Saco hair, Covent Garden

Just wanted to do a little rave about Saco hair in Covent Garden.

I first heard about this salon via a Groupon deal - £23 for a cut and blow dry. As the salon got good reviews online, I decided to give it a go (still not quite having found 'the' hairdresser to make me love my curly locks again in London).

I booked in for a cut and was very pleased with my lovely, friendly stylist and the cool but informal nature of the salon, which although quite large is laid out with lots of little nooks and twisting corridors so it doesn't feel too impersonal. I was also pleased with the cut - not a triangle or a diamond to be seen (two curly hair crimes) - my stylist listened to me, offered advice and feedback, and gave me EXACTLY what I wanted, despite my very vague attempts at explaining this (kind of choppy, shorter on top, longer straggly bits but not too much taken off!).

I was therefore very excited to return a couple of weeks later for a colour. We'd discussed going darker and richer, and I was a little surprised to see that the end result was somewhat redder than I'd anticipated. But once I'd gotten used to it - LOVE! In fact I'm going back in a couple of weeks for another dye and I'm going to go a bit redder, as it has faded quite a bit which is no reflection on the colour but more that red hair does fade quite quickly and it wasn't a permanent colour.

The salon only uses sulfate-free products which impressed me. AND they place nice relaxing music, not noisy in your face trendy rubbish. They use Wella dyes, and I'm actually quite impressed at how the colour has panned out. Normally when I have a colour I end up with a flat, orangey tinge when it starts to fade. On this occassion, although it has faded quicker than I would have liked, it's actually faded to a quite nice rich, chestnuty colour. I have been using Kiehl's Sunflower shampoo and conditioner on it as well, which I think has helped (I'll be posting on those little godsends shortly!).

Anyway here's a few pics for you to judge for yourselves.

after cut 

how it looked curly

after colour

colour five weeks later 

Price-wise Saco is about average for a central London salon though if you're having a colour you then have to pay separately for the blow dry, a practice I disapprove of in salons but which seems to be fairly widespread now unfortunately. And I did feel the blow dry was ridiculously overpriced at about the £40 mark. No blow dry, however good, is worth that in my book. I did have a 20% voucher for my second appointment which lessened the blow (no pun intended!) but I will be sticking to getting my hair coloured at the same time as I get it cut in future and getting blow dries when needed at my local salon in south London!

Overall though, highly recommended.

PS Another thing I loved about the red is that it opened up a whole new world of make up possibilities - colours which had previously looked a bit blah against my mousy hair were given a new lease of life against my vibrant red locks. I took full advantage of this by having a little splurge at Nars, the results of which can be seen in my last couple of posts!