new thread
When I go to a salon(a good one, that is)if I tell them 1/4" is all they take off at the most that is all that they cut off. sometimes they only take off 1/8" and then ask me if they took off enough. also full service salons do more than just cuts and trims. they also do color, highlights, deep conditioning among other things. I have always had a pleasant experience in most of them.
as for Barbershops, I've never had a pleasant experience in one. all they seem to know how to do is give severely short haircuts.
to be quite honest, I loathe barbershops.
every time I ever went to a barbershop I ended up with a much shorter length of hair than I wanted and if you tell the typical barber "keep it long" it means not buzzed off. they have no concept of what LONG is and for that matter MEDIUM. if it is long enough on top to use a comb in then it's "long hair" in their eyes.
"short hair" to a barber means a buzzcut and that means nothing left to comb.
I avoid barbershops like the plague and would highly advice any guy with longer hair or guy who is considering going to a longer style to avoid them and instead try to locate a good salon. it will cost you more but at least you have hair left on your head unlike a barbershop which only knows how to do one thing and that is to destroy a perfectly good head of hair!
AVOID BARBERSHOPS AT ALL COSTS!
remember this
SALONS are for those who want HAIRSTYLES(both Men AND Women)
BARBERSHOPS are for guys who want SHORT HAIRCUTS only and VERY SHORT ones at that! we're talking mostly guys who look like enlisted men when they get out of the chair. I think you get the picture.
stick with good salons and don't be afraid to ask about other services.
The key thing is to find someone working at a salon who actually understand that 1/4" means that and not one inch. When you have found that person stick with them and don't chance another one. There are too many tales of those who go to salons as well as barbers and find someone who decides that they know better than the client.
I agree totally. Plus I like having it washed for me feels good lol.. Never understood why poeple liked there hair played with or washed when mine was short but the longer it gets the more I like it.
I would have to agree with you as barber shops have no idea what to do when it comes to men who want long hair. I mean how many times have you seen women go to a barber shop to get their hair done. Hardly!lol.Frankly there are guys who just don't care and go just for a cheap butcher job! Of course I haven't had a professional trim since 2005 as I just let my hair do its own thing:) I do color my own hair so guess you can say I self maintain and trust myself more.Anyway it's good to warn those who may not understand that going to a barber shop won't produce the results they may expect and in the aftermath it may be too late.Cheers
Mârk
My partner, Steve, before retiring, owned and operated a hair salon in Scottsdale. he still does the occasional cut and style here at home for favorede customers. and he takes great care in his work. He just looked at my hair and declared it healthy and strong. no firzz, no split ends. when he does trim my hair , he takes only what is necessary and nothing more. Yes, A salon is best if you need some work done on long hair.
----------------------------------------------------------------Hi Jake,
These are excellent points made by you and the other guys. However, I will not be visiting any hair cutting places until I hit at least mid-back length.
Once I get to waist length, I will probably just keep trimming the ends to maintain a blunt hemline. Of course, this is if my parents blessed me with good hair genes! We shall see!
Ted
I've been to both, both are absolutely useless.
You tell them both to take off one inch or even up the ends of the
hair and they take off twe feet. I've gone into both with waist length (or longer) hair, tell them to take off one inch to even up the ends and they end up taking a whole lot more.
One inch means one inch not 13 inches. They both do what they want not what the customer wants. it's like you hair a painter to paint your house beige and he says "no i'm going to paint it bright red." You wouldn't stand it from a house painter and you
shouldn't accept it from a barber shop or salon.
yea i agree, i did a stint in the USMC and had to get a haircut every sunday for 4 years and i always went to a barbershop and everytime my hair looked different and everytime it was subpar and i was just getting a high fade. so that tells me there is no reason to ever go to a barber shop
I agree. Like some of the other older guys on this site, I was forced to go to barber shops when young, and I hated it. I somehow always have wanted long hair--as long as I can remember and well before the Beatles started the movement that would open the door for all of us.
After wearing it very long for decades it was getting ratty and terminal length of mid-back so I moved to a bit-longer-than-chin length style that looks a lot healthier. Plus I don't want my hair grey so I started coloring it. Having a professional do all this is great, but only at a salon. I have only had good experiences, even when my hair was real long, for maintenance trims and when I had feathered-back bangs cut in during the '80s.
Now i've always had bad luck at both barber shops and solons..
They both take great joy in cutting long hair short.
As far as grey my hair is now mostly grey and i'm committed to keep it all the natuaral color, even if that means it becomes all grey, all white, or all silver. I keep sayi8ng I earned all that grey hair every time somebody told me I needed a hair cut.
LOL. I think grey is fine--I just don't want it on me, at least yet!
... here, here - 'IMHO' = 'living is hard & dying is easy' = meaning it is hard to get to the ripe 'ol age of 57, 67, 77, 87, 97 , but in this day & age: ( lets ALL be honest here ) its easy to die young, & hard to live old: ( take your pick: ( @ ur demise - just watch the nightly news = there's sum ways fe ya ) = sorry = just being honest ) - so I take my hat off to ALL those that stand the test-o-time & to all those that endure, thrive & flourish, no matter what life throws @ you - including the kitchen sink = 'tilts-hat' in respect ...
The goal of the barber shop is to destroy manes, not teach proper grooming techniques or to make a customer look more attractive(at least not in my eyes)
what is so attractive about a military haircut? nothing.
the shaven or nearly shaven look on the head(like the kid that posted that pic of his haircut) looks ugly imho.
Hi Jake,
I don't want to look like every other guy out there. I will never understand why people always want to look like everybody else. Plus, I think barbershops exist to take my hard-earned money! I have already saved quite a lot of money by avoiding hair butcheries. And I'm having much fun growing my mane. Long hair forever!
Ted
Ha! It just occurred to me I can't give a very good opinion about barbershops since I haven't been in one since the 1970s. I have worn relatively short styles for a couple of periods over that time, but I've always gone to salons. Even with a salon, you want to home in on a pro who cuts it the way you want. I've gotten a bad one or two at a salon as well.
I wasn't going to post here but on second thought I will. I have
an undercut and do go to a barber shop for the undercut. My
barber is a lady barber and she does very good with the undercut
and is very respectful of my long hair. And when necessary she
does the search bit by bit through my hair for split ends. She
is so good to me that I feel I had to mention That there may be
one good barber in the world. But I agree with everybody else
for the other 99.9999% of the barbers.
I'm going to have to agree with you here. Aside from the standard super short "man's" haircuts, barbers don't really seem to know much about hair styling. I bet most of their customers are the guys who go and get the same exact cut every two weeks and never even give it a second thought. That's always been something I don't understand...even if you don't really want to grow it out, how could you keep the EXACT same "style" for your whole life? :P
I haven't been to a salon in two years, and even though they have been known to take off way more than people ask, I still feel that they are WAY more knowledgeable than 99.9% of barbers. A lot of them know a lot about hair in general. All barbers know how to do is butcher it. I'd only recommend a barber shop to someone who wants their hair short, and who doesn't care about style.
Barbers generally have zero experience in cutting hair that isn't already very short by our standards.
Barbers DO NOT comprehend why a male would desire to have something longer than what they refer to as a "regular haircut" which is basically a very short haircut that is no longer than 1 1/2" on top and cut very short(as short as 1/4" to 1/8") on the back and sides.
to the typical barber, "long hair" on Men and boys was associated with the 1970s and they often make jokes about it with their customers even though most of the styles of that era that many barbers consider "long hair" just barely was long enough to cover the ears or part of the ears(see Brady bunch type haircuts as an example).
some of the typical patrons(such as the ones that you described that go every other week) think if a man has more than 1/4" of hair on his entire head he is overdue for a haircut.
it's part of their mindset which indicates that their hair is NOT short enough(in their mind) when with us IT'S WAY TOO SHORT! LOL!
anyway, if you prefer to keep your hair and you think it's a bit unruly a salon is the best place to go. barbers(as you already know) don't know jack about proper hair grooming. all they grasp is the concept of extremely short haircuts.
AVOID barber shops at all costs even if someone else tells you that they can work with long hair.
The thing to remember is barber shops exist for one reason and
one reason only.........to make money chopping off hair.
When I started growing my hair long in 1964 and let it grow from then on barber shops lost a boat load of money because guys like
me failed to come into their shops to get our hair chopped off.
No hair chopped off = not income for the barber shop.
Also nothing makes the day (month or year) of a barber than
having a customer like me come in so they can chop off all
long hair. The same goes for stylists at salons.
And barber shops/salons are the only business where you
go in and tell them you want two inches trimmed off and they
trim off twenty two inches.
It would be like going into a sub shop and ordering roast
beef only to have the sandwich artist decide he is going to
give you a ham and cheese. You wouldn't accept that at
the sub shop, why would you accept at the barber shop?
I don't know what "salons" you went to, but if it was one of these strip mall type places like supercuts I can certainly understand your position, but for the most part my experiences have been quite pleasant at salons, but at barber shops very unpleasant.
I've tried a variety of salons. None of them followed directions I had given them. None of them. And these were no Supercuts.
It sounds like you did not communicate directly what you wanted.
to tell a stylist something such as
"keep it long" does not convey anything.
telling even the most scissor or clipper happy people "keep it long" might mean to some "keep it over the ears" or "keep it long enough to comb".
this does not tell them anything at all.
you have to be specific when dealing with these people.
I've overheard many other guys come in to a salon say similar things such as:
"whatever you think looks best"
or
"make it look presentable"
again, you're not being specific. it probably is best to take a photo with you when going in a salon for the first time.
Wrong. I've given them very exact instructions which they
proceed to ignore and do what they darn well feel like.
What part of "only take off two inches" do they not understand?
BTW, in college I majored in engineering so my instructions are
very precixe.
Make sure the salon maintains a long training program. The salon that I use in S.F. requires three years supervised training before being allowed to style hair unassisted. The trainees start out helping wash hair in the back sinks to prepare for the trim or are assigned simple uncomplicated trims monitored by exerienced stylists. There are skills to learn that take years to develop.
This includes styling hair to what the individual wants. Coming in the first time, the stylist should probe the individual with a lengthy discussion on how they want to look. Using pictures of differenct hairstyles to choose from helps to clarify the end result.
Most of the maintanance trims are done every two months to remove split ends using a roller brush and to recondition the hair. These are not to be radical cuts tht dramaticly change the hair style. The end result is smooth, silky hair that shines with the same length that you came in with. This is hair treatment, not hair elimination.
I prefer to trim my hair myself rather that risk a barbershop with this. Barbar shops may have a gender bias that associates a long jaw and broad sholders with a short hair style. And they proceed with this task from there. They can be trained that way.
I go the the salon every six months to correct errors in my own trims. The stylist knows what I prefer. She makes sure that I am positive with the result so that I come back again to pay again. It's part of their training.
Don