Cortex Hair Studio — Local services in Atlanta

PIC's taken directly after service provided by salon (3 days) .... not 5 months later as manager reply likes to imply. I have nothing to gain by posting a bad review/

I know bad reviews always sound bitter, so I hate to leave them. But, I have never experienced hair damage like this in my life, and I just want to save someone going through the same awful experience.

I just moved to Virginia Highlands area, and was looking for a new salon. With all of the positive reviews for Cortex, I decided to give it a try. I decided to go in for a cut just to test the waters and meet the stylist before I let her work on my platinum blonde hair. She was nice, cleaned up the damage from extensions and processing hair, and gave me a good cut.

However, I was concerned that she might not have the experience needed to take my blonde down to a more natural color. So i decided I would ask the manager if they thought that she could preform services I was looking for. The manager guaranteed me that she would be able to safely work with coloring my hair. I shared that I am used to spending 500/visit on my hair and would spend any amount to make sure there was no further damage. Manager again assured me that the Stylist would be "Great at this" referring to coloring my hair.

With this recommendation, I made an appointment to come back for my color. huge mistake.

The process seemed like it was going fine - after I was rinsed off, I asked the stylist how my hair held up, because I knew it was damaged from being blonde. She said "Good - hardly any hair came off in the bowl". I would come to find out that this woman had ZERO integrity and completely lied. As you can see from pictures, she burned off a huge portion of hair. She styled around the mishap, charged me her whole fee, and accepted my 20+% tip.

When I got home I thought something looked off, but no one likes how other people style their hair and put it up in a ponytail until I could wash it the next day. After washing it was so clear that something was wrong. All of the hair on the right side of my face was missing about 3 inches down from the root! Just gone!!!!

I am amazed that anyone would have so little integrity and class. Not only did she ruin my hair, and lie to me about it... but then she billed me. I have never in my life been treated so horribly by a salon. I just wanted to share this story so that you can be cautious when choosing this salon for coloring. It could cost you 3 years of damage grow-out + the insult of paying them to destroy your hair.

UPDATE: I see the owners reply here and it is laughable. I took my time in posting this review because I wanted be be fair and unemotional. It did take me a lot of time to come out and speak about this, but as I said in my original review - I hate posting bad reviews, but i just did not want anyone else to have the negative experience that I had. I have time stamps from when the photos were taken and they were taken directly after my visit - any Iphone provides time of photo taken so this is just further evidence that there is little integrity here.

The owner himself comments below that they took before photos of my hair- and they did take them. But, they REFUSED to take the after pic's!!!!! Probably because they did not want any one to see just how bad my hair looked after they were done!!!!

This damage did not exist before I came to the salon. I have no reason to lie about this --- obviously a business trying to cover up and save face does. Clearly I am not getting anything from lying..... but a business trying to cover up their ineptitudes by blaming the victim will always have to pipe up and defend...

Let me start this off by saying I've never left a bad review nor have I ever even reviewed a business online. So leaving bad review is just not in my nature.

I have been a customer of Cortex since 2015 and I will never return after my latest experience. If the haircut and color service that I paid for wasn't bad enough, the poor customer service from the owner, Marion, really drove the nails into the coffin.

I had a horrible experience with a cut and balayage on May 1st, 2021. I saw Olivia and asked for a very simple hair trim and balayage. What I got, quite frankly, looked like a child took dull scissors to the ends of my hair and dipped the top portion of my hair only (!) in pure blonde hair dye. My hair is a medium brown so the underside was still medium brown. The owner called and left a voicemail stating that that was how balayage was supposed to look and spent a minute and a half over voicemail trying to convince me that what was done was done properly and with skill. It was not. To then tell me that the pictures she saw that the stylist took looked "absolutely gorgeous" is incredibly unacceptable when I sent the pictures attached here to her and it's clearly not at all what I asked for nor is it how anyone should execute a balayage technique. We all know how styling, lighting and filtering can make things appear different than they actually are....it's the magic of social media. The pictures here where I styled my hair how I do on a daily basis are completely unfiltered and in the same lighting to show the difference.

Not only was I completely let down by Cortex I had to pay $300 MORE to get it fixed at a different salon that was highly recommended to me by people that I trust. The owner explained their policy to me and said had I come in to get it fixed there then we could've avoided this issue; however, I did not trust that they could fix the damage that had been done and didn't want to risk more damage and loss of hair. So instead I chose to go to another salon where friends of mine go and whose hair is always done with the highest of skill and integrity.

Since they are not refunding my money for a horrendous haircut and color, I hope that they will use that $305 to further Olivia's education.

The first picture is the inspiration picture I showed to the stylist. The second and third are the results after I got my hair done at Cortex. The fourth picture is after it was re-done at a...

Courtney did an amazing job on an up-do for me for a winter formal event. I was SUPER nervous about finding a place to get my hair done b/c I have gone to the same person for so long. I have very thick hair and it has in the past been too much for some stylists to deal with. When I called to make an appointment Courtney talked to me and asked details about what I wanted, etc. I emailed her some pictures and gave details. The day of my event, there was a change in how I wanted/needed my hair to be and Courtney adjusted on the fly. She did GREAT! My hair even held up all day the next day. When I left, she also gave my some trial size products to use on my hair for after I took it down. She was even so thoughtful to make sure to give me products that fit the TSA standards b/c she knew I was flying. Not only Courtney, but any other staff I encountered were very kind and friendly. The salon was very clean and well kept inside. I will definitely be back if/when I'm in ATL and in need of a...