Full head colour at Wembley Park

If you are booking a full head colour at Wembley Park, the decision that matters most is which colourist you get, not which salon. This page is about choosing that person and telling them the right things when you book. What the service involves, how long it lasts and how it compares to the other colour options is covered on the main full head colour page.

Why the name on the booking matters here

Wembley Park works off a large rota, and the majority of it is cutting rather than colouring. Colour is handled by a defined handful of people instead of by whoever happens to have a gap in their column, which means the person you book is the real decision and the salon is more or less incidental to it. Four names, and each of them is better suited to a slightly different brief.

Who to ask for

• Grace, senior colourist and stylist. Colour is her main work and she cuts as well, so if the shade and the shape need deciding together she can settle both in one sitting instead of you explaining one to the person doing the other.
• Az, creative cutter and colour expert. Comes at it from the cutting side. Worth asking for when the colour exists to make a particular cut read properly, rather than as a change in its own right.
• Walker, colourist and Asian hair expert. Dark, coarse or resistant hair does not take colour on the same timetable as fine hair and it holds a lot of warmth underneath. This is what Walker works with constantly.
• Asma, senior colourist and stylist. Asma is on the rota at both salons, so availability at Wembley Park moves about week to week. Ask for her by name rather than scanning for a gap that may not be there this week.

What to say when you book

Give whoever takes the booking three pieces of information: your natural base, whether there is existing colour on the hair and roughly how old it is, and how long and thick your hair is. Those three things decide how much time gets blocked out for you.

A full head on shoulder length, previously coloured, very dense hair is a materially different appointment from a full head on a short natural base, and the wrong length of slot is the single most common reason a colour appointment feels rushed at the end. Nobody wants to be toning against the clock. If someone is coming with you for a cut at the same time, mention that too so both appointments exist in the diary rather than one of them being hoped for on arrival.

Where it is, and who travels for it

3 Weaver Walk, Wembley Park, HA9 0GX. Colour clients here divide into two rough groups. There are people within a short journey who come back to the same colourist for years and stop thinking about it, and there are people who are in the area for work or for something on at the stadium and fit an appointment around that. If you are in the second group, build in more time than the slot length suggests. Colour finishes when the hair is finished, and that is not always when the diary says.

If the colourist you want is booked out

Take the wait. Colour is one of the few things in a salon where the specific pair of hands genuinely changes what you end up with, and a fortnight is a short time set against several months of living with a shade you did not want. It also means the same person sees the result grow out and gets better at your hair each time, which is not something you can buy by booking sooner with somebody else.

If the slot you are after is not visible, phone 020 3488 1492 and ask instead of taking whatever is showing. Fresha is where you check availability, and it is worth checking a week or two out rather than looking only at the next few days.