Noire The Nail Bar Chapel Hill — Local services in Chapel Hill

By recommendation from colleagues, I expected a pleasant experience at this nail salon. Here’s a look at my first impression: I called to make an appt and they said it wasn’t busy so walk-in. I said I would arrive in 10 min and once I got there I had to wait 30 min to be seated. I would recommend having a client already start with the SNS removal process during their wait. Expect to soak half of your fingers in acetone and have sticky residue left all over your fingertips. I had a nail tech who didn’t speak English so communication was impossible without an interpreter. She had to interrupt her colleague with another client to interpret what I was asking and this happened about 15 times. After she dipped my nails and was preparing for the final coat, I took a look and saw a ragged film of SNS on my cuticle extending to my skin. I asked her to shape the SNS to my nail bed, she didn’t understand and asked her colleague to interpret. She did the bare minimum and I had to ask her to do it 3 more times because she kept packing up the equipment thinking the work was done. In the midst of all this, she and her colleague were irritated at the situation. And, I’m sitting here in shock having to ask for the appropriate quality for SNS on my nail not my skin. On top of that, she left SNS all over the sides on my skin from my previous color and the current color. She attempted to remove it with a nail file on my skin! I had to ask multiple times to get that removed. At this point, I’m appalled at the fact that I have to micromanage the process of getting my SNS. She stopped at every nail and looked at me pointing at my nail waiting for approval. It seemed like she was brand new to SNS. She still left set powder underneath my nail bed leaving it sticky. About 2 hours in, she gave up and I was fed up with the service, lack of quality and attention to detail. To reiterate, I’m speaking to this experience with this nail tech. It seems the salon doesn’t have a manager or owner present to take feedback or anyone who cares to even take any and when I called to give feedback more discretely that in person, I offered to just write a google review and they replied with a careless attitude and said ok fine. My advice would be to be intentional with your nail tech and have an appt...

So this is a hard review to write. I came here for a mani pedi on recommendation of some friends so I also feel like maybe my experience was a fluke. That all said, I can say hands down that this was one of the worst mani-pedis I have ever gotten. Why is that hard to say? Because the gentleman who did my mani-pedi was middle-aged and clearly not interested in being there or in doing a good job, but I know it's been a hard year for everyone and maybe they really need the income. I also could not tell if he understood anything I was saying.. I don't know.

Here are things that went wrong; he filed the edges of two nails down to BELOW where the nail connects to the nail wall, so much so that it hurt to type the next day and now - a week later - there is still a visible step where the nail is growing. I have no idea what he was thinking, this has never happened to me. I had to literally stop him multiple times after he tried again to do this on other nails after I had already asked him not to make it so short and leave the sides more natural. This basically meant I couldn't relax even for one second as he kept filing and filing and I kept having to stop him. He also filed filed aggressively in both directions (back and forth) when I've also had technicians only file in one direction to protect the nail, but in the scope of things that's a small issue.

Unfortunately the polish application was equally poor and there was a significant gradient of color both between nails and on the same nail like it was pooling at the tip. I had to again ask him to fix them, and then to re-fix the fixed nails as the way he applied polish then made the surface uneven.

I ended up still leaving a tip and not saying anything because I felt bad and also wanted to just get out of there. It felt like it had been forever and I was just ready to leave.

I know this is not an easy job and I appreciate sometimes things aren't perfect, but I do draw the line at physically being hurt and then uncomfortable for days after. I definitely won't be back, or at least I'll be super specific about another technician that is...

*UPDATE:

I am NEVER going back to Noire Nail bar. I have been there countless times and there were only 2 nail techs (Lucy was one of them) I would go to which were great but now they’re both gone and I will not be going back. The service now is horrendous. I came in with a picture that they confirmed they could do. I sat down (at a dirty seat) and I got my nails done. WHILE getting them done I asked for a few things differently and the nail tech told me it ‘wasn’t possible to do with gel polish’ which was a bold faced LIE. I asked for the tips of my nails to be thinner and he only redid two of them.... the same way. When expressing my concerns at the front desk while paying for something I DID NOT WANT- I was told they could repair them the next day. I wasn’t willing to come back so I called them back and explained I would get them fixed elsewhere and that I wanted a refund. I contacted them a second time an hour later and the manager still NEVER called me back. I went and got them fixed at a different salon immediately after leaving and called them back the next day since I never got a call back and I was told that they have a no refund policy and would be willing to repair them but since I got them redone somewhere else that that was my loss because they could only repair the set that they did. They ROBBED me of $50!!!!

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The first time I came into this salon my gel manicure/pedicure took about 30 minutes for both and were very well done. The second time I came in, I got a liquid gel full set. The nail tech got the color I wanted perfectly but the nails themselves were not done as well. This time I made an appointment with Lucy who was more than attentive to my requests and was so sweet and friendly the entire time. She took her time and was diligent in perfecting each and every nail. My nails are IMMACULATE and I will most definitely be coming back....