There's a common chord in the comments of Janet Nguyen's Instagram posts: “When are you taking new clients?”

Janet Nguyen, sole and independent owner of Love Is in the Hair in Sydney Australia, posted once that she was taking new clients, then promptly had to take the post down to stop the flow of hundreds of messages from coming in.

Grey to pink color melt by Janet Nguyen

This is the heavy weight to bear for an independent stylist who is so obscenely good at what she does that people scramble over each other for a chance to sit in her chair. For many an Australia, it's a daily routine to check her page to see if she's taking new clients, so it's also a daily routine for Janet to tell them that her waiting list is still full, which is a hard thing for a stylist to do. Anyone who is so willing and excited to try something new just because they like the way you do it is a boon to hair artists.

Steel blue with top knot by Janet Nguyen

Over the years her specialty has become the gray beauties. She has a knack for pulling the tones of very dark hair into the delicate recesses of gray and metallic colors without severe yellowing. But it could be that this isn't so much her specialty as the thing she's most often asked for, because in the past she has shown an ability with pastels, vivids, and even blonde balayage. Much of her earlier work consisted of light, fading reds or bright striking blues. These were short interruptions to a collection of blonde and brunette color melts, and almost all of these styles were transformations from either very dark hair or hair that had been compromised by color.

Blonde Balayage transformation by Janet Nguyen

Clearly her recent focus on dark to gray colors is not a result of limited ability. Janet can color vivids with the best of them and tie it up with a hairstyle like you've never seen. But there's no denying she knows how to make her gray foxes sing, not just through skill in color but with subtle hand for updos. She often sets her styles off with a variation of top knot or braid. It's never anything especially wild, but definitely intricate within a deceptive simplicity.

Ocean colors with braid by Janet Nguyen

So if you'd like to try your luck getting on Janet's wait list, or if you would just like a healthy dose of daily inspiration, we highly recommend following Janet @loveisinthehair_byjanetNguyen.

Eva Lam has been blowing through the Americas like a cool wind on a hot day. The motto of this unapologetic hair artist from Vancouver, Canada is F*** Bad Hair, which is both an indication of her extremely high standards in her craft and her attitude towards anything that falls below them.

Pink color melt By Eva

Someone who has worked as hard as she has to become a titan of innovation and inspiration in this industry has a right to some attitude though. And, frankly, in a culture where so many clients are quick to demand fast changes of color, assuming money can make up for lack of proper care and time, Eva's motto is refreshing: No bad hair, no matter what.

Dark ash by Eva

Her journey to hair coloring didn't actually start with hair though. On paper you might mistake her for a marketing executive. She received a Bachelor's in business from Simon Fraser University, and later earned a graphic design certificate from the British Columbia Institute of Technology. In fact, a careful perusal of her Instagram reveals that hair is not her only visual medium. She's also very skilled with charcoal drawings. While that's not necessarily an indication of her ability with hair, it does show a mind willing and capable to explore and excel in all things.

Charcoal drawing of Charlie Chaplin by Eva Lam

Many people hail her as the queen of grays, which is true even if there are plenty of other stylists out there who can do a mean gray fox. But Eva's ability to gray into a poem on hair is not what makes her special, it's that she approaches every style with a consistent artistic integrity.

Metallic and neon contrasts by Eva

Eva Lam is not one to settle down in her career. She's always pushing the boundaries of her craft somewhere she's never been before. She's been running around the US since March teaching classes on hair color and collaborating with artists like Linh Phan and Ricky Zito. Now she's scheduled to teach alongside Vena Love this August in California, before flying off with her to each again in Australia and add Janet Nguyen to the team in September.

If you'd like to try keeping up with Eva be sure to follow her on Instagram @evalam_

A good rolling cart for the salon is hard to find. There's a trick to selecting the trolley with enough space appliance holders but isn't so bulky that it tips with every turn. One solution for a lot of stylists is to simply get a service tray which provides a great portable work place for coloring, but it doesn't have quite the same sturdy functionality of a cabinet style trolley. So if you’re looking for a strong combination of storage, working space, and utility space for tools, here are a few trolleys you might like.

Taranto Rollabout Trolley

The Taranto is a tried and true beast of burden with tons of appliance holders and separate slots for foils and plastic wraps. It has removable trays inside so you can customize your working space, and it has lockable doors so you can keep everything safe. It's also pretty simple to put together. The biggest complaints people have had about it is that the locking doors and metal pieces at the bottom aren't exactly winning any durability contests. But so long as you don't throw it around a pro wrestling match, everything should hold just fine for your needs.

Vittoria Rollabout Trolley

Now if it's durability you want, the Vittoria is probably the way to go. Most of the pieces in the trolley are wooden, and there aren't a lot of moving parts. It also rates pretty high on the classy scale. I mean, looks are subjective, but this is a pretty elegant piece of equipment. It doesn't have as much utility space in the way of appliance holders but the removable trays and the pull-out slabs give you plenty of work space. It's also a bit pricier (strength and style make a high-value combination), so it's the kind of thing you want to make sure you really need before pulling the trigger.

Genoa Rollabout Trolley

The Genoa is a little different in design. It manages to fit a lot of appliance holders into a relatively small space with the hanging set of three on one side and the half-moon metal tray on the other side for color bowls and brushes. This is not the way to go if wide open working space is what you need, but if you need a solid, reliable piece of moving storage, this trolley is hard to improve on for the price.

Cosmo Rollabout Trolley

The Cosmo has a very similar design to the Taranto. The primary difference is the sectioning in the top. Where the Taranto is a flat open work space, the Cosmo is shaped to fit color bowls in one side, clips in another, and your long tools like combs and brushes in the last. In fact, it's generally the same price as the Taranto, so choosing between the two is really matter of preference and specialization.

Anzio Rollercart Trolley

If minimalist design is your thing, the Anzio is probably an answer to several problems. There are no bulky add ons, and the cabinet body is a little slimmer than most so it fits smoothly into your salon interior. There are three standard appliance holders in a tray that slides out near the top, and of course it has the removable trays inside the cabinet, but that's the extent of the bells and whistles. The rest is open space and a solid construction.

Photo by Nate Pesce

August is just out of our grasp now which means you're probably gearing up for four months of holiday specials and stocking for the inevitable seasonal hair changes. But it also means football season is starting. That might not be a traditional concern for hair salons, but bear with us for a moment.

Salon Magazine recently did an article about the rising popularity of athlete-inspired hairstyles for men. Big name players like David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo have got people parting their hair then slicking it back or to the side to attain some mixture of suave yet short and maintainable. But that's in Canada and with soccer. What about here in the U.S. where American football dominates all sports channels and barroom conversations for at least seven months of every year?

You might not be surprised to learn that hair is treated a little differently with NFL players. And by differently we mean weirdly. Descriptions of American football hairstyles tend more toward “memorable” than “suave.” But there are a few stars who have become icons of style and serve as great examples of attainable athletic hairstyles for a variety of different types of hair.

Short, Curly, and Colored

Giant's receiver Odell Beckham Jr. has made the burst and fade a popular choice for a lot of football fans. Short curly hair with the top sections vibrantly colored caught on around 2014 after Odell had a particularly good year with some pretty fantastic athletic feats (after you've made a touchdown with a one handed catch maybe everything you do looks cool). The really great thing about this style though is that it's done with a type of hair that too many people believe is too difficult to style or care for.

Middle-aged and Flowing

There are few examples of what you might call “male Hollywood hair” in football, and when it shows up it's often the source of superstitious debates about playoff statistics. But high profile players like Tom Brady are almost always at the center of controversy, and Tom's hair in particular has gone through several stages of media coverage. What makes this year unique is that the long standing New England quarterback is now coming up on forty years old, a time that you generally expect men to start buying cars they can’t afford and wondering if they can pull off a leather jacket. Bottom line: it's when men start looking for a change, and Brady's growing, free-flowing locks give aging football fans something to think about.

Ridiculously Long

There are more than a few football players who are known for their long hair. Clay Matthews and Troy Polumalu are probably the most famous for letting it all grow out. In the case of Polumalu it became such a spectacle that he was sponsored by a shampoo company which insured his hair for a million dollars as a publicity stunt. Now it's fairly common for football helmets to be bordered by waterfalls of hair on game day. They've normalized the idea of long hair even for men with active lifestyles, which presents a unique opportunity for hair salons to step up and show men the how they can handle and take care of long hair.

Photo courtesy of Freddy Guerrero

The future of salons is computers doing everything for us except cutting hair. Salon Magazine recently did a spotlight on the Eikonic House of Barbers that was built around the use of the salon management program Shortcuts. The owners talk a lot about how the program has helped them become successful with its comprehensive data collection and automatic messaging. It cuts down on no shows, gives them easy access to information on areas they can improve, and appointments and billing happen almost without effort.

The article makes the point that this works so well for a barbershop because that men crave ease and convenience, but that’s not exclusive to men. Everyone craves ease and convenience. This isn’t just something that affects barbershops. It’s a rule of thumb that the easier you make it for people to do just about anything, the more they’ll do it. That’s the beauty of modernizing your salon. It simplifies and automates so it’s easier for you and your clients to connect and communicate. In theory.

Remember the Human Element

While it’s hard to overstate the usefulness of management software, you can get carried away with it. If there’s any danger lying in these paragons of convenience, it’s that they can encourage us to become lazy when it comes to interacting with other people. When a computer is handling so many aspects of the business, including reaching out with special offers, you might be tempted just to let the thing run and watch people stroll through your doors, but that will eventually create a disconnect between you and the clients outside. Here are a couple things you can do to avoid that disconnect.

Automatic Messages: Don’t Let Robots Talk for You

While it’s great to have a system that automatically texts and emails clients with reminders and special offers, it detracts from one of the key components of any salon: human interaction. Once you get the hang of setting up schedules for promotions and reminders it’s easy to walk away and forget what it’s doing. But just because something is automated doesn’t mean it doesn’t need your attention. It’s always important to personalize your messages in some way. For one thing, never use the stock copy that’s probably filled in the system. These are usually voiceless statements with over enthusiastic exclamations as if receiving that text message is the highlight of that person’s life. Always send out your own words. Just because it’s a robot sending the messages doesn’t mean it needs to be a robot talking.

Remember the Stylist Behind the Statistics

One of the handy features of Shortcuts is that it shows you statistics on client retention and makes it easy to log complaints. This is great data for finding areas you people need to improve, but it can also lead to a certain coldness in problem solving. When a computer program tells you a stylist is having trouble bringing clients back, don’t simply show them the numbers and tell them to fix the problem. Use the information to start a conversation with them. Ask them how they handle clients, or see if there’s some personal issue affecting their customer service. Or you might just find they need a little additional training in customer care.

Your Personality is Part of Your Business

Despite fears of robots taking over all our jobs over the next few decades, these programs are not meant to replace any humans. They’re made to augment humans. A salon is a place full of visually artistic people, and their craft is a specialized, difficult task that is hindered by paperwork and bookkeeping. The easier you can make those aspects of running a salon, the better the product will ultimately be. There might be a future where robots hold down most of the jobs, but they will never hold down our personalities. Never forget the value of that in your business.

It’s officially fall now, even if it doesn’t feel like it in all parts of the country (looking at you, California). If you’re already wrapped in clouds and rain and falling leaves then you might already be in the pumpkin-crazy spirit of the season. But for those who are still struggling through 90 degree weather and stubbornly sunny days, you might need a little help remembering what it’s like to be cold and surrounded by new colors, so we went out and found a few fresh hair colors that should give you a creative taste of autumn until the weather catches up.

Pure Autumn Hair

These are the traditional colors of fall executed perfectly by Mishele DiMaria. She has put just the right amount of fall color into this auburn hair so that it’s not overboard but still carries that sense of bright autumn cheer, and that braid was a great choice for styling to make the whole thing come together with a little structure.

Mishele is a makeup artist, colorist, and editorial stylist from Las Vegas.

Smoky Mermaid Hair

If you’ve ever watched a sunset through a rainy day, this light-colored style by Winnipeg artist Kelly Woodford should bring the memory washing back. The so-light-blue-it’s-almost-grey color cascading into ends tinged in pink is every bit like sun rays refracting through rain drops from a patchwork grey sky.

Kelly owns the Sapphire Hair Lounge up in Winnipeg, Canada.

Grey Skies Hair

Everyone associates autumn with explosions of golden hues, but it’s not all yellow, red, and orange. This overcast color by Rachelle Mariano defies that explosion by bringing us the grey image of a cloudy day and a tree that’s quickly losing all its leaves. It has a minimalist beauty that’s as calming as waking up to the sound of rain on the window.

Rachelle is a colorist from the Titanium Studios Salon in Vancouver, Canada.

Electric Fall Leaves Hair

Actually we’re not sure if this reminds us of changing leaves, a bright camp fire, or a neon sign. Maybe if you could plug a whole forest into a power source and watch the electricity ripple through the branches while the leaves change to yellow and orange you would get an autumn with these colors. In fact, we’re going to unofficially call this color Electric Fall.

Colored with Fanola. Handle with care.

The artist, Crystal Casey, is a colorist and educator in Virginia Beach, Virginia at High Voltage Hair

Cold Winds Hair

This unicorn rainbow by Samantha Tarini still has hints of summer in it. The blue brightness has hints of swimming under the sun, but the change to darker tones brings the clouds rolling in. Never forget the sun will disappear and the temperature will go down. Cold winds will blow, but let this vivid melody of color help you see the beauty in that change.

Samantha is a vivid specialist and Unicorn Tribe Ambassador in Las Vegas.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Oines.

The London-based shop, Barberette, recently got a bump in publicity for being a “gender-neutral barbershop,” meaning they charge by hair length and desired style. There’s no cheaper option for Men’s Haircut. It’s all just hair on heads.

Even though this is a UK business, it’s a direct response to a problem we have here in the states. When it comes to beauty related products and services, women pay more than men. It’s easy to justify the price gap by saying that women generally expect more when they get a haircut. They want shampoo and conditioner and blowouts and a host of other chemical treatments that can add up in product cost pretty quickly. But suppose there are a men who want that same treatment and either don’t get it because you assume they don’t want it, or don’t pay full price for it because you’ve established on your services menu that men pay less?

It Devalues the Service

When you charge less for a man's haircut you implicitly suggest that there is less value in the service. Whether this makes male customers feel as if their haircuts aren't as important, or the people who provide those haircuts are less valuable, it is a subtly destructive practice to continue.

Men Will Pay the Price

The idea of charging men less than women is partially based on an assumption that men don't care as much about their appearance and therefore aren't willing to spend as much on a haircut as women. It seems to be a necessity of the business to treat genders differently. Perhaps that was a safe assumption a few decades ago (although you could argue the slicked-back greaser craze of the 50's was a pretty clear indication that men were very concerned with their appearance). But there's a thriving industry of upscale barbershops that proves men will pay a premium for quality grooming. It's been increasingly common to see men investing a great deal of time and money into their hair. It might not be the majority yet, but the number is growing, and in the meantime you're losing money by charging haircuts based on gender instead of hair length and style.

It Hinders Creativity

It creates a separation between people who style for men and people who style for women, which in turn continues the idea that men must keep styling their hair the way other men do, and women the same, so you are limiting all your clients to traditional forms of expression, meaning you're limiting the hair stylists. While artistry is not a sound business model, it is the reason many stylists do what they do, and it’s damaging to them when they are systemically limited in their craft from providing a style for fear of judgement.

Man or Woman, It's all Style

There is a difference between a shop plush with barber chairs and shaving cream and a beauty salon lined to the roof with hair color products, but it's a superficial difference. In both cases you have people who want to look and feel good. One of the best things about many new barbers and stylists is their dedication to providing clients with niche styles that fit their personality. If that personality includes styling their hair in a short side part or a long, flowing balayage, why should their gender factor into the price they pay?

It’s officially fall now, even if it doesn’t feel like it in all parts of the country (looking at you, California). If you’re already wrapped in clouds and rain and falling leaves then you might already be in the pumpkin-crazy spirit of the season. But for those who are still struggling through 90 degree weather and stubbornly sunny days, you might need a little help remembering what it’s like to be cold and surrounded by new colors, so we went out and found a few fresh hair colors that should give you a creative taste of autumn until the weather catches up.

Pure Autumn Hair

These are the traditional colors of fall executed perfectly by Mishele DiMaria. She has put just the right amount of fall color into this auburn hair so that it’s not overboard but still carries that sense of bright autumn cheer, and that braid was a great choice for styling to make the whole thing come together with a little structure.

Mishele is a makeup artist, colorist, and editorial stylist from Las Vegas.

Smoky Mermaid Hair

If you’ve ever watched a sunset through a rainy day, this light-colored style by Winnipeg artist Kelly Woodford should bring the memory washing back. The so-light-blue-it’s-almost-grey color cascading into ends tinged in pink is every bit like sun rays refracting through rain drops from a patchwork grey sky.

Kelly owns the Sapphire Hair Lounge up in Winnipeg, Canada.

Grey Skies Hair

Everyone associates autumn with explosions of golden hues, but it’s not all yellow, red, and orange. This overcast color by Rachelle Mariano defies that explosion by bringing us the grey image of a cloudy day and a tree that’s quickly losing all its leaves. It has a minimalist beauty that’s as calming as waking up to the sound of rain on the window.

Rachelle is a colorist from the Titanium Studios Salon in Vancouver, Canada.

Electric Fall Leaves Hair

Actually we’re not sure if this reminds us of changing leaves, a bright camp fire, or a neon sign. Maybe if you could plug a whole forest into a power source and watch the electricity ripple through the branches while the leaves change to yellow and orange you would get an autumn with these colors. In fact, we’re going to unofficially call this color Electric Fall.

Colored with Fanola. Handle with care.

The artist, Crystal Casey, is a colorist and educator in Virginia Beach, Virginia at High Voltage Hair

Cold Winds Hair

This unicorn rainbow by Samantha Tarini still has hints of summer in it. The blue brightness has hints of swimming under the sun, but the change to darker tones brings the clouds rolling in. Never forget the sun will disappear and the temperature will go down. Cold winds will blow, but let this vivid melody of color help you see the beauty in that change.

Samantha is a vivid specialist and Unicorn Tribe Ambassador in Las Vegas.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Oines.

The London-based shop, Barberette, recently got a bump in publicity for being a “gender-neutral barbershop,” meaning they charge by hair length and desired style. There’s no cheaper option for Men’s Haircut. It’s all just hair on heads.

Even though this is a UK business, it’s a direct response to a problem we have here in the states. When it comes to beauty related products and services, women pay more than men. It’s easy to justify the price gap by saying that women generally expect more when they get a haircut. They want shampoo and conditioner and blowouts and a host of other chemical treatments that can add up in product cost pretty quickly. But suppose there are a men who want that same treatment and either don’t get it because you assume they don’t want it, or don’t pay full price for it because you’ve established on your services menu that men pay less?

It Devalues the Service

When you charge less for a man's haircut you implicitly suggest that there is less value in the service. Whether this makes male customers feel as if their haircuts aren't as important, or the people who provide those haircuts are less valuable, it is a subtly destructive practice to continue.

Men Will Pay the Price

The idea of charging men less than women is partially based on an assumption that men don't care as much about their appearance and therefore aren't willing to spend as much on a haircut as women. It seems to be a necessity of the business to treat genders differently. Perhaps that was a safe assumption a few decades ago (although you could argue the slicked-back greaser craze of the 50's was a pretty clear indication that men were very concerned with their appearance). But there's a thriving industry of upscale barbershops that proves men will pay a premium for quality grooming. It's been increasingly common to see men investing a great deal of time and money into their hair. It might not be the majority yet, but the number is growing, and in the meantime you're losing money by charging haircuts based on gender instead of hair length and style.

It Hinders Creativity

It creates a separation between people who style for men and people who style for women, which in turn continues the idea that men must keep styling their hair the way other men do, and women the same, so you are limiting all your clients to traditional forms of expression, meaning you're limiting the hair stylists. While artistry is not a sound business model, it is the reason many stylists do what they do, and it’s damaging to them when they are systemically limited in their craft from providing a style for fear of judgement.

Man or Woman, It's all Style

There is a difference between a shop plush with barber chairs and shaving cream and a beauty salon lined to the roof with hair color products, but it's a superficial difference. In both cases you have people who want to look and feel good. One of the best things about many new barbers and stylists is their dedication to providing clients with niche styles that fit their personality. If that personality includes styling their hair in a short side part or a long, flowing balayage, why should their gender factor into the price they pay?

Photo courtesy Krista Baltroka.

Halloween is nigh which means two things.

1. There’s barely enough time for you to slip in last minute Halloween specials,

2. There’s another two months of Holiday madness to prepare for.

We’re entering the time of obligatory parties, family get-togethers, special events, and heinous gift giving, all of which are things many people will be looking to you, the salon owner/stylist/barber/unofficial counselor for help. If you haven’t had time to come up with some quick specials and marketing plans for the end-of-year trifecta yet, here are a few ideas that will bring some holiday spirit into your business.

Gift Certificates Like Crazy

There is no saving grace to the desperate gift search like the beauty salon gift certificate. The husband to the wife, the friend to the friend who’s too scared to pay for a new hair color, or just someone who’s too busy or poor to make and keep consistent appointments. The list of people looking for extra quality time in the chair is endless.

Become the Escape, not the Next Thing on the To Do List

Whatever your customer base is like, it’s about to become a lot more stressed out. Make a holiday special that highlights the relaxing services you provide: manicure, touch up with head massage, complimentary refreshments (especially now that salons can legally serve alcohol in California), etc. Make a nice blue poster to hang up in your window and post on social media, regardless of the holiday so it stands out as a calming offer in a sea of red and green or yellow and orange.

Holiday Themed Hair Styles

This is a little bit gimmicky, and relies on social media like Instagram and Pinterest, but it gets people’s attention. There’s a certain feel and set of colors that goes with each holiday. Fall colors with a mix of black and red for Halloween, pure orange, yellow, and red fall colors for Thanksgiving, and then blizzard of white, red, and green that dominates everything in December. Take time to perfect a style that fits in with the feel of these months and post them around your social media, preferably with some well placed hashtags, then offer something like a 10% discount on first time color appointments. And speaking of hashtags...

The Holiday Hashtag

If you don’t already do regular hashtag research, this is a good time to start, because when someone doesn’t know what look they want this fall/winter, they’re going to type in seasonally charged words to find inspiration, and that’s when you want to show up on their feed. Keep an eye out for people using things like #holidayhair, #autumnlocks, #christmaslook, or pretty much any combination of fall, autumn, winter, snow, pumpkin, and snow with color, do, hair, and beauty. This kind of thing shifts year to year, but about twenty minutes on Instagram should give you a pretty good idea of how people are using these terms and how to tag your holiday and season specific pictures.

There’s a world of brown hair out there and people who want to keep that hair brown but maybe just make it pop a little more. One of the best ways to do that without completely changing the style and overall color of the hair is to start playing with highlights and lowlights. Now, we know a lot of you colorists like to put a buckshot of unicorn vivids on every head you see, and that’s cool, but sometimes you need to stop and appreciate what can be done with regular ol’ shades of brown. Because not everyone wants to wipe their natural brunette hair away to go grey fox or put a rainbow of pastel on their head.

Pixie Highlights

There are a lot of tough things about this pixie by Amanda Mae that make it really remarkable. First, just styling any pixie cut successfully is tough, but Amanda has made this work really well with the loose side part. None of the angles are too tight so that even though the hair is so short it comes off very casually. The streaks of light (almost blonde) highlights Amanda painted give the loose casual look a striking definition and lifts it to that memorable leve.

Brunette Balayage

This is a full blooded balayage, complete with a wavy cascade of brunette locks and caramel highlights. Emily Belcher pulled the blend of colors off perfectly. She wasn’t afraid to paint widely within the brown spectrum so you get a hugely dynamic range of of color, creating a collage you can stare at for hours because because there’s always some new spectacular combination of brown melting into a curl of caramel.

Long Brown Hair with Babylights

Katie’s balayage with babylights really shows an expertise at shaping. For all it’s wild look, this is actually a really well thought out hair style. There’s not a whole lot of different colors at work, but the styling of the hair and placement of highlights amplify the colors. The way all the hair seems to be going wherever it wants to, but still falls into a shape that conforms to a certain wild logic is a sign of some pretty expert styling.

Brunette Lowlights and Balayage

Vena Love creates a lot of hairstyles that go way out into the fringes of vivid color, so when she decides to do something more… Well, we don’t want to say normal. Almost nothing she does is ever strictly “normal,” but to see what she does with natural brown colors is to see a shining example of an intensely creative mind tempered by expert professionalism. In this case, Vena made a vibrant piece with a caramel base color and an accentuating composition of lowlights. The whole of the style is a gentle combination of two main colors, woven together in long flowing hair in perfect condition.

Photo by Johnny Lai

By now you probably have your holiday marketing plans sorted out. You’re already sending out mass texts about special offers and referrals and gift sales and now you’re waiting for the Christmas tide to wash up to your neck, and hoping it won’t get over your head. This is technically a happy time, but it’s also obscenely busy and a lot of stylists become overwhelmed by the thickening appointment book coming at odds with the lengthening to-do list at home. While it might be a good time for business, it’s not great for health, and that’s one of the most important aspects of keeping your business up. So here are a few tips for getting through December without breaking down.

Prepare Meals

It sounds like your grandmother saying you need to put more meat on your bones, but you’re a stylist. Odds are your lunch was a protein shake pounded down in five minutes while standing up, so it’s a safe bet grandma was right. Eating healthy is a lot easier than most people think, it just takes a little planning and preparation. At the start of each week try sorting out snacks to eat during the day like trail mix and dry fruit, and if you don’t have time to cook every night, try making food in bulk like stew, chili, or soup that you can just heat up when you get home. It takes a little cooking savvy and cuts into your Sunday a little, but you’ll thank yourself every day during the week.

For God’s Sake, Sleep

There is no worse mistake made by ambitious creatives and business owners than to drive yourselves into the ground with too many late nights. Sometimes it’s necessary, sure. Constant growth is inherent to this industry. But if you let too many of those late nights stack up you’ll be bed-ridden by the end of the month. Especially during flu season, when bacteria flies behind warm closed doors with wild abandon. And, not to alarm you, but as a stylist you’re coming into close contact with a lot of people. Maybe you already got your shot, and maybe you’re taking a daily dose of vitamin C and wearing a mask, but at the end of the day, the best way to avoid getting sick is letting yourself get those 6-8 hours at least a few days a week.

Separate Work and Home

We all love what we do. The great thing about being a stylist, colorist, barber, etc. is that you wake up every morning and go home every night knowing you’re doing something you enjoy doing. But it’s still work. It involves stress and planning and a lot of dedication, so even artists need to turn off sometimes. When you go home at night, parcel out a set amount of time to do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Whether that means reading or watching tv or just watching paint dry (on the wall, not hair. No cheating). One of the things that often keeps us from relaxing is knowing we have something else we need to be doing. If you specifically set an hour or so aside to do nothing it makes it easier to relax because you know exactly when you’ll be getting back to life.

Are You Ready to Style Hair at Home?

Photo by Karen Newman

For millions of stylists in America, starting a home salon seems like a shorter, cheaper path to owning their business, but many don’t realize what all goes into opening a salon. And a home salon brings its own set of unique complications. Between finding the right salon equipment to fit in your home and the complications of adapting any room in a house to meet state regulations, you will quickly find yourself drowning in preparation. So it’s important to take a step back and really consider if working from home is worth the trouble, and if you’re ready for it. To help you along, here are a few reasons you probably aren’t ready for it.

1. You Will be too Stressed

It’s a tantalizing prospect. You don’t have to drive to work or rent an extra space so you’ll save money. Every break and lunch can be spent in the comfort of your own room or kitchen, and you’ll never have to worry about forgetting something at home. But your now your home is your work and there is no easy escape. If you thought your job was stressful before, just wait until your bed is only 20 feet away from your salon chair. It will affect your sleeping habits and your eating habits. Your emotional state will shift toward anxiety in almost every facet of your life.

2. You Don’t Have the Discipline

Working from home creates a dangerous compromise between professionalism and relaxation. Every time your lie back in your pajamas to watch tv, you’re doing it at work, and every time you put on an apron and pick up a pair of scissors, you’re doing it at home. It becomes very easy for the lines to blur to the point that your time at home becomes too professional, and even worse, your work becomes too relaxed, and you’re never really working or playing to your fullest potential.

3. Decorating Your Salon Means Decorating Your Home

There’s a lot of silver lining here since a salon is meant to be a beautiful, well decorated place anyway. But maybe your not so big on keeping your home as clean as your work, or you really like movie posters in your home but that doesn’t really fit with your salon’s classic aesthetic. And even if you successfully put up a solid divider between work space and living space, the outside of your home takes second priority to the outside of your work. You need to take pains to keep your yard manicured and your holiday decorations tasteful (according your salon’s image, anyway). Unless you already have a relaxed image and know all your clients well, you lose a lot of freedom, because everything must be decided with consideration to your clientele.

4. You’re Working with a lot Less Space

In general, a home salon will be a tighter fit than any other option. Whether you’re converting the garage or the living room into your salon, it means you not only have to find a new place to keep the car or living room couch, but you’re also working with less square feet for your salon than you would have by just renting out a studio somewhere else. It takes a lot of careful planning to work out the ergonomics of fitting salon equipment like a styling chair and a shampoo unit into 120 square feet of space while also finding a place for your regular home furnishings.

But…

It’s absolutely possible to make a home salon work. And if it’s what you really want, or if it’s just the only option you have, you will find a way to make it work. Pessimism is a safe mentality. It operates by avoiding the possibility of failure, but you will only ever accomplish anything through the ambition inherent in optimism.

A small space is an opportunity to innovate and make the most out of what you have. If you love what you do you’ll find the discipline and creativity you need to make work and home mix well enough to keep pursuing your passion. Just keep in mind that this is not a frivolous decision. A home salon is going to be an insane amount of work and stress, but hair artists are nothing if not dedicated problem solvers. If you can figure out how to take a brunette ravaged by three years of box dyes and turn her into a smooth silver fox you can work out how to fit an all purpose chair and a color bar in the second bedroom.

It’s been a little while since we’ve rounded up some of our favorite hair colors made with Fanola, and the end of 2016 seems like a good time to do it again. This is getting trickier to do because Fanola has been getting progressively more popular. People are getting wild out there with it, but the most common use is the Fanola No Yellow shampoo, which a lot of stylists use as a way of pre-coloring. So not all of these hair colors are just Fanola colors, but they were definitely brought to you by Fanola in one way or another.

Brunette to Blonde Transformation

There aren’t many colorists who could hold a candle to a balayage by Rachelle Mariano. The closest thing any will ever get to sleeping on a cloud is to have their hair done by her. This brunette-to-blonde transformation she made a while back is a great example of subtle toning. It has a hint of silver mixed in to create an almost smoky color that makes it stand out from a world of pure blondes.

Burgundy Layers

There are a lot of things to love about this glowering purple hair from color specialist Tiak. The layering, for one, is bold to say the least. It keeps the from looking flat and allows light through in different angles so the style shades itself and creates a more dynamic look. But the color is of course the star of the show here. Instead of a straight red or purple, Tiak took the time to find the sweet spot between the two, and her work paid off.

Ice Queen

Even if the best part about winter is over (RIP, holiday season), we appreciate this icy white color from Esa Beauty Studio. It has all the regal airs of a true ice queen, with a loose tie in the center that’s not quite a braid but perfectly brings the whole undone look together. It’s a fantastic execution of a style that seems to be getting more popular every year.

Red and Curly

We love it when someone goes red using Fanola, because it’s such a tricky color to get right. Isabel of Bellabru Salon has not only properly set a head on fire (figuratively. We don’t condone lighting your client’s hair on fire), but she’s also tackled a head of curly hair and done wonders with it by making it a dark color melt and tying it off with a loose braid.

Mermaid Hair

We’d be remiss if we didn’t include at least one mermaid hair color. White Ivy Studio brings us this vivid rainbow on a long bob. They were not afraid of making intense neon shades out of oceanic colors, tinged with a sunset on top. There’s a lot of fun behind these colors. It’s the kind of thing that a lot of colorists want to do, but very few clients are brave enough to try, so it’s satisfying to see it done, and done well.

Color Melt/Blonde Transformation

This is something of a No Yellow miracle by the people from Revive by M. No intense coloring going on here. It’s just a solid hair save and clean up resulting in a lush color blend. These colorists have done a great job taking an extreme color melt to a soft blonde with a dark layer. There’s a lot of careful hair care and painting going on here.

One of the worst things you can do after setting up your salon equipment is to leave it alone and pretend it can take care of itself. Whether it’s styling chairs, shampoo chairs, or manicure tables, your equipment needs regular cleaning and maintenance. Most of it really doesn’t take that much effort, and with a little care and attention, even cheap salon equipment can give you years of reliable use.

Exposing It to Direct Sunlight

Natural lighting is great for decoration and your Instagram before-and-afters, however sunlight wreaks havoc on most kinds of upholstery by drying it out and fading the color. When you’re designing the layout of your salon make sure the sun won’t be beating down on any chairs in the afternoon (it isn’t quite so damaging in the morning). If you have to put some chairs in sunlight make sure you cover them with something. Even clear plastic chair covers are better than nothing because they still disperse some light.

Ignoring the Screws

Most of your equipment includes moving parts and pieces screwed into other pieces. Over time all those things are going to loosen up and wear down. Every week or so make sure you give your chairs and tables a once over and make sure all the screws are tight and nothing is wiggling more than it’s supposed to. This will prevent pieces from wearing out or even breaking off over time.

Leaving it Uncovered when Using Hair Chemicals

Hair color cream and bleach don’t play well with pretty much any surface. It should always be standard practice to at least protect the back of a styling or shampoo chair with a chair cover when you’re going to be working with any chemical more caustic than water. Otherwise you’ll end up covering the chair in stains and eventually ruining the upholstery.

Irregular Cleaning

Dust is the enemy of any machine, no matter how simple. Wiping down a chair completely at the end of the day goes a way toward keeping its color intact and all its parts working properly. And always wipe the equipment down with disinfectant regularly to avoid any grime build up. A lot of people are sitting in those chairs and lying on those tables, and the cumulative body oil from all of them won’t look or smell great if left uncleaned for too long.

Repair vs. Replace

It’s important to make sure all the parts on your equipment are repaired or replaced quickly because generally when one part is breaking down, it will start bringing all the parts nearby down with it. Every stylist and salon owner should know how to repair things for his or herself, but if you’re going to fix something on your own, learn to do it properly, and most of all, learn when a part just needs to be replaced. There are far too many flustered stylists out there assaulting their styling chairs with duct tape and glue to avoid dropping a few bucks on replacement arms, when it would be simpler and safer for both the chair and the clients to put on a new part.

It’s a new year, spring is inching closer and people are starting to get an itch for change. And that means new hair styles. We’ve  been seeing a lot of hair color transformations while we spend too much time scrolling through Instagram lately. There are a lot of bright colors coming back into the world, and even though we enjoyed the ice queen winter changes a few months back (and even though spring is still a ways away), it’s refreshing to see hair bloom again. Here are a few of our favorites so far.

Green or Red Color Melt

Seattle hair artist Kylie Rose does a lot of work that’s fun to look at. She paints lots of bright colors and often combines complementary colors so every shade comes out strong. We don’t know what all went into this mermaid makeover, but seeing this change from sea green to sunset orange with a smoky complement is an immersive experience. It’s like looking at an impressionist painting of a landscape.

Blond to Sunset Hair

The determined artist behind this creation, Haley Edwards, actually hails from Melbourne, Australia, so the whole spring change thing doesn’t quite hold up here. But it’s still one of the most vivid color transformations we’ve seen so far this year. Take a look at the rest of her work and you’ll find that colors like this are a motif for her, but this transformation definitely wins out as the most vibrant.

Muted Split Vivid Transformation

Dear Miju, where did you get your magic powers?

This lift-and-color job is a work of genius. Lifting dark hair is a delicate process, especially when you’re going to add colors as soft and light as this afterward. James Miju has been working magic with Fanola for a while now, so you’d think we would stop being surprised when he weaves together a soft purple and blue color spell. We suspect that he’s still got quite a few surprises mixed up in is color bowls, though.

Black to Brunette Balayage

Okay, so this doesn’t have quite the same kind of color spectrum as the others, but we like it anyway because this transformation is a sign of hope. Vena Love took this first-time client with aggressively darkened hair, dry to the bone, and breathed enough life back into it to lighten the color slightly and paint subtle highlights. It’s not an extreme change in color, but in terms of hair health and color dimension, this transformation as like night and day.

Rooty Ombre to Platinum Blonde

Leave it to Sammi Wang to take a grown out dark brunette ombre all the way up to platinum blonde and still make it look natural. This transformation made liberal use of the Fanola fiber fix treatment, and probably took months before it crossed the light-haired finish line, but this hard-earned result looks about as close to a perfect platinum as anyone could get. This hair is breathing a whisper of summer, so it looks like a light at the end of a rainy tunnel right now.

Studio Posh 29 has become a constant sanctuary for Sacramento people with hair troubles thanks to the calm and caring ownership of Katie Radu. Many of the stylists here are well known for their precision with cut and color and for always being able to come back with a new solution to a challenge. Part of that skill and ingenuity has grown out of the mentorship Katie provides to artists in Studio Posh 29.

The Studio

It sits on the east end of Broadway in Sacramento, an area where trendy cafes and breakfast joints hide in plain sight, and most days of the week you can hear school children in the distance. It’s the kind of place that’s easy to feel safe in, so it makes sense for Studio Posh 29 to be here. With cozy, wood-paneled walls, and a quiet atmosphere it’s probably one of the most relaxing places in Sacramento to get your hair or nails done. It opened its doors back in the summer of 2015, and has been weaving beauty and fixing compromised and box-colored hair with a cool confidence ever since.

Katie Radue

Apart from steadfast salon owner and cool teacher, Katie obviously fulfills her role as a stylist and colorist to an incredible degree. She makes white Kahleesi styles and classic balayage look easy. The things she’s been doing with Fanola colors lately serve as great examples of clean, professional work for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s very well done. She makes hairstyles look like they just happened to grow out that way. That’s an important detail. The less visible a stylist is in her work, the better. The other great thing about Katie, though, is that a lot of the time when she styles or colors she’s fixing something. People come to Studio Posh 29 with damaged hair or months of box dye or after a botched bleaching process from somewhere else, or even just a poor cut. And Katie and her team are always there to help them through it. For both clients and stylists, Katie has become the person to go to when you’re just not sure what to do anymore.

Fanola Troubleshooting Class

Now the good news is that Katie is coming to the Salon Guys’ home to teach a class on troubleshooting color problems with Fanola. That includes everything “from color corrections to toning disasters,” and the class comes along with a gift bag of Fanola products that Katie picked out herself, so you’ll walk away with the tools you need to actually practice what you learned. The bad news is this is happening very soon and might be tricky getting seats for. The class starts at 11 AM on Monday, March 13th.

It’s not the end of the world if you can’t make it. Even if you can’t learn from Katie personally, you can still follow @studioposh29 to get your daily fill of hairspiration, and while you’re at it, follow @salonguys and @fanola_usa so you can stay updated on the new hair artists and the next class.

A good massage table can make all the difference on a day of travelling between clients. Lugging around tables that are too heavy, or stepping up onto one to do deep tissue and hearing that worrisome creak from the legs can make for a stressful day. That’s not an ideal state of mind for someone who’s supposed to relieving stress all day. If you’ve been looking for some decent, sturdy massage furniture, you need something reliable, and preferably light, that can take a few hundred pounds without making you worry. There is a universe of options out there, and only one you, so here are three tables, tried and true by both amateurs and professionals, to help you start your search.

Master Del Rey Massage Table

This is the heaviest table on the list. In fact that’s usually the biggest complaint people have about it. The Del Rey is a bulky option, there’s no way around it. It weighs nearly 40 pounds, so this might not be the best option if you’re small or have clients who live up three stories of stairs. But if you can handle the weight, it’s one of the sturdiest tables you can get. This beast can handle up to 1,500 pounds, and has a pretty generous working area. This would be a great table if you have a lot of bigger clients.

Master Fairlane Massage Table

If a light table is your main concern, then the Fairlane is definitely a good solution. At a little under 30 pounds, it’s one of the lightest options you’ll find without sacrificing too much sturdiness. It can’t handle quite as much as some other tables but with a weight capacity of 1,000 lbs it’s no pushover. The most common complaint about the Fairlane is that the adjustable headrest can be a little tricky to work with sometimes, but some careful tightening should fix that up. This is also one of the most economic options, if price is also a big concern. This table usually comes in at around $200 versus the typical 3 to 500 you expect to pay for any table of decent quality.

MT Midas Massage Table

MT is an often overlooked brand for massage equipment, but they’re good at making a comfy portable table at a pretty reasonable cost. The Midas table is one of their more popular products because it offers a good compromise between cost, comfort, and portability. It’s not the lightest option you’ll find, but with a nice 3 inch cushion it’s worth the weight. It’s also roomy, so you’re clients will love it. However it does have a plywood frame, which is by no means a top quality structural material. You might hear some creaking as you settle extreme weight on it, but so long as you don’t misuse the thing it will hold, and you’ll have a good comfortable table for good long while.

Prepare yourselves, colorists. Fanola is headed to America’s Beauty Show in Chicago this year. They’ll be in booth 2480, and pining to answer your questions. Fanola has been working hard to educate stylists around the world and provide them with the tools they need to perfect their colors, so they’re extra excited to be going to ABS for the first time.

Fanola’s No Yellow Shampoo

While they offer a hug line of colors, bleaches, and hair treatments, one of their most popular creations is their No Yellow shampoo. Many stylists hail this purple shampoo as an excellent way to save time and money thanks to its incredibly strong pigment. It processes a lot faster so coloring sessions will go quicker. On to top of that, many stylists, like Nam Nguyen are using it to turn blonde hair silver without using color. The No Yellow shampoo will sort of be Fanola’s flagship product at ABS 2017, so if you’re curious about, this will definitely be the time to check it out.

Fanola Colors Make Art

The people using Fanola have been creating absurdly good artwork. The likes of James Miju, Vena Love, and Josie Vilay have been experimenting and perfecting their skills with Fanola colors over the last year, and their end results are inspirational to say the least. Some of the best silver colors have come from innovators using Fanola colors. And it’s become especially valued as a great color for working with very dark, fine hair.

Fanola Wants to Talk to You

One of Fanola’s goals is to support and build a relationship with stylists. They believe artists become stronger with the support of a community, so come talk to the representatives and ask them about hair colors. Tell them about your salon and your artwork and maybe they can tell you how Fanola can help your business. But either way, the only thing better than helping hair artists explore their craft is hearing their stories. That’s why they try to hold education events as often as they can. Getting to interact with stylists on a close and personal level helps Fanola learn the best way to serve the artists using their products.

This March 25 - 27, come check out booth 2480 and find out about the hair product that’s been sweeping the US. If you can’t make it to ABS this year, though, you can still talk to Fanola representatives. Just call or email the folks here at Salon Guys. And if you just want to see what Fanola can do, you only have to go as far our Instagram.

In the meantime, keep coloring, and Fanola hopes to see you this March.

There’s a world of brown hair out there and people who want to keep that hair brown but maybe just make it pop a little more. One of the best ways to do that without completely changing the style and overall color of the hair is to start playing with highlights and lowlights. Now, we know a lot of you colorists like to put a buckshot of unicorn vivids on every head you see, and that’s cool, but sometimes you need to stop and appreciate what can be done with regular ol’ shades of brown. Because not everyone wants to wipe their natural brunette hair away to go grey fox or put a rainbow of pastel on their head.

Pixie Highlights

There are a lot of tough things about this pixie by Amanda Mae that make it really remarkable. First, just styling any pixie cut successfully is tough, but Amanda has made this work really well with the loose side part. None of the angles are too tight so that even though the hair is so short it comes off very casually. The streaks of light (almost blonde) highlights Amanda painted give the loose casual look a striking definition and lifts it to that memorable leve.

Brunette Balayage

This is a full blooded balayage, complete with a wavy cascade of brunette locks and caramel highlights. Emily Belcher pulled the blend of colors off perfectly. She wasn’t afraid to paint widely within the brown spectrum so you get a hugely dynamic range of of color, creating a collage you can stare at for hours because because there’s always some new spectacular combination of brown melting into a curl of caramel.

Long Brown Hair with Babylights

Katie’s balayage with babylights really shows an expertise at shaping. For all it’s wild look, this is actually a really well thought out hair style. There’s not a whole lot of different colors at work, but the styling of the hair and placement of highlights amplify the colors. The way all the hair seems to be going wherever it wants to, but still falls into a shape that conforms to a certain wild logic is a sign of some pretty expert styling.

Brunette Lowlights and Balayage

Vena Love creates a lot of hairstyles that go way out into the fringes of vivid color, so when she decides to do something more… Well, we don’t want to say normal. Almost nothing she does is ever strictly “normal,” but to see what she does with natural brown colors is to see a shining example of an intensely creative mind tempered by expert professionalism. In this case, Vena made a vibrant piece with a caramel base color and an accentuating composition of lowlights. The whole of the style is a gentle combination of two main colors, woven together in long flowing hair in perfect condition.