The Crucial Minute of a Haircut

If you are just cutting family or friends' hair, you most likely know what they want done. But if you are cutting quite a few peoples' hair or if you work at a salon, you need to find out what they want you to do to their hair. Assume nothing. A gap in communication can have unpleasant results. This means you need to be good at

1. communicating and


2. analyzing the hair.

This time I'll get into the careful questioning and listening skills.

Some of the questions you can ask are-

• How do you like your hair cut?


• Do you want some covering your ear?


• Do you want it really short at the side?


• Would you like the back tapered or blocked?


• Do you want all the ear showing?


• Right now you have 2 inches. How much would you like off?

Ask very specific questions so you get specific answers.

The first haircut you give a specific customer, cut it conservatively and cautiously and leave the hair a bit longer than what you agreed on. Clip one side and give him the hand mirror. Once you get the OK, proceed with the back and on around the other side. If he wants it cut shorter, do that and have him check it again with the mirror. This saves you time because you won't have to completely recut all the way around the sides and back if he wants the entire cut shorter.

You'll often have people tell you, "Oh, just give it a trim." At least 9 times out of 10 people who want a trim don't want much hair cut off. Their last haircut was what they wanted, so they just want you to cut off the hair that's grown out since that last cut. That means you need to find out how long it's been since they've had their hair cut.

Hair grows about 1/2 inch per month, so if it's been 2 months since their last haircut, they'll want you to cut of an inch of hair all over.

While an average haircut may take 15 to 20 minutes, the first minute (before the haircut) is the most important minute of all. If your customers don't like what you did to their hair, they won't be back.

Do You Cut Wet or Dry?

What should you do? Should you cut hair when it is wet or when it is dry? That depends.

If you are cutting hair with scissors, you should be cutting damp hair. If the hair is damp, it can be combed neatly into place and held securely in your holding hand with all the hairs lined up perfectly for the scissors. If the hair is dripping wet, you'll have a soggy mess on your hands with hair clumping and water dripping all over the place. The key word here is damp.

If you are cutting with clippers, the hair needs to be dry. Wet hair clumps and therefore does not feed evenly into the clipper. This will give you an uneven cut. Wet hair bends away from the blades.

However, if you are about to cut someone's hair with a clipper and he has a classic case of "hat hair", you'll first need to wash the hair. Wash the hair and dry it before clipper cutting. You want the hair to feed evenly into the clipper and kinks will bend away from the clipper and give you a very unique looking haircut!

Wavy Hair Can Have 3 Different Looks

Wavy hair can be cut to look 3 different ways.

1. If you cut it short enough it will look straight.


2. If you cut it just a bit longer, there will be some waves.


3. If you leave it an inch long, it will get the curly look.

Decide which look you'd like to achieve and cut the hair accordingly. You can always blowdry the longer wavy hair to straighten it, but you'll have to blowdry it every day if you want the straight look. Cutting it short is simply the easiest way with the lowest maintenance.