Practice Makes Perfect
Practice-Practice-Practice
Be sure you have mastered the necessary training and achieved the appropriate certification before adding the title Hair Extension Specialist to your menu of services. There are many places including online that offer “instant” certifications in hair extension application to hair stylists.
Don’t fall for this trap. The only way to become a specialist or master in hair extension is to take classes with hands-on training supervised by an in-person instructor. Think about the ads for online training, How is that even possible?
Proper Hair extension application requires detail, precision and technique. Only in-person instructors can properly observe the technique, style and precision of the student. In an effort to gain more customers hair extension supply companies offer crash courses to hairstylists to achieve their hair extension certificates. These courses range from 3 hours to 24 hours, instructing on all the methods at once. Just one method of hair extension could take an entire course and hours of practice.
These crash courses lead to hairstylists rushing to get that hair extension sign in their windows and on their menu of services. This leads to shoddy work that will lose customers and could potentially damage people’s hair and scalp with poor hair extension applications. I see clients all the time in my Hair Extensions Salon or and Luxury Hair Extension Suite who are upset and begging for me to correct the mistakes made by a local hairstylist who they trusted with a hair extension.
Like everything in life Practice Make Perfect. If you are passionate about being a certified hair extension specialist in route to being a Master, there are no short cuts. It takes hours of training and more hours of practice.
Practice, practice and practice is required while training to be a hair extension specialist. Let me make this CLEAR, DO NOT PRACTICE ON YOUR CLIENTS. Even if you ask and receive their permission practicing on a client could result in not only saying good-bye to that client forever, but it could also result in a complaint against your cosmetology license.
Only practice on willing MANNEQUINS, just as you did when you learned your skills in cosmetology school. Remember the days of learning hair coloring, cutting and every service, hours practicing on mannequins and graduating to people only under the direct supervision of the instructor. The same thing needs to happen when studying and practicing hair extension techniques and applications. This is why online, and crash courses are an extremely bad idea.
Hair extension application is a complicated service dealing directly with the skin of the head and the most sensitive part of the hair, the roots. Incorrect hair extension applications damage the scalp, and hair creating bald spots caused by the weight of the hair extension when not properly applied.
