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Hairdressing salon

Articles on hairdressing software, online booking, client records and salon operations.

An introduction

This section is about running a hairdressing salon: about appointments that hold, clients who come back, and the half hour a day that disappears between a call, a call back and the appointment book. It is written for owners of small and mid-sized salons, for whoever leads the team, and for anyone renting a chair or working self-employed on one.

The most common questions are questions about time. How long does a colour really take once the development time sits in the middle of it, and what happens on the second chair during that gap? How much slack does a day take before it tips, and at what point does slack make it uneconomic? Out of those answers comes a service menu that names not only prices but durations that hold up in the calendar.

The second big question is return. A salon does not live on new faces but on the rhythm of familiar ones: four to six weeks on a regrowth, six to eight on a short cut, considerably longer for anything meant to grow out gently. Know that rhythm per service and you have to advertise less and remind more. The same group holds the articles on client notes, on formulas and preferences, and on handling cancellations.

Then there are the subjects nobody opens voluntarily and every business meets anyway: hygiene and the records that go with it, holding client data, consent for photographs, complaints after a colour. They appear here not as legal text but as a description of what is workable in a salon day.

Two neighbouring subjects sit deliberately elsewhere. Anything that only concerns a barbershop — beard services, walk-ins, short turnarounds — is in the barbershop section. And the question of which system you run and how you introduce it is a software question; it sits under salon software. This section is about the craft and the business around it.

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Open around the clock: why online booking is a must for hairdressers Hairdressing salon

Open around the clock: why online booking is a must for hairdressers

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Salon marketing: how to fill your appointment calendar sustainably Hairdressing salon

Salon marketing: how to fill your appointment calendar sustainably

Instagram, a maintained Google profile, local partnerships and reviews, why keeping a client is cheaper, and the rece...

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Hairdressing salon: frequently asked questions

Allow the time the appointment actually occupies the salon, not the time spent working at the chair. A colour includes application, development, rinsing and finishing; the development time is the only stretch in which the chair frees up and a second appointment fits alongside. Measure for two weeks rather than estimating — most salons find their standard duration is too short for half their appointments and too long for the other half.

The rhythm belongs to the service, not to the person: a regrowth usually shows after four to six weeks, a short cut holds its shape for four to eight, longer hair will take three months and more. Once you know the interval per service you can propose the next appointment at the end of this one, instead of advertising weeks later. That proposal at the chair is the most effective and the cheapest client retention there is.

A no-show almost always has one of three causes: it was forgotten, it was booked too far ahead, or there was no easy way to cancel. A reminder a day or two before deals with the first, a shorter booking horizon for new clients with the second, and a cancellation route that works without a phone call with the third. A cancellation policy stated clearly and in advance works more reliably than a fee nobody ends up chasing.

In goes whatever makes the next appointment better: formulas and development times, products used, hair structure, previous treatments, known sensitivities, wishes, and whatever did not go down well last time. Private observations about the person do not. A workable rule of thumb: if you would not want to read an entry out to the client, do not write it — subject access requests are about exactly these notes.