How Cosmetology Schools Are Failing Their Students and the Students’ Future Clients
When cosmetology students spend 1,500 hours in training and over $20,000 at a premier cosmetology school, they expect hands-on training and superior guidance from the industry's top professionals to ensure they have the skills needed for a successful career.
Unfortunately, most cosmetology schools fall short, leaving their students riddled with debt and lacking the basic skills they need to work in the industry—to the detriment of the student's future clients.
At The Color Room in Wentzville, our Associate's Program is a chance for recent cosmetology school graduates to get the education they thought they had received from their previous cosmetology school. They work and retrain alongside our seasoned stylists to learn the essential skills needed to succeed in a highly competitive industry.
Oh, and did we mention we pay our Associates to do this?
So, why do we do it?
It's simple: We want our guests to have the best experience when they walk through our doors.
With nine years' experience as a salon and spa owner, The Color Room owner, Toni Peanick, has witnessed numerous gaps in the cosmetology education programs that leave recently graduated students struggling to deliver the quality haircare services that discerning clients expect and deserve.
The Short Story: Hair Cutting Techniques
Missouri requires its cosmetology students to complete 130 hours of hair cutting and shaping training. With so much training, you'd expect students to graduate with a firm grasp on basic hair-cutting skills, but that's not the case.
"Cutting hair is about angles and math," Peanick explains. "Many people don't think about hair cutting like that, but it's basic geometry. When cutting hair, you have to think about elevation: anything below 90 degrees adds weight and anything above 90 degrees removes it. Aside from understanding basic angling techniques, I find so many students graduating from cosmetology schools don't even know the foundation of the two basic hair-cutting lines."
If you were curious, those two cutting lines are straight and curved.
These are the things that frustrate Peanick and why she started her Associate's Program. When students spend tens of thousands of dollars on cosmetology training, shouldn't they know the basics?
Hair Coloring Is an Art—Not a Dye Job!
If you follow The Color Room on social media, you've seen the jaw-dropping coloring techniques our expert colorists use to create beautiful, multi-dimensional results for our guests. The results our guests expect from their colorists are what every client should expect, regardless of where they get their hair done.
Unfortunately, many people end up with hair color that's flat, dull, and damaged because they're having their hair colored by colorists who didn't receive proper training in color theory.
"A common request we get at The Color Room from our guests is they want color that doesn't pull red. Well, there's a proper way to achieve that very reasonable request. Do you remember the color wheel from art class in school? The color wheel is the basis of color theory. Every student graduating from an accredited cosmetology school should know that green cancels out red, but that's not the case. I've seen recent graduates confidently reach for blue coloring products thinking this will achieve their client's goal and it simply won't," Peanick says, shaking her head. "It only makes the problem worse. These are the types of gaps in learning we aim to correct at The Color Room through our Associate's Program."
Consultation: It’s Where It All Begins
How can you meet your guests' needs if you don't know what they are? Of the 1,500 hours of training required by the state of Missouri, there isn't sufficient (if any) training for handling a guest consultation. Yet, the guest consultation is what lays the foundation for a successful guest experience!
At The Color Room, we consult with every new guest to learn more about their hair goals and their actual hair. Before a seasoned stylist or associate picks up a pair of scissors or colors a single strand of hair, we need to know the following:
Hair texture: Is it straight, wavy, or curly?
Hair diameter: Is it fine, medium, or coarse?
Hair density: Is it thin, medium, or thick?
Hair distress: Has it experienced mechanical, environmental, chemical, hormonal distress?
Percentage of grey: Is it 0-25%, 25%-50%, 50%-75%, or 75%-100%?
What is the hair's natural level on a scale of 1-10?
We also need to know the answers to these questions:
What is your commitment to salon visits?
How do you style your hair daily?
What products are you currently using, including boxed dye?
How much time do you spend styling your hair at home?
What do you like and dislike about your hair?
The answers to these questions help us create a cutting plan, a coloring plan, and a cost plan. All these questions are vital to a solid consultation and something every student who graduates from an accredited school should know—but so many don't!
Gold-Star Guest Experiences
"Doing hair" is more than cutting and coloring. It's about making your guests feel special and giving them a short reprieve from whatever stress awaits them outside the salon doors. Stylists often walk through many seasons with their clients and become friends; dare we say, family?
At The Color Room, we consider all our guests "family" and treat them as such. Our Associate's Program teaches recently graduated cosmetology school students how to deliver a gold-star guest experience every time, which always begins and ends with listening to what their guest wants and going above and beyond to deliver it!
The Color Room Believes in Nothing Less than Excellence
We want our guests to walk through our doors, confident that their hard-earned money is well spent and on a style they'll love. We also want newly graduated associates to have the skills necessary to achieve career success and earn well above the average stylist's salary. At The Color Room, we achieve both these goals!
For more information about our Associate's Program, contact The Color Room at (636) 856-1400. If you're a guest and want to book your next appointment, call us or book your appointment online.
Brighter days start here for our guests and our associates!
