Hair cut and colour now exceeds what I earn in a day. Absolutely fed up.

[Burntout01]

Obviously everything is going up and up. Just went to book hairdressers- I don’t go often , maybe every four months since I went grey ( used to box dye it for 30 years before that). Its my one bit of self care.
Cost has jumped from £120 to over £170 since I last had it done in September. For full head highlights for chin length bobbed hair plus wash and rough blow dry.
It’s not that I don’t believe its worth that price and I am not knocking my hairdresser, its not about that. But I am a senior NHS nurse with 30 years experience. My job has taken a lot from me and my family. I take home £150 a day. The hair appt is 2.5 hours.
I just cannot justify the expense for myself any more.

It’s unbelievable isn’t ! This poster earns £50 per hour , but hairdressers must not be allowed to earn a decent wage …

This thread really show up a lot of people’s opinions of hairdressers .
The more I see these views , the happier I am with our high prices

Gosh your employer NICs on those holidays and spa days and meals must really add up.

It’s blowing my mind too! A “simple” bob…. Yeh that doesn’t exist

I’m happy to pay any extras 😃

This just popped up on my instagram feed

Your box dye does not look the same as a professional colour no matter how hard you try to convince yourself. I think I noticed you said you smoke in one of your other posts?… I have never, ever smoked a cigarette. Why? Why would you do that? I take care of my health and I can just not smoke cigarettes, not stink or stain my teeth. It has never, not once occurred to me to pay for something that will harm my health that I can so fucking easily not spend money on. …. See what I did there? Your comments are so narrow minded. How can you not see that other people like different experiences to you? Wild

When wet trim cost me £25 ...fringe and the ends I was in the chair under five mins ..no washing I stopped going.
Hubby cuts ends with his razor now and then and do I my own fringe.
Box dye for the greys

Here ! From a hairdressers page on instagram .
Im inclined to agree that some of you think this , especially the poster who said our prices are a disgrace , then said she got paid £250 for 5 hours work 🙄

I don’t think this is the issue here. It’s about affordability alongside everything else in life. I’m lucky that I don’t have grey hair yet (44), but I’m putting off getting my highlights done because it’s so expensive these days. Over £100 for a couple of hours is a lot.

I was here a few months back. Chin length bobbed head of highlights. Two full time income family who don't want for anything, and I'm priced out of having my bloody roots done.

Alas! I have cracked it!

Igora highlights professional high lift tint, developer ( 30 ) and a strong toning shampoo like finola. 2 mirrors ( front and back ) and a tint bowl and brush.

30 quid and enough for two applications of the tint and a years worth of developer. room for error because your working with tint not bleach.

I am once again, as blond as you like. With my grey and existing bleach underneath giving me some different tones running through.

Give it a whirl!

Nothing useful to add about hair except the variations in cost are astonishing. Mobile hairdressers are the way forward as they are much cheaper but you do have to shop around till you find a decent one.

What I wanted to say was that I agree with you that it is utterly shit that the public sector is so underfunded that you cannot afford a decent standard of living after all the years of hard work you've put in. Your job sounds increasingly challenging with the onslaught of additional work (familiar with that as a teacher) when they just decide to cut costs by removing another role and then just palm the work off on everyone else to "be efficient". What they are doing is breaking their staff, frontline NHS staff have a really shitty deal at the moment and I can't see it getting better. If I can think of a lucrative way out I'll let you know!

Wow... You seem way overly defensive.

Hairdressers use the same dyes as are in a box. It most certainly does look the same as paying the hairdresser to do the same thing. No matter how much you pretentiously think it doesn't.

Secondly, you can dye your hair yourself, you can't grow your own cigarettes yourself. So a bad analogy. It's not me that is narrow-minded.

@WonderingWanda What! A senior nurse with £150 a day (not sure why income is expressed like this) is not a basic grade nurse. They will have a fantastic pension - all funded by us. They aren’t the worst off in society by a long long way. Like the rest of us, shopping around for a better deal is what’s needed here. Very many families are cutting down on luxuries as they are paying more tax to pay for the public services and they don’t have the gold plated pensions to look forward to.

I am in a deprived NW town, I pay £160 for a full head of foils, cut & blow. That is expensive for my town but I pay it because she only has me in for the whole time I am there, not splitting focus between different clients. She takes me brunette to blonde in one sitting with no damage, she is a blinding expert and I love the results I get.

I have been to cheaper salons and I can get a whole head of highlights and a cut and blow somewhere else for literally half that price but I choose to pay for the quality service she provides.

I have never quantified it into how many days pay it is before but now you have mentioned it, it is indeed a days take home pay. Worth it to me.

My hairdresser will take a deposit?
I think in all honesty that’s to make sure they have some £ in the event of no shows .
But for me that’s meant when I go to pay on the day it’s a bit less £

It’s simple - hairdressers should be able to charge enough to pay their bills. But if their clients don’t earn enough to pay what they want to charge, they won’t get the work. Basically the economy is in a downward spiral due to decades of political negligence.

It isn't really about what your hairdresser earns though is it? It's about what you can afford on your salary.

You can charge what you want as long as you have punters who can pay or who choose you as the luxury item for the month. I love going to get my hair done and my hairdresser is charging an amount I can afford, albeit rather less frequently than in the good times. The point is that many, many people in this country (an increasingly large number) can’t afford the huge price hikes that some in the service industry are adding. Yes, you are still dealing with the impact of Covid but many people in other industries are too. Wages have been frozen. If my car needs repairing, I have to choose my car and my hair stays straggly and grey. If the boiler needs a replacement part, it’s another month to wait. You may think you are worth it, but if your customers can’t afford it even if they desperately want to come, then everyone is losing out. As I said, when you get to the point when senior nurses, teachers and other public service people can’t afford a hair cut, the country is in trouble.

You’re being unreasonable - hairdressing and nursing are two completely different things you can’t compare - also people have no problem paying £300 for Botox that takes 20mins to do but William at a skilled trade worker who has spent years perfecting their craft charging half the price - really annoying and disrespectful the trade

Their’s always a cheaper hairdresser. You can cut the cost in half if you shop around or use a mobile hairdresser.

Thinking some more on this topic.

Working people should be able to afford a haircut. It shouldn’t be unaffordable to get needed services whilst supporting small businesses.

Rather than cutting back on these things and hurting the economy further, we should be pressing our politicians to put more money back in our pockets by tackling multinational companies that are profiteering on basic necessities.

I’m in Greater London area and my hairdresser/salon owner charges £100 for half head highlights with cut. Even though she always fully booked her business is struggling with overheads.
i don’t begrudge paying this even though i earn minimum wage. Luckily my natural colour is mousy brown and blonde highlights hide my grey, I’m 54

This. I’ve noticed that more and more men seem to be colouring their hair too. The skin changes as we age in addition to hair losing its colour so makeup needs to be adjusted accordingly. I think there’s something about a woman who wears red lipstick with a nicely cut white head of hair that can be striking. I always think that very dark dyed hair on an aging woman doesn’t do them any favours as the hair doesn’t match the face, the makeup if any is wrong and it’s still obvious that she is getting on in age.

Ignoring the professionally offended folk who seem to lurk on MN waiting to pounce on people, the bigger picture here is the fact that services are gradually becoming unaffordable to a large percentage of the population. That's a very signficiant thing. If a senior nurse is now unable to afford a hair cut and colour then many others will have also cut back on the frequency of their appointments of found a cheaper alternative or be considering doing so soon. In aggregate, cutting back on discretionaries, whether it's hair colour or eating out or holidays, will have a massive impact on all these discretionary businesses. It might not happen suddenly but, gradually, these sort of businesses will be impacted and more will close and more people will lose their jobs, and so the cycle continues.
Considering that a huge percentage of GDP is discretionary services, this is a huge impact.

@Burntout01 I use NXT professional hair colour (semi permanent) and Wella Color Touch at home. It was recommended by a hairdresser years ago and was what she used in the salon. Perhaps find someone who can come to your home or get the highlights done twice a year rather than four times.

My friend just had a colour, cut and blow dry at her local salon, £215!!! WTA…..! My mobile hairdresser only charges £60 for a whole head and I wash and dry it myself, but even that I’ve given up due to funds and am reverting back to my original colour. Costs for everything these days are ridiculous