Habits
How to talk to your hairdresser about thinning without dying of embarrassment
The person who sees the top of your head most often, in good light, with a professional eye, is your hairdresser. Most women never ask them a single question about it. Here is how to.
Why they do not bring it up
Hairdressers are trained to make you feel good, and pointing at a thin patch does not. They also assume you know. Most will say nothing unless asked, and most, once asked, are relieved and generous. Start with: “Can I ask you something honestly? Has my hair got thinner, and where?” Say it at the basin, when they are already looking.
The five questions
1. “Where is it thinnest?” They will tell you: the corners, the parting, the crown, or all over. That tells you the pattern, and the pattern is the most useful thing you can know. Here is what each one means.
2. “Is it the number of hairs, or are the hairs finer?” A good stylist can feel the difference between a scalp with fewer hairs (shedding) and one with the same number of finer hairs (miniaturisation). They may also spot both in different places.
Not sure which one is you?
Take the two-minute hair quiz
Twelve quick questions. We tell you what we think is going on, what to do about it, and we say so if it is something we cannot help with.
Start the quiz →3. “Can you see short new hairs, and are they growing or breaking?” They can see the halo at the hairline and, with the hair sectioned, along the parting. Regrowth has soft tapered ends; breakage is blunt. More on that here.
4. “How does my scalp look?” Redness, flakes, oiliness, build-up, a sore patch you cannot see. They look at scalps all day and will know if yours is not calm.
5. “What would you change about how I’m wearing it?” Length, layers, parting position, colour, the ponytail. This is their real expertise and they will have opinions. The haircut article gives you the vocabulary to discuss it.
What to ask them not to do
No thinning scissors. No razoring. No heavy layering. No lifting the colour through the lengths every visit. No high-tension blow-dry pulling at the hairline. Say these once and a good stylist will remember.
Using what they tell you
Ask them to take a photo of your parting and crown from above, in the salon light, on your phone, every visit. Salon lighting is consistent and the angle is one you cannot get yourself. Six of those photos across a year is a better record of what your hair is doing than any amount of looking in the bathroom mirror, and it is exactly what a GP or trichologist wants to see.
If they say it looks fine
Believe them a little. Women see their own hair more harshly than anyone else does, and the ponytail-circumference test at home can be more accurate than the mirror. But if you know it has changed — the bobble going round the extra time, the photo from four years ago — the change is real, and a stylist who did not know you then cannot see the difference. The quiz asks the questions that get at the change over time.
Ready to read your own pattern?
Take the two-minute hair quiz
Twelve questions. We tell you what we think is going on for you, and we say so if it is something a GP should see first.
Start the quiz →
