One chair, one hour at a time

00:00the first stretch

Nothing is picked up during this part. It is not a formality.

Talking it throughBefore anything is picked up

Every appointment opens with you sitting down dressed, hair dry, saying what you want. Bring whatever you have been looking at — a picture on a phone is worth more than a paragraph — and you will get a straight answer about whether your own hair will sit that way and what going after it would involve.

• What is being done, named out loud: a cut, a cut and a finish, colour, or some combination. Nothing appears halfway through that was not said here.
• How long it takes, given as a span of minutes rather than one confident number, and whether that span fits the time you actually have today.
• Whether colour is involved — because if it is, a skin test has to happen on an earlier day, and the whole appointment has to be arranged around that.

00:10at the basin

Asked, not assumed: how hot you actually want the water.

The water runsThe part people brace for

The basin is the easiest part of the hour to get right and the one most often got wrong. You are asked how hot you want it instead of being given somebody else’s preference, and asked again once it is running. If the chair does not sit comfortably under your neck, say so straight away: it moves, and nobody should spend ten minutes being polite about a sore neck.

A towel goes on, you come back to the chair, and the hour carries on from where it left off.

00:25scissors

We stop and show you. Twice is normal; three times is fine.

The cut itselfSlow in the middle, on purpose

Hair is sectioned, length comes off in stages rather than in one decision, and we stop at least twice to lift the mirror and show you where it has got to. That is deliberate, and it is the whole reason the middle of the hour is quiet.

It is far easier to agree that another centimetre should come off than to put one back.

00:45only if agreed

A skin test comes first, on an earlier day. There is no way round that one.

ColourIf it is happening at all

Colour happens only when it was agreed at the start and only when the skin test has already been done on a separate, earlier visit. That test is ordinary practice before colour goes near anybody’s hair and it cannot be folded into the same appointment, however much anyone would like it to be.

It is also where most of a long appointment goes. Roots and a full head are not the same job and do not take a similar amount of time; how each one runs is set out on where the minutes go.

01:05the last stretch

If it will not hold for you at home, you hear that out loud.

The finishAnd the honest part at the end

The blow-dry is the first time you see the whole thing together, and it is part of the hour unless you have asked for it not to be. While it is happening you get a running commentary on how it is being done — which way the brush is going, where the lift comes from, how long it is really taking.

Then the honest part. Some shapes sit like that on their own; some only look like that because somebody spent twelve minutes on them with both hands and a brush. You will be told plainly which of the two you have and what the realistic weekday-morning version looks like. Nothing is sold to you at the end of it.