A Straight Razor Can be Hair’s Best Friend

Image courtesy of Avery.

You’ve probably heard before that razor cutting hair is a great way of creating more interesting texture for a haircut. Unfortunately, whether because of inexperience in a hairdresser or ignorant demands from a client, razor cutting has gotten a bad rep with a few people and scared a lot of stylists and clients off from it. But if you want to create a style with movement and texture or easily thin out certain areas of hair or even fix up layers, the straight razor is an invaluable tool. If you’re using it right.

There are a lot of factors that can turn your razor haircut into a huge, split-end mistake, so it’s important to consider a few things before you start slicing.

Do You Have the Technique

Make sure you know what you’re doing. Angles are important. It can be hard to find that magic spot between too flat and too perpendicular, especially taking into account that the angle might vary between hair types, so be sure you practice on a mannequin a lot before trying it on a live client. There’s only so much that can be explained beyond aiming for a 45 degree angle cut. It might take a while to perfect your technique on live clients because mastery over this kind of cutting really comes from learning how to feel for the right angle on the hair that’s in front of you. You’ll refine that touch over time. Just make sure you can easily handle the razor itself.

Does the Hairstyle Need It

Razor cut the right kind of hair and for the right reasons. Generally, you use a razor when you want to create a low maintenance look. Most types of hair can benefit from razoring so long as you have a clear idea of the look you’re going for. If hair is very thin and straight you can avoid giving them a blocky or rigid look by giving more rough cut ends that will grow out into a nice textured look with a little bit of layering. It can create some great short hairstyles, and it’s almost essential for the client with the flowing beach waves. Nothing endangers a free-flowing look like a pair of scissors. You should absolutely not take out the straight edge for brittle or compromised hair, and definitely never do it just because the client asked you to.

What About Curly Hair

Contrary to popular belief, razoring curly hair is not a deadly sin. In fact it can be preferable since shears work strictly in straight lines. A razor lets you shape and layer the hair in more fluid shapes. The technique can be a little harder to get down for this curly hair, but when you think about it on principle, it makes a lot more sense to use a straight razor. Shears cut in hard, longer lines while razors can make much shorter, natural-looking cuts so you have a lot more freedom in shaping. You run the risk of thinning out sections of the hair too much or making the hair frizzy, but these are the kinds of problems you can make disappear with practice and proper hair maintenance.

Stay Clean and Sharp

Something often overlooked with the razor cut is the condition of the blade. You need to be cutting with a fresh, sharp blade that is either new or thoroughly sanitized. If your cuts with the razor aren’t smooth, or if they tug at all, you need a sharper blade or else you will damage the hair. There are a lot of options in this case. Whether you want to switch out blades each time you do a new razor cut, or clean and sharpen them on your own is up to you. So long as you’re using a clean tool and getting those nice, easy cuts.

We Don’t All Want the Big Salon Experience

Photo courtesy of Michael Coghlan

Places like Little Space Salon in New York are more common than people realize, partly because most of them don’t get the kind of news coverage Patty Mocarski got. But they’re out there, for better or worse. Maybe we get tangled into vast virtual worlds so much now that we want to simplify the physical world. Or maybe it’s that almost every stylist dreams of owning their own salon, and it’s mathematically impossible for all of them to end up with a glamorous ballroom with a twelve-chair set up.

So they go with one chair, or maybe two if a friend tags along. It’s an attractive image: a low-key space tucked away downtown where people pop in to say hello and there’s no one to boss around, or to boss you around. It’s a good, wholesome goal. But it’s not all good.

Setting up the Small Salon

You want to start a small business it has to start with the dream. What is your place going to look like? How are you going to make it attractive and comfortable for clients? How will it advertise your personality?

The Good

What clients see, hear, smell, and touch has a big impact on their initial reaction to your salon. These things are much easier to control in a small environment, particularly when that environment only contains you and maybe one other stylist. You’ll find you can do a lot more with a lot less decoration. When you only have a few hundred square feet, a single, soft love seat goes a long way toward making your salon feels cozy.

The Bad

There are two big problems here:

1. A small space fills up fast, which makes it hard to arrange everything you want in there,

2. Everything you put in will have a bigger impact. That means an ugly picture, a weird smelling plant, or a dirty floor is going to shoot down the attractiveness of your business fast.

You need to be able to compromise with yourself in this situation. You’ll have to leave out some pieces you thought would be key to make your space practical. Leave oout the mural, take the color bar.

The Money

In a practical sense, money is the most attractive difference at the beginning of opening a small salon. Forbes did a great rundown of the costs of opening and running a salon a while back, but that break down looks a little different for a small salon.

The Good

It is a lot cheaper. Vastly cheaper. The Forbes article predicts at least $100,000 in starting costs, assuming somewhere around $100 per square foot in a location that, according to them, should be at least 1,000 feet in order to fit six stations. The article is working with 2007 numbers but we can still get an idea of the difference in cost when you’re opening a place with just one or two chairs. There are plenty of places that get by with just 400 square feet or less and still manage to have a shampoo station in comfortable access. So there you’ve already cut your starting costs in half. Once you have everything set up, for most salons the big cost is people, which you won’t have. You have you, and that’s all you need to worry about, so your running costs are simplified to keeping your shelves stocked and your lights on.

The Bad

Forget about raking in an easy six figures in a few years of hard work. Big money is for salon owners renting out a dozen chairs. As a salon owner and stylist on your own you make money in two ways: selling merchandise, and working with your own two hands. Don’t worry too much. You can still make a nice living this way, but one or two stylists in a shop means fewer clients buying products and no commision percentages coming your way. The running costs are a lot lower, but the roof on what you can eventually make shoots down to just above your head. If this is all about the money for you, it’s better to go big or find a different industry.

Stylist Relationships

When you go small, material things aren’t the only things that get simplified. In a small salon you’re on your own in the best and worst ways.

The Good

No more fighting, no more “she said this” or “he keeps doing that.” No one will be stealing your hair clips anymore, and you only have to worry about offending your clients. You won’t have to worry about having an awkward aside talk with a stylist who’s being rude, and you won’t have to go through the pains of firing, hiring, or training anyone, unless you decide you want a receptionist, and that’s a much easier relationship to maintain.

The Bad

Some people can handle being alone all the time, but for many artists, complete isolation gets unhealthy after a while. If you spend much time scrolling around Instagram, you’ve probably read a key word under a few particularly original colored styles: “collaboration”. One of the best things about working around a lot of other stylists is that you get to inspire each other. You see how other people work every day, and if there’s something you’re not very good at, you can go to the artist a few chairs down and ask for help. You can think up ideas together and tell each other about upcoming workshops. In the small salon it’s all on you. If you’re doing something poorly, you’re the only one who can see it and do something about it. You’ll have to work a lot harder at putting yourself out there and discovering new ways of applying product or cutting ends to look straighter or more free flowing.

Some stylists know how to push themselves to improve. If you’re planning on heading out on your own, you better make sure do to too.