10 Things You’re Doing at the Hair Salon Your Stylist Secretly Hates

Offering to Pick Up Coffee

Offering to pick up coffee for someone—stylist or not—is obviously a sweet gesture. But driving 20 minutes in the opposite direction to grab coffee for you and your stylist when you’re already running late is not. For Rubi Talavera, a cosmetologist at Hair House Social, getting the coffee text just stresses her out. “When they message us 10 minutes before their appointment asking us if we want coffee, that gives me more anxiety,” she explains. “Like, are you gonna make it to your appointment?”

Arriving With Greasy or Deep-Conditioned Hair

Hair prep is another component you may be getting wrong prior to your appointment. (If you’re just going to the salon for a cut and no color, feel free to jump to number three.) It makes sense to assume that showing up with week-old hair is correct. Your stylist is there to make your hair look beautiful and doesn’t care how greasy your hair is, right? Unfortunately, no. “It’s a huge misconception that oily hair helps color,” says Talavera. “But it actually creates a film around hair that prevents any color or bleach from penetrating as much as it should.”

So, your stylists don’t want you showing up with dirty hair, but they don’t want you showing up with extremely clean hair either. Let us explain. It turns out that heavily moisturizing products like leave-in treatments also create a film around the hair. Wash your hair normally two to three days before your color appointment and your stylist will love you.

Seating Yourself

Offering to pick up coffee might stress Talavera out, but nothing irks master colorist Tiffanie Richards more than a client seating themselves. Regardless of the time, or even if Richards is still with her previous client, she has seasoned clients that will walk themselves over to her station and sit down without being told to do so. “While it’s helpful to maybe the receptionist, it’s really unhelpful to the colorist or stylist,” Richards explains. “It, one, makes us really anxious about timing, and, two, can take away from your current client’s appointment time.”

Moving Your Head Without Instruction

Similar to how you shouldn’t seat yourself, you also shouldn’t move your head during the appointment unless you’re told to do so. Stylists run into this problem at two key points during an appointment: while you’re sitting at the shampoo bowl and while they’re coloring or cutting your hair at their station. It’s typical for hairstylist Lucy Seitz’s clients to lift their head at the shampoo bowl, thinking it’s helping her clean the neck area. “The water is just going to go underneath and get your whole back wet,” Seitz explains. “We can pick your head up and move it for you.”

Let’s say you make it through shampooing without annoying your stylist (or getting soaking wet). Don’t worry, there’s still plenty more time to mess things up. Richards finds her job gets significantly harder when a client proactively tilts their head during a cut or color. “A lot of times people will follow us and where our bodies are thinking that’s helpful,” says Richards. But Richards prefers to move her own body to reach the client’s head at her desired angle. “That one actually drives us nuts.”

Assisting With The Cape

This one may seem silly, but assisting with the cape is at the top of Seitz’s stylist pet peeve list. Her clients will often lift up and bend their arms, either to help position the cape or to move their hair out of the way, but this only makes it harder for Seitz to snap the cape into place. She wants to tell all current and future clients, “It’s easier for us to do it. We got it. We’re good!”

Criticizing Previous Appointments

While all stylists enjoy a little appointment-time gossip, they never want you to talk badly about other hair stylists in their chair. It’s helpful to explain to your stylist what someone else might’ve done wrong in the past, but there’s a difference between hating on a stylist and disliking what they did to your hair. For Talavera, clients talking badly about previous stylists raises more of a red flag on the client than it does on the other stylist. “When a client sits in my chair and they tell me that no one has ever been able to give them what they want, I immediately red-flag them because I know they are just picky individuals who aren’t happy with anything.” Be specific with what you didn’t love about your previous results, but don’t go placing the blame on your stylist’s industry peer.

Assigning Measurements to Dead Ends

Seitz sometimes struggles explaining to her clients how much dead hair needs to be cut off because the client is coming to her with a measurement. Instead of saying “I want the dead ends off,” or “I just want a trim,” they’ll ask Seitz for a half-inch or one-inch trim. The problem? Only the stylists are able to gauge the number of inches that are dead and should be cut off. It could be half an inch, but it could also be two or two and a half. To really make it helpful for your stylist, ask for just one of the two: either all the dead ends can get cut off—no matter the length—or a certain number of inches can be cut off—regardless of where the dead hair ends.

Asking For a Color or Toner By Name

Similar to asking for the best of both worlds when it comes to the cut, a stylist’s job gets harder when their client asks for a color or toner by its name. Stylists are trained to be able to mix several colors or toners together to get their client’s desired shade, especially if they’re running low on something. But there’s nothing they can do if you ask for “Wella Professionals Koleston Perfect Medium Ash Blonde,” and they don’t have it. “I have a client who gets this violet purple color every time, and I actually rescheduled her because she genuinely likes this color, but I ran out of it,” recalls Seitz. Trusting your hairstylist to give you your desired shade regardless of the name will not only show respect to your stylist, but it will also ensure your appointment can remain as scheduled.

Opting Out Of Blowdrying to Save Time

Clients often assume that they will make their stylist’s job easier the less time they spend at the salon, but that’s not entirely true. Sure, a routine haircut is easier than a root smudge and full head of highlights, but rushing out of the salon with wet hair after a dye job usually isn’t preferred. Clients will say to Richards, “Let me just get out of your hair, I’m done with color and if I don’t like it, I can come back!” While this may save the stylist time in the moment, it is truly so unhelpful in the long run. Richards recommends at least staying to dry the front of your hair. “See if you like it then and there,” she says. “And if you need a gloss or a tweak or anything, that would be the most helpful instead of coming back two weeks later, because then you have to rearrange your whole schedule.”

Entering the Color Room

The color room at a salon is used for storing products and mixing formulas, but it also doubles as a break room, and stylists would prefer if it stayed client-free. Instead of peeking your head around the door to add a last-minute request for your color formula or to hand your stylist a tip, ask the receptionist or another stylist to get your stylist for you. You may think you’re being helpful, but it really just feels like an invasion of privacy. “The color room is our safe space,” explains Richards. “It’s our private little sanctuary away from everyone.”