The colour correction consultation at Wembley Park

Every colour correction at Wembley Park starts with a consultation, and it is the appointment that decides all the others. It is short, it is not the colour service itself, and it is where a starting price on a list turns into an actual price for your actual head of hair. This page is about that conversation: the patch test, what to bring, what you will be asked and what you should expect to be told.

The patch test

Colour products need an allergy patch test before they go near your scalp, and correction is no exception. A small amount of product goes somewhere discreet and is left for a set period, so that if there is going to be a reaction it happens on your arm and not on your head. Ask when you book how far in advance you need to come in for yours, because it has to happen before the colour appointment rather than at the beginning of it.

If you have ever reacted to hair colour, to tattoo ink, or to so called black henna, say so at the point of booking rather than on the day. It changes what can be used and it is not a conversation to have while somebody is already mixing.

What to bring

• Photos of your hair as it is now, taken in daylight. Bathroom lighting flatters and hides, and colour lies indoors.
• Photos of what you want, more than one, so the pattern is clear rather than resting on a single lucky picture.
• Photos of your hair before it went wrong, if you have any. These are often more useful than the aspirational ones, because they show what your hair does rather than what somebody else's did.
• The actual box or tube if you coloured at home, or a picture of the packet. A shade number tells a colourist more in two seconds than a description manages in five minutes.
• Rough dates. When it was done, and how many times.

What you will be asked

None of it is a test and none of it is a trap. Every question is trying to work out what is physically sitting on the hair.

• When was it last coloured, and how many times in the last year
• Salon, home, or a mixture of both
• Has it ever been lightened or bleached, including years ago on lengths you have since cut off
• Has henna or any vegetable colour ever been on it
• Have you used a colour remover or a stripping product on it yourself
• How often do you wash it and how much heat does it see
• What did the last person to colour it tell you, if anything

Be honest about the home colour, including the one you did in a panic and did not tell anyone about. Withholding it does not protect you. It just means the plan gets built on the wrong information and the result surprises everybody in the room.

What you should expect to be told

Sometimes the answer is simple and you book the slot. Sometimes it is that the shade on your phone is not reachable on this hair in one sitting, or that getting there means losing some length, or that the sensible first move is a different colour to the one you came in asking about. A consultation that agrees with everything you say is not worth the chair time.

Your colourist may also want to take a small test strand, which is another good reason to leave a gap between the consultation and the colour rather than stacking them together. The gap gives you thinking room too, and a plan you have slept on tends to be the one you are still happy with three weeks later.

Practical bits

Consultations happen at the Wembley Park salon on Weaver Walk. Book it as its own appointment through Fresha rather than assuming it can be folded into the colour slot. Ring 020 3488 1492 if you would rather talk first, although a colour history is very hard to read down a phone line and you will still be asked to come in.

Turn up with your hair as it normally is. Freshly washed and blow dried so it looks its best hides precisely the banding, porosity and regrowth your colourist is trying to see, which makes the whole appointment less useful than it should have been.