Sunesy Hair Design — Attraction in San Mateo

Do not go here. I went in with somewhat faded/grown out red hair to get chunky caramel highlights and a layered cut, with a reference picture. None of the employees spoke very fluent English, so it took a little back and forth to figure out what the plan was to get my hair similar to the picture- even so, they said “we can only try our best- it won’t be 100% [like the picture].” That should have been my red flag to get up and leave. The hairdresser took 3 hours bleaching portions of my hair for the highlights part. Then, after already shampooing my hair after toner, they decided to dump black hair dye on top of the highlights they just did. The dye was left on for about 3 minutes before washing out, but left my entire head jet black- no sign of any highlights that he spent 3 hours on. When cutting my hair, I asked for bangs and he straight up said “No”. As he was blow drying/straightening my hair to finish up, he and the salon owner kept trying to show me the “highlights” in the mirror (again, my hair is jet black.), assuring me that after 2-3 washes and “in the sunlight” the color would lighten. I’ve gotten my hair done enough to know black hair dye does not do that. I left and received a text an hour later that if I was still unhappy with the color after 2-3 washes, I could come back and they would fix it for free. After initially taking up this offer, I followed up with questions to see if I could get a refund if I still was not satisfied with my color after returning; the owner kept saying they did not offer refunds, and she would “not have reached out if they knew they couldn’t fix it”. We went back and forth for a while before I obliged and agreed to come back for a second appointment to get it fixed. 2 hours later they refunded me and cancelled said appointment. Huge waste of my time and their time. 1.5 stars is being generous. The .5 for refunding me and not...

I recently visited Sunesy Hair Design for a color service and unfortunately, I left extremely disappointed. My goal was to get a handful of babylights around my crown in two tones (blonde and caramel) and blonde money pieces to frame my face, similar to a "salted caramel" look I had in mind. I showed the stylist, Manny, a photo (attached below) for reference.

As background, I've had a balayage done before two years ago at a mid-tier salon in Virginia. Since then, I've had focused babylights done at a more convenient local salon in Virginia, where I've never had any issues with this approach to updating my balayage. I've also been to Sunesy Hair Design before and they did great job with my haircuts in the past.

Despite showing a reference photo, Manny ended up doing babylights all over my head in a mix of blonde and caramel--far from the subtle, focused babylights and face-framing money pieces I requested. About 30 minutes into the service, I had a feeling that something was off, but I didn't speak up.

Unfortunately, the end result was so far from what I had envisioned that I wore a baseball cap for the rest of the day. I had to visit another salon the next day for a color correction, and while they fixed a lot of the mistakes, I'll likely need another color service in 8-12 weeks to fully address the excess blonde babylights.

While the babylight technique at Sunesy was fine, I cannot recommend this salon for balayage or highlight services. It seemed like there was a fundamental misunderstanding--whether due to a language barrier or something else--and even with a reference photo, they did not deliver the look I wanted. I would have preferred they honestly let me know if they couldn't achieve the result I was after, rather than proceeding with a $360 service that left me so...

Edit 6/24/24: I went to get my hair bleached and toned to a ashe blonde. I came in with colored hair that had about an inch of root growth since last month's full head bleaching and left the salon with ashe blonde hair thats all one color/tone.

I do appreciate the help from the staff throughout the visit, and the tips about haircare at the end.

5/15/24: Wanted to talk about my last 2 experiences, 1 year apart. Last year visit had great results, this year felt almost amateur. 2 different stylist.

Had my hair bleached here last year, and also did yesterday Tuesday the 21st of May.

Last year I had the Stylist JC bleach my black hair to a very nice blonde (almost ashe blonde) within a 3-4hour session.

He achieved that with a careful bleaching mix and application that did not hurt my scalp. He then used a toner on my hair to remove the brassy/bronze tones to a cooler ashy blonde. Great service and skill! Definitely deserved a tip for the great work.

But yesterday, I went called in to set up a same-day appointment just an hour later, and where I messed up is expressing I had no preference on stylist. The stylist I got was very kind, but did not know too much English, I wanted to ask her questions about toning and which type of dye she is using. She did not understand my question about if the dye is a semi permanent dye, or a permanent dye that uses peroxide/developer. My hair after the bleaching process and before the color application was very bronze, like almost orange bronze.

I recommend taking the time to ask which stylist in the shop is best for a...