Afro and curly hairdressers in east London

Curly and afro hair is as much of what this salon does as straight hair is, and that is meant literally. Across 3,065 bookings in the last twelve months at Chop Chop's Charlotte Road salon, 787 were curly and afro work and 800 were straight. That is 25.7 per cent against 26.1 per cent, which is level pegging. If you have been looking for afro or curly hairdressers in east London and are tired of ringing round to ask whether anyone there can actually handle your hair, that balance answers the question better than any promise on a homepage could.

Why the volume matters more than the claim

Any salon can put curly hair on a website. What you are trying to find out is whether the person holding the scissors works on hair like yours weekly or twice a year. A rota getting through nearly eight hundred textured appointments a year is not learning on your head. It means a stylist has already seen your density before, has already dealt with the loose curl at the front and the tighter pattern underneath that most people have, and has already had the conversation about what happens to length when it dries.

The two curly services, and which one you want

• Curly Hair Trim, Wash and Style. The maintenance appointment. The shape you have already stays the shape you have, with growth and split ends taken off and the outline put back. It is the shorter of the two bookings and the right one when the shape you have is still working.
• Curly Hair Restyle, Wash and Finish. A new shape. Length, weight and where the volume sits are all open, so it is a longer appointment and a longer conversation.

If you are unsure which you need, book the trim and say in the notes that you are considering a bigger change. Adding time to a booking is easier than taking a restyle decision under time pressure.

What a proper textured appointment involves

Curl has to be understood before it is cut. Two people can both describe their hair as shoulder length and need entirely different appointments, because shrinkage on a tight pattern can hide several inches and density varies enormously across the same head. Expect your hair to be looked at and handled before any decision is made about length, and expect to be asked how you normally wear it, since a shape that works on a wash and go is not necessarily the shape that works when it is stretched or tied back.

The other half of the conversation is chemistry and history. Say if you have been relaxing, if there is colour or lightener anywhere in the length, if you have been wearing protective styles, and roughly when any of that happened. It changes what your hair will now tolerate, and a stylist who does not ask is guessing.

Pricing, and why the number is a starting point

There is no separate rate card for textured hair here. Everything is priced by the service and the time it takes, which is the fairest way to do it and the only honest one, because a head of hair is not a fixed unit of time. Density, shrinkage and the condition it arrives in all move the number. A dense head of coils takes longer to section, work through and finish than a fine loose wave, and that is reflected in time rather than in a surcharge attached to a hair type. When you book, describe your hair properly and you will get a realistic figure before anyone starts rather than a surprise at the counter.

Colour on textured hair

Colour is on the rota rather than an outsourced extra, with more than one stylist here whose stated speciality is colour. That matters for textured hair specifically, because lightener behaves differently on hair that is already porous or has a chemical history, and the answer to a request is sometimes a staged plan rather than a single appointment. If that is what you are told, it is a good sign rather than a brush off.

Booking, and asking first

The salon is at 60 Charlotte Road, EC2A 3QT, and the number is 020 3488 1492. The full service list is on the site, and if the thing you want is not on it, ring and ask rather than booking the nearest sounding option. Ask two more things while you are on the phone if you are new: how often your particular pattern will want cutting, and what to do at home between appointments to keep the shape. A cut you cannot maintain on a Tuesday morning is not a cut that has worked, whatever it looked like when you left.