The last time I went to the hairdresser in Brooklyn, I left with a beautifully blow-dried head of shimmering highlights and a sinking, panicky feeling that I could not be trusted to make sensible life decisions.
The problem was that I had just spent $820, including tax and tip, in one hair appointment. In my defence, it was a complex job: I had swapped my usual, basic cut and colour for a more customised ’do designed to better camouflage the grey-flecked landing strip of my roots for longer. The price also included dye, so I could touch up the roots at home and not return for three months. Still, I was shaking when I handed over my credit card.
Such stories are commonplace in New York and other US cities, where the cost of hair salon visits has skyrocketed. Since I moved to Brooklyn from the UK in May 2022, I have been unable to find even a straightforward cut and root touch-up for less than $270 (including a 20 per cent tip — which feels more or less obligatory). Even at that price, the quality has been patchy: my hair has been accidentally dyed purple, dark brown and searing tangerine in a series of unfortunate hairdressing incidents.
Hairdressing chat is rife in my neighbourhood, where the word is that cuts that were once $40 are now $70, that $70 cuts are now $100, that anything involving dye has doubled. Such conversations are echoed on social media. Reddit threads ask: “Ladies, is it really normal to pay $500 for highlights?” On TikTok, debates between shell-shocked clients and visibly upset hairdressers have sometimes become heated.
Prices certainly have risen: according to Kline PRO, a data provider that monitors transactions in independent hair salons, the price of colour appointments and haircuts were up by 10 per cent and 14 per cent respectively between the first quarter of 2021 and the corresponding period in 2023. Inflation, including rising energy costs, has driven up rents and prices for shipping and supplies. Salons in the UK are affected too: Reddit is full of complaints about barbers charging £30 where they once charged £12, and of cut-and-colours shooting up from £170 to £240.
I charged so little in the salon and paid so much back in commission that I was living off my tips
Cody Moorefield
Christine Ressy, an expert stylist who specialises in colour at Sara June salon in Brooklyn, says the disruption wrought by Covid “kind of reset our psyches”. Health and safety rules meant that salons operated at reduced capacity, with longer appointment times. Ressy found this better “for my mental health and for my creativity” and has continued to build a “buffer” of time into her day between clients. While it might not be the case for hairdressers in other areas, Ressy’s affluent client base has largely tolerated the associated price rises.
Lockdown was a watershed for Cody Moorefield, too, a blond-hair specialist in Williamsburg. He overhauled his business plan with the help of coaching company Destroy the Hairdresser, whose advice is chiming with hairdressers in the current climate. He is now a coach for Destroy the Hairdresser himself and, working towards their advice, he charges an hourly rate of $195 and does not accept gratuity.
Moorefield believes the hourly-rate model is transparent, offering better value for clients and fairer terms for him. The industry is still notoriously badly paid on average (according to jobs listing site indeed.com, the average hourly wage in Brooklyn is just over $19). When Covid hit, “I came to this realisation that I charged so little in the salon and paid so much back in commission that I was living off my tips. I vowed to never do that again,” Moorefield says.
Changing beauty standards have also tied into this shift. Ressy points out that her grandmother’s generation had their hair done regularly, every week or every month. “When I started doing hair in the late 1990s, it was normal to get highlights and a cut every six weeks. Nowadays, we offer hand-painted ‘lived in’ looks, which require more expertise and care, but allow longer between visits.”
Advanced dye techniques are driving high ticket prices, says Emily Chen, a hairdresser and industry educator. Clients now come to salons with inspiration photos for complex looks found on Instagram and Pinterest. Popular techniques — including “grey blending”, in which grey hairs are camouflaged using a variety of shades, and “root smudge”, which reduces the demarcation between dark roots and lighter ends — require specialist training and one-to-one appointments. That is a different way of operating from double- or triple-booking clients, as was once the industry standard.
Aided by her 323,000 Instagram followers, Chen is in high demand for these services and is able to charge $380 for the first two hours of any appointment, plus $143 for every subsequent hour, even though she is based in a salon in a small town 300 miles north of Manhattan.
Of course, it doesn’t always follow that stylists with huge followings will be as experienced as Chen — a disparity that Anthony Dickey, a US stylist with expertise in wavy, curly and kinky hair, believes is “convoluting” prices. Dickey put his price up from $200 to $300 for a cut a year ago, saying he feels it was justified after a near 40-year career. It does, however, put him within range of many “social media darlings that have gained an enormous following because they have that ‘It’ appeal”, even if “that doesn’t necessarily speak to their talent”.
The hairdressers I spoke with agreed that pricing transparency is essential. “Salon owners need to be better about coaching people on having this conversation about money. What kind of upsets me is sticker shock — I think that’s causing a lot of this emotion, this backlash,” says Chen. She advises that customers speak honestly with their stylist about their budget and see if they can recommend an early-career stylist, or ask for advice on services that might be similar but cheaper than their inspiration picture.
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There are other ways of saving money, including visiting hair schools or using at-home products. One friend, who balked at paying £49 for kids’ haircuts in a village in Kent, told me she had been cutting her little boy’s hair at home, using tutorials on YouTube. Another has swapped her sleek salon cut and colour, which had risen from £170 to £240, for a £65 ’do in someone’s garage. “Honestly, I don’t think my hair is any worse,” she told me. Another, a freelance copywriter, has taken to bartering: she edited all the copy on a hairdresser’s website and was paid £250 plus six free haircuts.
In the US, another option is Madison Reed Hair Color Bars — colour-only hair specialists that offer monthly memberships targeted at women seeking to regularly eradicate regrowth. Starting at $70 a month, clients can go in as often as they like. Chief executive and founder Amy Errett says business is booming; from 12 such bars at the start of the pandemic, the business has mushroomed to 90 premises.
What kind of upsets me is sticker shock — I think that’s causing a lot of this emotion, this backlash
Emily Chen
Some customers are prepared to swallow the prices but go to the salon less frequently. Alex Friedman, an angel investor and content creator based in Austin, Texas, pays $600 ($500 plus $100 tip) for a six-hour process of root touch-up, highlights, balayage and a mask with a blow dry that now takes place every three months instead of monthly. As a podcaster, and someone who is on camera a lot, she says: “I view it slightly as a business expense; I don’t think you can put a price on self-confidence.”
Certainly, the changes have reminded many people that a good hair stylist is not to be taken for granted, says Moorefield. “For a long time, hairdressers were not high on the totem pole of ‘respected’ professions. People often didn’t want to pay much for their services. The Covid lockdown really showed everyone how important the hairdresser is in everyone’s life.”
When things go right, adds Dickey, “there is no greater bond than [that between] you and your hair stylist”. Also, he points out, “we can’t be replaced by AI”, which is more than can be said for many of the rest of us.
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