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.

How to Deal With Protruding Ears

People with protruding ears are usually self conscious of them and would like to have a haircut that would minimize them rather than accent them. If the tops of the ears protrude 3/4 of an inch or more from your client's head, the hair that covers them will flip out and look like wings if it's cut too short. If the hairline just above the ears is close to the top of your client's ears, the problem is accented. If however, there is 1/2 inch between the top of the ear and the hairline, it's kinder to your client.

What can you do to camouflage and minimize protruding ears?

1. Leave the hair long enough when you cut the outline so that half of the ear is covered. This will work well with medium or coarse hair.


2. For fine hair, cut the hair so it's very full and short above the ears. The extra fullness balances the ears. Fine hair that is over the ears (as in option 1) could flip out at the sides. Don't make the mistake of cutting the hair super short above the ears. Super short will have the opposite effect. You need short length and especially fullness. (If it's cut to 1/8 inch, it can't be full.)

How to Decide the Best Length to Cut Men's & Boys' Hair

A general rule of thumb for straight or slightly wavy hair is the finer the hair, the shorter it would be cut and the coarser the hair, the longer you should leave it. This is because finer hair bends easier than coarse hair and need less length to bend and lie where it should. Coarser hair needs to be longer because it does not bend as easily and needs more weight (from length) to bend and lie in place.

A basic guideline would be -

• Fine Hair 1 - 2 inches


• Medium Hair 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 inches


• Coarse Hair 2 - 3 inches

This is just a general guide, though, and each specific haircut needs to be unique for a particular person's needs.

If you are not really sure about the texture of the hair you are cutting and want to know for certain that you will be cutting it the right length, do this simple test. Cut off one hair from the top of the head right at the scalp. Hold that hair between your thumb and y our pointer finger right at the "root" end. Hold it straight up. Cut little bits of length off of the end until the hair has just a slight bend at the end. (When it's too long, it will lie down, bending close to your fingers.) Once you find the optimal length, measure that strand of hair with a ruler.

Look closely at the way the hair grows at the top of the head. If your client's hair grows straight out of the scalp (usually only 1% of people have this), then cut his hair to the length that you measured the strand of hair to be. However, if your client's hair grows at a 45 degree angle from his scalp (which is much more common), you should subtract 1 inch from the measured hair strand length.

When you have a client that has his hair thinning on the top, cut it 1/2 to 3/4 inch shorter than what you calculated from your cutting test. Thinner hair lies flatter because it doesn't have much hair around it to support it. Thinner hair (up top) will have more fullness when you cut it shorter.

Deciding What Length to Cut Hair

A general rule that can apply to cutting men's or boys' hair is to cut off any unnecessary length and leave it long enough to lie in its place. This rule mainly applies to the hair on the top of the head where extra length can make it heavy looking with the extra bulk.

There are exceptions to this rule. Hairtype is a factor that determines length. Wavy, kinky, and curly hair types give you more options when choosing length and cover up haircutting slip ups too ;o) The shorter you cut the hair, the straighter it lies and the longer you leave it, the curlier it is.

Just slightly wavy or straight hair is less forgiving. If you cut it too short, it will stick straight up and if you leave it too long, it becomes floppy and doesn't hold its shape. With this hairtype, you tend to have more low cowlicks, double cowlicks, ducktail necklines, and cowlicks in the front hair line.

Since every head of hair has its own unique combination of hairgrain, hairtype, density, and texture, you need to take all these factors into account when deciding how long to cut the hair.

How to Deal With Cowlicks in the Neck and at the Front Hairline

Everyone has a cowlick in the crown area, but some people also have one in the nape of their neck or along the front hairline (or both). We'll start off with looking at the cowlick at the nape of the neck.

Ducktail

Someone with a cowlick at the nape of his/her neck has what's commonly called a ducktail neckline. When the hair is short enough in the nape area, you can see the hairgrain growing up and to the side in some areas. As the hair grows, it can start flipping out in the wrong direction, not lying neatly with the rest of the hair. There is nothing you can do to change the hairgrain - that is just the way it is going to grow.

Some people have only one cowlick at the back, so it looks as though the hair sort of swirls over all to one side at the bottom of the hairline. Others have 2 cowlicks, making the hair on both sides swirl toward the center, looking like a duck's tail.

When cutting a ducktail neckline, you don't really need to do anything out of the ordinary. Just cut as though it wasn't there when dealing with fine or medium hair. However, if the hair is very coarse and straight, it may prove to be a problem. You will need to cut it very short and taper out to a long length further up the back of the head. You can do the taper either scissor-over-comb or clipper-over-comb to get the ducktail area really nice and short.

Font Hairline Cowlick

This particular type of cowlick is not entirely in the hair itself but the center of it is in the finer, transparent "peach fuzz" at the top of the forehead. The effects the hairgrain along the front hairline and is found on 5 - 10% of the population.

The best way to deal with a cowlick at the front hairline is to let the hair lie where it wants to. If you don't want your hair to lie in the direction that it wants to, you are going to need extra length. You can do this in 2 ways:

• 
  
  Cut the entire top section 1 inch longer than you usually would.


• 
  
  Leave the first 2 inches of hair (behind the front hairline) longer. Blend it in with the rest of the top when you've finished cutting.

The easiest way, of course, is to go with the natural hairgrain of the hair rather than try to fight it. The famous model, Claudia Schiffer, has not one, but 2 cowlicks at her front hairline. She deals with it by wearing her hair longer and having it styled to compliment, rather than trying to hide the little erratic hairgrain areas. So ..... go with the flow, don't fight it!