Inspire Salon — Local services in Ellicott City

this is my second time coming to this salon because i wanted to give them a second chance. today i asked for highlights / partial foil that looked like the attached photo with the beautiful ribbons of highlighted hair.

the result was an overly blended poor color job. as the owner mentioned (below), the colorist told me she would use color instead of bleach to do the highlights but she also promised the outcome would be the same so i agreed to let her use that technique.

the top of my hair is lighter and the rest of my hair is super dark. the owner was professional enough to apologize and offer to redo it next week, but the original colorist didn’t, and claimed the desired look had curls in them. meanwhile she told me at the start of our conversation that my hair would “definitely” look like the photo. please don’t try to justify incompetency. even if we agreed on a technique, the colorist is the one who is supposed to make sure the results match the desired look because that’s what a customer is paying for!

i’ve been getting my hair done for 15 years and i know what a good color job looks like. even with 50% off just the foil work, i had to pay over 200 dollars for a 4-hour haircut and zero highlights. i had no energy to fight it at this point - i just wanted to leave, so i agreed to pay the 200+ dollars which included a 50% discount for my dissatisfaction. (Update: they recently refunded me the full amount for the color job so i only had to pay for the hair cut, which was about 80 bucks. i ended up getting my hair redone elsewhere.)

i’ll enjoy my birthday weekend with horrendous hair. you can see what my hair looks like below, and see how bad it turned out. there’s zero dimension.

the reality is an experienced professional would’ve known color would not have worked. i’m not a professional- i’m leaning on them to do it right.

i’m offering this review so people can make their own informed decision. i felt extremely misled when i came here 2x because i only saw glowing reviews. that’s not fair to the consumer. i have gone to plenty of establishments with good and less good reviews. so i hope this helps someone make a decision that...

There is so much I could say about Inspire Salon: the environment and energy of the place is beautiful, the products they use are amazing, the prices are so fair and worth it, etc. But the one thing that means the most is the service/staff/stylists! Every time I walk in the Inspire doors I’m met with a smile and energetic yet graceful greeting, they always offer drinks/snacks. The staff makes the entire salon experience so welcoming and fun. Honestly my social anxiety is usually bugs me at hair/nail salons… never here. If I could do something with my hair every week, I would just to experience the energy of the place!

I get my hair done by Kara, who is honestly the best listener and stylist ever. You couldn’t pay me to get my hair done by someone else at this point. She has done everything for me, from giving me bangs for the first time, to my first salon hair dye, to the latest: a 6in chop! I went in on Tuesday and told her I have no idea what I want as far as length and to do whatever she’d like… she took that and ran with it. All I asked for was more volume/body to my hair. She talked me through the chop and how it’ll still be functional for the different styles I like to do but short and layered enough to give me the volume I was looking for. I truly could NOT be happier. I’ve never left a salon so satisfied and obsessed with my haircut! I didn’t even think my hair could get this type of volume, I’m getting compliments left and right! This is by far my favorite haircut and style EVER! (That’s not even to mention the amazing dye job...

I really wanted to like this place! Especially because they use non-toxic products. Angela did a great job at getting most of my hair back to my natural hair color. But the salon charged me $100 for a face frame "foilage", when I let them know I was thinking about curtain bangs. So she took her time coloring and getting the face frame right but it was all chopped off anyways. Then they mentioned the "olaplex treatment" was complimentary, and it was not complimentary when i received the bill. Also I was charged $80 for a "color melt" which i don't even know what that is and that was never discussed during my visit. And if it was a "color melt", I'm not sure how my bangs are literally reddish brown and the rest of my hair is dark dark brown. The cut came out horrible and not what I wanted at all. I showed them a picture of what I wanted, that was different than the original picture I sent the salon in an email because I found something that was more my hair type. Just make sure whatever style you send them is going to be what you want. Because that confused everyone when I got there and had changed my mind. Although everyone I worked with was nice, this was so expensive for a cut/style that doesn't look anything like how I planned it to.

Also the pricing was a non-issue. I will pay whatever as long as the cut/color is what was discussed. My hair just looked so horrible I had to go to a second hair salon to...