It's a really nice salon, but I didn't have the best experience unfortunately. My biggest issues:
1. They told me you can't do chrome nails over dip powder, only on gel (yes you can, I've had it done before)
2. Nail tech did not understand that I wanted all of my nails to be the same length
3. Rushed through my appointment
4. The finished dip powder top coat looked lumpy and dull - nail tech would have left it like that if I didn't point it out
5. Pretty steep pricing - $55 for a dip powder mani plus $6/each for nail extensions. I used to pay $40 at my old salon, and that price included nail extensions if any of your nails broke.
6. Overall the experience was a bit stressful since I had to keep correcting mistakes throughout my appointment
I went in for a dip powder mani. Two of my nails were broken, so early on I told the nail tech we need to make those two nails longer since they are way shorter than all of the other nails. I mentioned it maybe twice. As she got further into the manicure I kept wondering when she would lengthen the short nails. She was about to start applying polish when I realized it wasn't in her plans, so I said something to remind her. She seemed surprised and confused (I think the language barrier came into play here), told me there wouldn't be time, but then someone else jumped in to help (they did a great job). They charged me $6/nail to add extensions. This added maybe 5 minutes to the length of my appointment, because the nail tech continued working on one hand while the other lady added extensions to the other hand.
I'm not sure why any nail tech wouldn't think to ask about making all of the nails the same length? Those two nails were significantly shorter than the others. She was planning to leave them like that.
For the rest of the mani, this poor woman was RUSHING like crazy. Like, I've never seen anyone moving so fast through a manicure. I respect that this wasn't her fault, but she was probably overbooked with not enough time in the schedule for my manicure, and the extra 5 minutes to even out my nail length apparently threw the whole schedule off course. I also respect that they were probably just squeezing me in since I called for an appointment last minute, but they really shouldn't have added me to the schedule if there wasn't enough time.
So when we get to the end of the appointment, my nail tech applied a top coat to the dip powder that came out of a squeeze bottle. I've been getting dip powder for years, but I've never seen this top coat before. When it dried, it reminded me of the old "shatter" nail polish. It was dull, lumpy, and just looked totally unfinished. I felt guilty pointing it out and I tried to be very kind about it - but for $55, I felt really unsettled about having my nails look like that for the next 3 weeks. I kept checking to make sure she also noticed that the top coat looked unfinished (I usually am not one to complain, but I promise these REALLY looked bad). She said yes but at first tried to only fix one nail. I had to point out that it was all of them, and if there wasn't time to fix it I understood, but maybe we could agree on not charging full price. The woman's boss made her do it over again.
She re-did them and added a gel top coat instead at my request, and they looked much cleaner and nicer (albeit a little too thick, because she added a gel base coat AND a gel top coat, when only the top coat is necessary). I felt guilty the whole appointment, because I felt like I was throwing them curve balls the entire time, but at my previous salon (I just moved) I never had any of these issues. They would always even out my nails, my dip powder always looked amazing, and I was never rushed.
I *may* try this salon one more time. Maybe it was just a bad day. Maybe I should have been clearer when I made the appointment. Everyone was nice, and the finished product did come out good, but it just took so much effort to get there and the appointment was a bit stressful. read more