Hair salons near Old Street

Chop Chop sits at 60 Charlotte Road, EC2A 3QT, which is a few minutes on foot from Old Street station and squarely inside the working day of anyone based around the roundabout. If you are searching for a salon near Old Street, the deciding factor is usually not the haircut in the abstract. It is whether you can realistically get there, get it done and get back without losing an afternoon. This page is about that.

Where it actually is

Charlotte Road runs between Old Street and Great Eastern Street, one street back from the main traffic. It is quieter than the roads either side of it, which mostly matters when you are trying to find the door. From Old Street station, come out on the Great Eastern Street side and it is a short walk east, under ten minutes at an ordinary pace. From Shoreditch High Street station it is closer still, roughly five. Liverpool Street is a longer walk but a perfectly reasonable one if that is where your train gets in, and the buses along Old Street and Great Eastern Street drop you within a couple of streets in either direction.

If you cycle, you are arriving on some of the best served roads in the area for it, and the surrounding streets have stands. If you drive, be realistic. Charging zones, restricted parking and Old Street traffic all work against you, and this is not the journey to do behind a wheel.

The opening hours, and what they let you do

• Monday to Friday: 10:00 to 20:00
• Saturday: 09:00 to 19:00
• Sunday: 11:00 to 18:00

Read those hours as a working person and two things stand out. There is no before work slot during the week, because the doors open at ten. There is a genuine after work window, because the last appointments run up to eight in the evening, which is late enough to finish your day, walk over and still eat afterwards. The earliest start all week is nine on a Saturday, and that is the slot to take if you would rather deal with your hair before the day gets going.

Booking around a working day

Not every appointment needs the same amount of your time, and the salon's own booking mix shows how people use it. Clipper and fade work is a substantial part of the Charlotte Road diary, at 395 bookings over the last twelve months, close to thirteen per cent of everything booked. A dry clipper cut does not include a wash, which makes it one of the shortest bookings on the list and the obvious candidate for a lunch hour or a gap between meetings. A restyle, a colour, or anything involving length and a proper finish is a different proposition and wants an evening or a weekend rather than a squeezed sixty minutes.

The honest advice is to book the appointment you actually want rather than the one that fits the gap you have. If the gap is small, take the short service and come back for the bigger one. Rushing a colour to make a two o'clock is how people end up disappointed with a salon that would have done fine work with another hour.

If you work in the area

Two habits make this easier over a year. Rebook before you leave, while you have the diary in front of you, and take the same slot each time so it stops being a decision. And put the number in your phone: 020 3488 1492. If a meeting runs over, ringing five minutes before your appointment is worth far more than turning up ten minutes after it. A short delay can usually be absorbed. A no show cannot, and a stylist who has held an hour for you has turned other people away for it.

One practical caveat

Weekday evenings from about six, and Saturdays generally, are the busiest hours of the week here for the obvious reason that everyone else near Old Street wants the same thing. If your hours are flexible, a late morning or early afternoon on a weekday is the calmest time in the building and the easiest to get at short notice. If they are not flexible, book further ahead than feels necessary and the evening slot will be there.