Why my clients switched to a mobile hairdresser and never went back

Busy work and family lives get in the way of the colour you desperately need or the restyle you have been thinking about for weeks. That is the message I hear most often, and it is the reason I went mobile in the first place.

This is not a piece about what happens during a home visit, because I have written that one already and you can read exactly what to expect from a home appointment if that is what you are after. This is about the decision that comes before it: why people move their hair appointment out of a salon and into their own front room, and whether it would suit you.

The appointment fits around you, not the other way round

A salon opens when it opens and closes when it closes, and the slots everyone wants are the slots everyone else wants too.

I take appointments until 8pm Monday to Thursday, which covers the 7pm slot after the school run. Saturday starts at half past eight, before football. Evening and weekend appointments across Cambridgeshire are a normal part of my week rather than a favour I am doing you, because the whole model is built around fitting into your day rather than the other way round.

That flexibility is the single most common reason people call me, and it is the reason they stay.

Add up the hours the salon costs you

This is the calculation nobody does until they do it once.

A salon appointment is not the ninety minutes in the chair. It is the twelve minutes driving, the six minutes hunting for a space in St Neots on a Saturday, the ten minutes you arrive early because you do not want to be late, the twenty minutes they are running behind, and the drive home. A ninety-minute haircut has quietly eaten most of an afternoon.

At home, the appointment starts when I knock on the door and ends when I leave. There is no travel, no parking, no waiting room and no fifteen-minute gap where you are drinking a coffee you did not want because your colour is processing.

For a client having colour every eight weeks, the difference over a year is closer to a working day than you would guess.

It is quieter, and it is entirely yours

You are not sharing me with three other clients, a phone that will not stop ringing and someone else's music.

We talk properly about your hair, without me disappearing to check foils on the other side of the room. Your children can wander in and out. The dog can supervise. The tea is exactly how you like it because you made it. If you would rather not talk at all and just read, that is fine too, and in a salon it is somehow harder to say so.

For clients who find busy places difficult, who have sensory sensitivities, or who have had a bad experience being looked at in a room full of mirrors, that difference is not a nice extra. It is the whole reason they can have their hair done at all.

It works when getting out of the house is the hard part

A significant number of my clients book me because leaving the house is the obstacle, not the hair.

New parents, who would need to arrange childcare for a haircut. Anyone with mobility difficulties, for whom a salon with a step and a fixed basin is a non-starter. People recovering from surgery. Older clients who no longer drive and would otherwise depend on someone else's afternoon.

Hair matters more, not less, when the rest of life is difficult. Bringing the appointment to the door removes the only part of it that was ever a problem.

The same standard as a salon, which is the part people doubt

This is where the scepticism lives, and it is fair, because plenty of mobile hairdressing genuinely is a trim in the kitchen.

Colour, foils, balayage, toners, keratin blow dries, Olaplex and occasion hair all travel. The products are the same Wella, Moroccanoil and Olaplex I use in my home salon in Yelling, because they come out of the same bag, and the technique does not change because the room does.

The one honest difference is the water. We rinse at your kitchen sink or your shower rather than at a salon basin, and I work around your furniture rather than a salon floor. That is the whole list.

I trained at Vidal Sassoon and spent years in senior and director roles in salons. Nothing about my standards changed when the chair started folding into a car boot. You can see the work on the gallery and read what clients thought on the reviews page.

Does it cost more?

It is the question everyone is too polite to ask first, so let me answer it.

No, and the reason is structural rather than generous. A salon carries rent on a high street, business rates, utilities, a receptionist and a team. Those costs are in every price on the board, and they have to be. I have a car, a kit and a room at home, so the same appointment does not have to carry the same overhead.

There is a call-out charge on a home visit, from £12.50 near Yelling depending on distance, covering fuel and my time on the road, and worked out from your postcode when you book so you see it before you confirm. Beyond that the service costs what it costs in the salon: prices are all on the booking page, and they depend on hair length and how long the appointment takes rather than on where the chair is standing.

Then there is the money nobody counts: the parking, the fuel, the coffee you bought while your colour processed, and in some cases the childcare. Take those out and a home visit usually still comes out ahead of the call-out, before you have counted the time.

What changes when the same person does your hair for years

The underrated part of a small mobile business is continuity. You are not allocated to whoever is free on Thursday.

I know what your hair did last time, what you said you hated in 2023, that you always go a shade warmer in winter, and that your daughter's prom is in May. My notes are useful because they are about you rather than about a service code, and it means every appointment starts further along than the last one.

It also means I will tell you when the answer is no. If your hair is not strong enough for the colour you have seen on Instagram, I will say so and give you a route that gets you there over two appointments instead. A relationship that is going to last years is not worth trading for one appointment's worth of yes.

The trade-offs, honestly

It would be strange to write this without them.

You do not get the theatre of a salon. There is no row of mirrors, no glass of something, no receptionist. Some people love that atmosphere and would miss it, and if that is you, a home visit is not going to feel like a treat in the same way.

You need a plug and a bit of space. Not much, about the footprint of an armchair, but a very small flat with no free floor makes a colour appointment awkward.

And I am one person rather than a team, so I book up. My evening and Saturday slots go first and they go early. The clients who get the times they want are the ones who book the next appointment before they leave.

The appointments where it beats a salon outright

Weddings and occasions, without question. Everyone getting ready in one house, done in the order that gets you out of the door on time, nobody driving anywhere in curlers.

Groups generally: proms, birthdays, a mother-and-daughter afternoon. One stylist, one location, one afternoon.

Anything with small children in the house, because the appointment happens around them rather than despite them.

And children's haircuts, which are considerably calmer in a familiar living room than in a strange chair with a stranger holding scissors.

The one thing to check before you book anyone

Mobile hairdressing is not regulated the way a salon premises is, so the quality range is wide. Before you book anyone, including me, it is worth asking three things.

What training have they had, and where. What do they bring, specifically, because "everything" and "a dryer and a pair of scissors" are different answers. And whether they carry insurance.

Ask to see recent work that is not a stock photo, and read reviews that mention the same person by name. Any hairdresser worth booking will be pleased you asked rather than prickly about it.

How to try it without committing to anything

Book something small first. A cut and blow dry, an hour, in your own kitchen. Book it online, say yes to a home visit and enter your postcode. You will know within twenty minutes whether it suits you, and if it does not, you have lost an hour and nothing else.

Most people only need to do it once. The conversation at the door is nearly always the same, and it is some version of not being able to believe they used to drive somewhere for this.

Home visits are bookable online: pick your treatment, say yes to a home visit and enter your postcode. You can see where I travel and what a visit involves, read about home visits for older and housebound clients, browse the full services list, or send me a message if you would rather ask a question before you book anything.