r/hairstylist

I work at a commission hair salon(I am not an owner) but we have assistants who do washes, cleanup, laundry, dishes all of that stuff. they’re also there for us if we need any blowdries. If I ever need a blow dry I always tip them out at the end of the day but I don’t think anyone else I work with does.

One of my bosses is known for running late A LOT and will need the assistant to put root colors on and blow dry a lot of her clients and she does not tip them out.
What do you guys normally do?

Hello! I am a hairstylist and need some advice, I have had this client for 3 times now and I adore her and we get along so well. Her hair just isn’t doing what I want it to do. My salon uses L’Oréal color and I used DIA color the first time I saw her. She wants a chocolate brown. When she came back it faded so red and warm. Her goal is to cover(ish) grays while but doesn’t want permanent and wants low maintenance. At this appointment I did a little dimension with foil work and covered everything else including her roots in 7B. I saw her today for a glaze and it’s still so damn warm and she is booked again to come back for a root color in a few months. Her whole goal was to not have a grow out line and it’s there because of the warmth. I don’t know how to make this low maintenance and budget friendly. I also feel bad because I feel like it’s not her fault the color faded that way. When she comes back I have no clue how to get rid of the warmth while covering her roots without leaving a grow out line and getting rid of the warmth throughout her hair while keeping the baby lights I JUST gave her. Please help me!

Hi there. I’m a hairstylist of 19 years and I’m currently at a booth rent Salon. A couple of weeks ago I had a basal cell carcinoma removed from my cheek. I took a week off after the surgery. When I went back to work, (still wearing a bandage) I expected to let my clients know what had happened. Of course most of them were very understanding and calm. Though I felt very uncomfortable with my first client of the day.

As soon as I walked in the owner, had a client in his chair. The owner says hello then immediately says oh did you have something removed? My client happened to be sitting in the waiting area (the salon is one big open room). I said yes, then continue to set up. My client says oh no what happened and I said nothing, I just had something removed. This client tends to think that she knows me better than she does or that we are friends. I’ve done her hair for years and have never once seen her outside of the salon. She continued on questioning me, so I told her that it was cancerous and had to be removed, however it really wasn’t a big deal. She goes “Oh no was it a mole” I said no it wasn’t. Then as I’m explaining it to her, she very loudly goes. oh my God and it metastasized! Which I never once said. I laughed out loud and said no if it metastasized I wouldn’t be working today. It was one little spot they removed it. It’s not a big deal. She continued on asking what did it look like and I said it was just a little scar on my cheek. She says oh yeah I remember that little scar. Yeah it was on that cheek and it looked like blah blah blah. The whole time I was just hoping that she would just leave it alone. I felt so uncomfortable. I even tried to change the subject a few times.

The whole experience made me feel so uncomfortable because I felt like I was bombarded as soon as I walked into the salon. Then my client over dramatized it with question after question and assuming that it had metastasized. How do you deal with clients that get too personal? What do you think about the owner asking me about it in front of everyone as soon as I walked in the door?

i work at a great salon, i love it. we are commission and have about 15 stylists rotating through the week and we share stations. we have outlets in our stations but mostly use extension cords plugged to that outlet to plug our blowdryers into. i have noticed everybody’s blowdryers dying after a year or less. i’ve been working here for a few months and my blowdryer just took a shit on me. mine is a dyson. it’s happened to the other stylists and their babyliss, dyson, bioionic, etc. has this happened to anyone, is it the extension cords?

i have had my license for about a year now i work in a chain salon so all my clients are walk-ins. i make pretty good money doing this and it gives me lots practice and experience but my dream has always been to work in an independent salon and have a clientele that comes to me regularly. i am aware that it takes time to build your clientele up but i wouldn’t even know where to begin on something like that. i dont know many people in my area and i don’t post on social media which i know is a sin in the hairstylist community but i do not like the idea of having to become a part time influencer to build clientele. any tips and tricks from anyone who’s built a clientele without bringing in people you already know or posting lots on socials?

I’m a first year apprentice, and i love my job, i’m at my dream salon all my coworkers are beautiful and so supportive, but i moved to a new city to get this job etc

and unfortunately i need to seek a model every week to do their hair, and ive only got so many friends i can ask about doing their hair, so im just wondering how on earth do i find models? ive tried the facebook groups and have only been met with people who get angry at me when i cant transform their black box dye hair to a cowboy copper,

what am i supposed to do?

I’ve been having a bit of a hairstylist identity crisis lately and would love to hear from anyone who’s made a similar transition.

I’ve been licensed for about 6 years and have spent pretty much my entire career doing exclusively men’s hair. I originally wanted to get into vivid/creative color when I got out of school, but I needed a steady paycheck and ended up at Great Clips. Men’s hair became my thing, I got really good at it, and now I’m in my own suite specializing in men’s cuts.

The problem is…I still really fucking want to do vivid color. 😂

At this point I have very little real salon color experience. I’ve done basic gray coverage/blending and friends/family, but I’ve only had maybe one actual paying women’s color client in my entire career. I have no color portfolio, no color clientele, and I’d basically be learning/building that side of my career from scratch while continuing to run my men’s business.

Has anyone here gone from doing almost exclusively men’s hair/cutting to women’s color or vivids several years into their career?

How did you relearn/build your color skills? Did you start with classes, mannequins, models, assisting/shadowing someone? How did you find models and eventually figure out timing and pricing?

I’m not looking to abandon men’s hair or completely change my business overnight. I think I’m mostly trying to figure out whether there’s a realistic way to slowly build this second specialty without taking another massive leap.

Would especially love to hear from anyone who made the switch later in their career and what you’d do differently if you were starting over.

Hello Reddit! Long-time reader, first-time poster here! I suppose I am seeking advice and opinions on this situation. I will try to make a long story short while not leaving out too many important details. I am a hairstylist and have developed a crush on one of my long-term clients, and I think the crush is mutual, but I cannot tell for sure.

I have been cutting his hair for about 6 years; I met him outside of work through another client who became a friend whose hair I have been doing for almost 10 years. I was hanging out with him and his husband, and my now-crush was also there; he needed a haircut and has been a loyal client ever since. I always thought he was attractive, but I was married at the time, so he obviously was not on my radar like that, and vice versa.

I have since gotten divorced and have been single for about 2 years. I have only had one little fling since my divorce with a woman I was close with, which faded quickly; we stayed friends, but I have not had any substantial feelings or connections with anyone since, especially a man, due to some trauma from my ex-husband (I am bi, not that it matters, but just for context). I was fully prepared to stay single and stay in my lane; I did not think anything of my client or anyone else because I had so much going on getting my life together that I did not want or have anyone on my radar. I just was not ready to accept any of that, I had to heal, and I have to have a deeper connection with people to have any form of a crush or intimacy; my heart just was not there, and my client and I were not super close at the time, as it was always the same small talk and updates during his appointments.

Anyways, time for the juicy part! Please stick around; I promise I will get to the point. Around July of this year, I started to notice him as an attractive guy again, not just as a client and acquaintance. I thought he would never feel the same, as I had seen him outside of the salon a few times in a group with my other clients and friends. I still pushed it aside because surely it was nothing and I would get over it; I did not think he would have any interest in me either.

However, a few appointments ago, the vibe seemed very different during our appointments in a good way. I do not know if it is delusion or mutual attraction, but he was making more eye contact, started booking his appointments earlier, and would linger to talk to me after his appointment, which he did not do before. Again, I have been cutting his hair for about 6 years, so maybe he is just finally getting comfortable with me, but I feel like that would have happened sooner. Then we had another haircut and it was similar; he was opening up to me a bit more, too. I just felt a vibe change I've never felt with him before.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago: our mutual friends and my other clients invited me to go to a local drive-thru restaurant near town. He called to invite me and told me my crush was going to be there and that they go every Saturday. He doesn't know about the crush to my knowledge, at least from my end. We're all mutuals and haven't hung out in a while, so I decided to go because it would be fun and I could also test the waters. We all met at the place, and as soon as I got out of the car, he immediately turned to me and said, "So, I'll be seeing you next week," with a smirk; he was smiling, but not quite. I told him his appointment wasn't until the week after; apparently, we were both heavily keeping tabs on when his next appointment was. He looked at me and said, "It's definitely next week," and told me he was going to pull it up on his phone to prove it; I then took out my phone to check the book and showed him the appointment was the following week. He seemed kind of bummed it wasn't sooner, but we had some playful banter about it. He also stood near me, and we chatted here and there about silly things like pasta salad and his coleslaw preferences, lol. I was definitely a little flirty with him, but we were in a group and I didn't want to make it obvious. I also caught him staring a few times, and then he turned away when I looked back, and vice versa.

Fast forward to his next appointment, the most recent one. I suddenly had so much excitement and butterflies to see him and cut his hair that I could barely hold it together, but for the sake of professionalism, I obviously did. As soon as we saw each other, we were both cheesing, and then he reeled it back a little. He got in my chair, and we had the most in-depth conversation I've ever had with him. He really started to open up to me more and seemed a lot more comfortable. I'm looking for an apartment, and he was trying to help with ideas; he told me he had a brother and shared all about him and his girlfriend, which I never knew until then. We talked about a whole bunch of things and I learned a lot about him; we had more silly food preference talks, too. He also had me trim his facial hair, which he's never had me do; for that, I'm right in someone's face, so I was dying being a few inches away from him. He looked so fine and I was holding it together; I could see him staring at my face while I did it, and I could tell I was blushing from our cute little interactions. He stayed later to talk to me again and lingered longer than usual, and kept eye contact for most of the time. He told me about his travel plans in depth, his Halloween costume plans, and his work drama, which he's never chatted with me about before. I don't know if I'm just delusional, spot on with my feelings that this might be mutual, or what. There was a lot more banter and laughing and smiling with/at each other this time; so I can't ignore that!

My therapist thinks he is flirting with me subtly because he is a more reserved kind of guy, but I figured I would come here to see what you all think and what I should do. If I had not been his hairstylist first, I probably would have made some sort of move by now, but I want to retain our professional relationship and avoid making him uncomfortable or losing a client whom I also genuinely enjoy as a client and now friend. I wonder if he feels the same and does not want to come off as a weirdo too; all the tension is killing me. I am at the point where I am fully down bad with this crush, and I am struggling with how to navigate it. HELP! 😅