Hair salons in east London: the case for travelling

Chop Chop sits at the western edge of east London, at 60 Charlotte Road in EC2A, which puts it inside a fifteen or twenty minute journey from most of the E postcodes and a good part of N1 and E2. Nobody needs to travel for a haircut in east London, because there is one on every high street. So the only question this page has to answer is what would make the journey worth it, and the honest answer depends on what you want done.

Getting here from the rest of east London

The Overground is the spine of this journey. Shoreditch High Street is the closest station and the line running through it links Whitechapel, Shadwell, Wapping, Hoxton, Haggerston, Dalston and points north, which covers a large slice of the catchment in one ride. From Stratford, Leyton and Bethnal Green the Central line into Liverpool Street is quick and the walk up is short. From Bow, Hackney Wick and Homerton you have a choice of the Overground or a direct bus along the Old Street corridor. From Canary Wharf it is a straightforward run in on the Jubilee line and a change, or the river and a walk if the weather is behaving.

The point of listing that out is simple. This is not a destination that requires an expedition. For most of east London it is a shorter trip than the one you already make to get to work.

What is here that is harder to find locally

East London is well served for hair, but the provision tends to specialise. There are excellent barbers who will do a fade and nothing else. There are colour salons that would rather not take a head of coils. There are salons that are wonderful with curls and do not touch lightener. Fine, if your household only ever needs one of those things.

What Charlotte Road offers instead is range under one roof. Sixty five services sit on the list, spanning a £10 job at one end and a £270 one at the other. Textured and curly work sits alongside straight cutting, colour and clipper work in the same diary, and more than one colour specialist works the rota. That combination is the reason to go past somewhere nearer: not because the local place is bad, but because you are not being asked to split your hair across two appointments in two buildings, and neither is anyone else you might be booking for.

Making one trip count

If you are coming any distance, book accordingly. Combine the cut and the colour in one visit rather than two. Book the household together where the diary allows, which is more practical here than in most places because the price list is organised by service rather than split into separate lists for different people. Take a Sunday if weekdays are impossible: the salon is open from 11:00 to 18:00 on Sundays, which is the slot that suits people travelling in from further out rather than nipping over from an office nearby.

One salon or the other

There are two Chop Chop salons and they are not interchangeable. Charlotte Road is the east London one, and it is the site where colour and textured cutting sit at the centre of the work. The other, at 3 Weaver Walk in Wembley Park, is barber-led and weighted heavily towards clipper work. If you are reading this in an E postcode, EC2A is your salon. Both take bookings on 020 3488 1492.

An honest note on whether to bother

If what you want is a quick dry clipper cut and there is a decent barber four minutes from your flat, use the barber. Nothing on this page is an argument for adding forty minutes of travel to a twenty minute service. Travel for the work that is genuinely hard to place: colour you do not want to gamble on, a restyle you have been putting off, a hair type your nearest few salons keep quietly declining, or the appointment where you want an hour of a senior stylist's attention rather than a tidy up. That is the work this salon is built around, and it is the trip that repays itself.