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Manchester · hairdressing

LILY HAIR SALON The Lily Hair Salon mark: an open ring whose stroke turns inward and winds into a single curl.

Where the minutes go

The adder on the front page works off the figures below. They are this salon’s own working minutes for its own chair, written down rather than carried about in somebody’s head, so that you can hold an appointment up against them afterwards.

The stretchesEvery part, with its two figures

Each stretch carries a low figure and a high one. The low figure is a straightforward head of hair on an unhurried morning; the high one is thick or long hair, a shape that needs checking more than twice, or colour being asked to travel several shades. Neither figure is an average, and that is the point of giving two.

  • 5 – 10 minTalking it through. Longer when a picture and a head of hair disagree with each other and somebody has to say so.
  • 5 – 10 minThe basin. Longer for very long or very thick hair, which simply takes more water and more time to get right.
  • 30 – 45 minThe cut. The middle of this is slow on purpose: sectioning, then length in stages, then stopping twice to show you.
  • 20 – 35 minThe blow-dry finish. The high end is a shape being built rather than hair being dried.
  • 45 – 70 minColour, roots only. Mixing, applying, then developing — and the developing cannot be shortened by anyone being quick.
  • 75 – 120 minColour, full head. The same chemistry over more hair, with the ends and the roots wanting different things.
  • 15 – 25 minToner afterwards, where the colour needs settling rather than changing.

ColourWhy it cannot be hurried

Most of a long appointment is colour, and most of the colour is waiting. Once it is mixed it has a working life of minutes, so it goes on steadily rather than quickly; once it is on, it develops for as long as it develops. Nobody in the room can shorten that part, and an appointment that tries to is the appointment that goes wrong.

A skin test comes first and on an earlier day. It is ordinary practice before colour goes near anybody’s hair, it cannot be folded into the same visit, and it is the one thing on this page that is not negotiable about timing.

The corner of a copper-framed salon mirror on a deep plum wall, with a single warm bulb beside it and a quiet room reflected.
The waiting partDeveloping time belongs to the chemistry, not to the diary.

OverrunningSaid early, not discovered late

Appointments overrun for a small number of reasons and all of them are visible early. Hair that has been coloured before does not always take the way it is expected to. A shape agreed from a photograph sometimes needs an extra pass once it is wet and sectioned. Occasionally somebody arrives with less time than the thing they have asked for needs.

In every one of those cases you will be told while there is still a choice to make — do less today, or stay longer — rather than at the point where the choice has already been made for you. If what you want and the time you have cannot be reconciled, we would rather say so at the start than at the basin.

The orderNot the order you ticked them in

Stretches do not simply queue. Talking comes first because everything else depends on it. Colour, where it is happening, usually comes before the cut, so that the shape is cut into the colour rather than the other way round. The basin can appear twice in one appointment — once before the cut and once to rinse colour out. The finish is always last, because it is the only part that shows you the whole thing together.

The adder on the front page does not try to model any of that. It adds two columns of minutes, which is all anybody needs to answer “will this fit in my morning”. Ask for an hour and we will confirm the real shape of it in writing.