When Tara Salloum went to a Toronto hair salon for balayage, she didn’t think to discuss the price beforehand. She was a dye job veteran, used to spending a few hundred dollars every time she sat down in the chair.
But when she went to pay, the total came to an eye-watering $900, plus a 20 per cent tip. “I felt flabbergasted,” Salloum said. “It’s not the norm to talk pricing during a consultation, but it really should be!”
Salloum went on to find another stylist who charges a comparatively modest $400, and still lightens her hair regularly — although the recent arrival of her first child has her reconsidering the time and expense. “It just doesn’t feel realistic to sit in the chair for six-plus hours every couple of months,” she says. “It’s something I’ve done on autopilot for the last seven years, and I’m realizing it’s not really a necessity to me anymore.”
Hair-colour sticker shock has been a hot topic lately. Salons’ rising costs of doing business is making what has always been an expensive habit even more so. At the same time, many women are returning to pre-pandemic salon schedules after years of taking a more hands-off approach — ramped up by in-office mandates resulting in a more pressing need to look polished in the workplace.
On the Ask TO sub-Reddit, a user posted that they’d paid $560 for full highlights and a cut at a King West salon, and asked: “Is that crazy or normal these days? I feel like it was closer to $400 not long ago.”
More than 500 comments later, the consensus seems to be that it was almost a bargain. “I pay close to $700,” said one commenter, adding they used to pay $400 pre-COVID with the same stylist. “I think that’s just the going rate now.” Another said: “Sadly this is normal.” Someone mentioned spending $1,200 for similar services.
Reconsidering the regular hair-colour habit
Alex Neary of Stouffville, Ont., started colouring her hair in Grade 7 via Sun-In, that orange-hued rite of passage. In high school, her mom took her for highlights, and she was faithfully blond for her entire 20s and 30s. Like everyone who couldn’t get their hair done during the pandemic, she was eager to go back to the salon when restrictions were lifted. But when it came time to pay the $400 bill, it hit differently.
“I couldn’t believe I’d been spending that much money on my hair,” she says. “I got my hair dyed once, and then I was like, ‘I’m not doing this.’ I let it grow out to my natural hair colour, which is actually a really nice shade of brown.”
Still, it’s been an adjustment. “Anytime I see a photo of myself, I’m like, ‘I have brown hair?’,” she says, laughing. “I like myself better as a blond. Sometimes I think about it, but I just can’t justify spending that much money.”
The pressure to cover greys
Neary, who’s in her early 40s, doesn’t mind the silver strands she sees coming in. (“I call them my tinsel,” she says.) But for many women, covering greys is a primary motivator for spending so much money on colour. For good reason: Research published last year found that faces of any gender with grey hair were judged to be “older and less attractive.”
This is especially pertinent in a professional environment, and many are putting in more facetime at work given increasing in-office mandates.
Older women perceived going grey as a “risk” to their social status, in a 2021 study, citing feeling invisible and irrelevant. Distinguished Canadian news anchor Lisa Laflamme kicked off a nationwide conversation about this in 2022 when she said she was “shocked and saddened” that her CTV contract wasn’t renewed, after she decided to go grey during the pandemic.
Why salons are charging more
Whatever the reason you’re dyeing your hair, professionals aren’t arguing that their prices have gone up. “It’s a thousand per cent true,” says Jason Lee, a celebrity and editorial stylist and colourist who owns an eponymous salon in midtown Toronto. “As a business owner, we’ve had to have a tough conversation internally to say, ‘We have to do this.’ Quite frankly, it’s just so we can survive.”
In 2020, the average client left Lee’s chair paying $300. Now, it’s between $600 and $700. “I have 35 years of experience, and people are willing to come see me because of that,” he says. “But I also know of people half my age who are charging that amount, if not more.”
Lee says that salon costs have soared, and points out that many salons have closed or changed hands since the pandemic, and the survivors “are the ones who are charging the right amount to stay in business.”
Some of the increase is down to the complexity of colour techniques required to emulate the modern “sun-kissed, lived-in” styles all over Instagram. “When you’re leaving paying $650, you’ve had layers of different tones, balayage, going back in. It’s not just your straightforward root touch-up,” he says. Investing in training stylists on these new techniques is an added expense.
When it comes to a root touch-up, in 2020 Lee charged $98; now it’s around $120. “That actually hasn’t gone up that much,” he says. “That’s literally just inflation.”
Lee stresses this isn’t some bonanza profit time for the hair industry. “We do just pay our bills, pay our staff properly, keep our lights on,” he says. “It’s not that we’re making a ton extra — and I’m booked and very busy.”
He feels the sticker shock is exacerbated by the fact that many people don’t see hair stylists as professionals, despite the years of study and expertise many have. “You wouldn’t [object to] paying $500 an hour for your lawyer,” he says. “I don’t understand why hairdressers get the flack for charging more.”
Nicolette Cammalleri, founder of Colette Studio at Yonge and Eglinton, itemizes the rising bills. “The cost of product from the U.S., which is where most salons get their colour, has increased significantly,” she says.
Rents are rising and so are staffing costs, she says, as stylists push for pricing that enables them to earn the $100,000 annual salary many feel they need to afford a reasonable life in Toronto. “Minus your taxes, products and overhead, you’re really leaving with $40 to $50 an hour.”
It’s not a regulated industry, so anyone can charge exactly what they please. “If you’re busy enough and you know people will follow you, what’s stopping you charging $1,500 a head for highlights?”
Cammalleri’s salon adjusts prices according to the annual inflation rate. Last year, that was 3.7 per cent. They use a cost-plus-service price model, so you pay a base price — say, $300 for half a head of highlights — plus the product, usually between 3 and 8 per cent.
How to lower your salon bill
If you’re no longer comfortable paying a certain amount for colour, both Lee and Cammalleri encourage you to have that conversation with your stylist.
“I have maybe five to seven clients who have been seeing me for the last 10 to 15 years, and I know they can’t afford my current pricing,” says Cammalleri, who honours what they’d been paying earlier in her career out of loyalty.
There are other ways to keep costs lower: Cammalleri suggests doing a half-head of highlights instead of full, or trying balayage, which allows more time between appointments. While it won’t give the same level of grey coverage, a semi-permanent colour doesn’t leave that harsh line at the root because it fades gradually, and can help you transition out of touch ups every three weeks. Lee suggests booking with a junior stylist or apprentice.
This conversation inevitably turns to box dye. “There’s no shame in that,” says Cammalleri, although she urges against it if you can afford the alternative and want multi-dimensional colour custom-matched to your skin tone. “One size fits all is not one size fits all, and that’s what you get in a box. And then if you come to the salon later, it’s really hard to remove.” She cites a client who used box dye for over a year while going through an expensive divorce. When she could afford to come back, it took four months and $2,300 to get the dye out.
Lee says that there are some perfectly acceptable box dyes on the market, but you must remember you’re working with chemicals. “The problem is that you’re not going to get an expert to explain what is going to happen if you use, say, light brown on dark hair,” he says. For greys, he suggests “grey blending,” a biannual visit that works with the grey in your hair to avoid a harsh grow-out.
Dedicated to dyeing
For some people, hair colour is a non-negotiable part of their budget. Vanessa Tsotos, who lives in Parkdale, is so dedicated to her signature electric green that she kept up appointments even when she was laid off last year. “I’ve connected with a certain colour, and it’s become so much a part of who I am,” she says. She’s also motivated by grey coverage: “On me personally, I hate the way greys look,” she says.
Vivid colour requires labour-intensive pre-bleaching and frequent touch-ups. “When I was trying to save money, my hairstylist was great because he had ways we could do that.” They let the roots grow out longer, and did a darker hue at the base to extend the time between appointments.
Back at work now, Tsotos goes to the salon every two months and spends around $300 per visit. The price has steadily increased over the years but it hasn’t put her off. “I’ve always had a budget line for hair,” she says. “I won’t do a lot of other things before I won’t do my hair.”
