reinstall often, or are still learning to lay lace. Neither is invisible untinted, whatever the listing says. At Mayvenn, 6x6 and 7x7 closures come in HD only.
Do I have to bleach the knots?
Not always. Dark knots on transparent lace are visible in daylight, so most people do. If you would rather not risk the lace, buy a piece with pre-bleached knots. Bleaching does weaken lace, so a unit realistically takes it once or twice, not repeatedly.
How do I bleach knots without ruining the lace?
Bleach powder with 20 volume developer, mixed thick so it does not run, painted on the underside of the lace only with the hair pinned away. Check at ten minutes and rinse at honey blonde, usually fifteen to twenty-five minutes. Never use 40 volume and never chase platinum.
How do I pluck a hairline without making it bald?
Start about an inch back from the front edge, take three or four hairs at a time with tweezers, and move around the hairline rather than finishing one spot. Aim for roughly half density in the first quarter inch, fading to full about an inch in. Leave the temples and outer edges dense.
Should I sew or glue my closure?
Either works. Sewing keeps adhesive off your skin but damages edges if the braids are too tight. Gluing gives a flatter hairline, and the damage blamed on it is almost always caused by pulling the lace off dry instead of using a proper remover. Many people sew the body in and use a little adhesive at the front edge only.
How many bundles do I need with a closure or frontal?
Mayvenn recommends 2 bundles for installs up to 14 inches and 3 bundles for 16 inches and longer, paired with a closure or frontal. The closure or frontal covers the leave-out, so it does not add a bundle, and the count is the same for every texture. The bundle calculator on our hair bundles guide works it out in three taps.
What does pre-plucked mean?
That the hairline density was thinned at the factory before it shipped, so you have less customizing to do. Check how far it was taken before you pluck any further, because it cannot be reversed.
What density should I choose?
130 to 150 percent reads as natural everyday hair. 180 percent and above reads full and deliberately glamorous, and it needs more maintenance to keep looking deliberate rather than heavy. If you are between two, take the lower one.
How long does a closure or frontal last?
Take it down at six to eight weeks. With careful removal, gentle washing and at most one round of bleach, a good closure goes back in several times across a year or more. Frontals wear out sooner for the same care, because the lace sits where the oil, adhesive and handling are.
Can I dye or tint a lace closure?
The hair follows the same rules as bundles — only virgin natural black hair can be lifted, and only to about a 27. The lace itself should be tinted, not dyed: a light dusting of foundation or lace tint on the underside, built up in thin layers and matched in daylight.
What is a 360 frontal?
A band of lace that runs around the entire perimeter of the head with a wefted crown, roughly 22 inches in circumference. It is the only construction that allows a genuine high ponytail. Mayvenn does not carry 360 frontals.
Why does my lace lift at the corners after a few days?
Almost always skin oil. Adhesive does not bond to oil, so cleanse the hairline with rubbing alcohol on a cotton pad before applying anything, and keep heavy products away from the perimeter. Sweat and humidity shorten a bond too, so match the adhesive strength to how long you are wearing it.
Keep reading
The rest of the Mayvenn guides
This page covers the lace. These cover the hair that goes with it and everything after the install.
Hair bundles guide
How many bundles, what length, which grade and what it all costs. Includes the bundle calculator. Read the bundles guide.
Hair care guide
Co-washing, sealing wefts, heat limits, and how to clean lace between washes. Read the care guide.
Wigs 101
If you would rather buy a finished unit: every cap construction explained, drawn to scale. Read Wigs 101.
How to install a wig
Glueless and glued, step by step, including hairline prep and adhesive choice. Read the install guide.
Our hair
How the range is graded, what the lace sizes cover, and what separates virgin from raw. Read about our hair.
Find your texture
A one-minute quiz that matches you to a texture, a length and a bundle count. Take the hair quiz.
Ready to shop? Closures and frontals are both grouped by lace size. Anything not covered here is probably in the FAQ, and every order is backed by our 30-day guarantee.
Ready when you are
Closures and frontals, grouped by lace size
2x6 through 7x7, 13x4 and 13x6, in HD and transparent lace. Every order covered by our 30-day guarantee.