I went to Natalia at Studio Chroma twice.
The first time, I was absolutely thrilled with my hair. Natalia did balyage on me that I really did love. She is very good at achieving the color goal you have (I have very naturally dark hair, and I wanted a beachy, beigey blonde). That being said, even though I paid an extra $40 for Ola Plex, something that Natalia said would allow hair to lighten more dramatically without the damage, my hair was absolutely fried after this experience. I chalked it up to the fact that I did a LOT of lightening, and since I was so happy with the color itself, I decided to go back. For this visit, the pricing was very much in line with what I expected.
The second time I went to the salon, I told Natalia that I was so happy with the blonde ends that she had given me with the balyage that I wanted to just do full highlights all over to kind of bring the color all the way up. She said that was fine.
I ended up being in the chair for almost four hours that day. I could tell while it was happening that they weren't happy with the way the color was developing. My mom came back after a couple of hours and told me that she could tell from the way Natalia and someone who was assisting her kept looking at each other after checking my color that they were worried about how it was turning out. I guess that because it was turning brassy, she had to leave the bleach on my hair for an extremely long time (I would guess it was about 2.5 hours) and then had to do several different toning type things afterwards to get the color to look good. I think I sat with toner on my head for about 30 minutes, two times. After all of this, I WAS very, happy with the end result as far as the color goes. I really thought that since the majority of my hair (just about 100% of the bottom 2/3 of my hair) was already the color I wanted, I thought that the damage would be much less this time than the first time. I couldn't have been more wrong. My hair was so brittle, dry, and fried that I ended up having to go back to my old stylist and cut off about four inches off the bottom of my hair. To add insult to injury, the bill was almost DOUBLE what I anticipated. The online appointment booking system on their website allows you to pick the stylist and service, and it said that full highlights with Natalia start at $160. I was charged $275, for just color. When I brought up the difference in price to the person at the desk (the people at the desk are never very nice, but I'm typically willing to overlook that), they said that it was because Natalia was a senior stylist. Then when I said that their website says that full highlights with a senior stylist start at $160, they said that it was because she had done BOTH balyage and full highlights. I honestly think that was BS (because, um, hello, my hair is all the same color) but I do realize I'm not a professional and could be wrong about that. But let's just assume she did do both. Wouldn't it be the right thing to do to ASK a client if you should do something if it's going to DOUBLE their anticipated cost?
Natalia does do great color. I will give her that. But I felt that the salon's pricing is shady at best, their website misleading at worst, and the way my hair was just FRIED after I went there was just not ok. I've since returned to my old stylist, who is far away, but at least she's able to give me the color I want without ruining my hair! read more