UKH

I’ve not had a hair cut in well over 20 years since I bought a pair of clippers and gave myself weekly number 1s. At the start of lockdown I decided to let it grow out and now over a year later I have a big helmet of scruffy looking hair. 

I’m quite liking having hair but it needs tidying up and some kind of “style” applied to it I assume. It’s grown much quicker and a bit thicker on the sides and back than on top. I’ve no idea what to ask for or where to go. I want to keep the length on top but tidy up and shorten the sides. The wife reckons I need a hair dresser and that all a barber would do would be to make it shorter or chop it back to my scalp again. Don’t hair dressers just do ladies hair? 

Cheers

I suspect it depends on the barber.  They aren't all hack and slash merchants; if you go in with a clear idea of what you want then most would try and give you that.  What you've said here seems a good start.

I gave up having my hair cut when the first lockdown started and am currently a particularly hairy beastie.  I'm going to leave it as long as it amuses more than it irritates.

T.

After years of nagging my mum dragged my dad to her hairdresser. No change in 'style', but it was cheaper and they both agreed looked better than when his Barber cuts it.

Cheaper?!

Yeah, some barbers aren't especially cheap.

It's just terminology, isn't it?  A barber is primarily aimed at traditionally male styles*, and a hairdresser at traditionally female ones (though both will likely have the skills to do the other, though perhaps not all the equipment).  Pick which you go to (and which of the variety of different price ranges) depending on what you want

* The term "barber" comes from the fact that much of their business used to be shaving beards, not hair, but obviously that's not mostly how it is now.

As someone that frequently goes from 4 on the side to collar length and back again I can shed some light on this:

1) Bog standard barber next to the bus station, taxi office, with copies of the sun kicking about - likely outright hostility or they'll take the piss - cheap

2) Turks/Middle Eastern type places. Professional, thorough, but you'll get the hair cut they want to give you - cheap

3) New wave, hipster barbers, often next to a tattoo shop, offers free whisky and beer but can't actually cut hair beyond the 4 same cuts they give everyone - not as cheap, not as good as they think

4) And I've only been to one of these places by accident, the type with serious stylist aspirations that deliver where point 3 doesn't, but charge close to what your Mrs pays - good, relaxing, too expensive

Preference is usually option 2 now, and a shave thrown in too

Yep!

Don't think it was by much, but it was less at the hairdressers.

Stick with a barber, ideally an old one. No man should enter a hairdressers or anywhere that has salon in the description. 

fine if you live in a big town but although practically every village here has a hairdressers, I'd have to travel to the 'big town' for a barbers. I admit this is rural France but it wasn't much different in rural Scotland

"I’ve not had a hair cut in well over 20 years since I " . . . just stopped having it cut

mebbe over 30 years      I really should be able to retire, with the money I've saved

Agree, usually go for the Turkish barber option, the only issue was no matter what I said when I had a beard he insisted on trimming it ruler straight, I had to hack into it to unstraighten it.

the hipster barber dance seems to be a thing, lots of big arm movements and exaggerated movements to check the ongoing haircut.

I've always thought that you should get a better haircut at a barber as this is pretty much what they do all the time whereas hairdressers spend a lot of their time colouring and setting hair rather than actually cutting

This is strictly my hypothesis, is not based on any scientific research and I am somebody who hasn't visited either variety of tonsorial artist in over 25 years.

Hair dresser but choose wisely.

Too many one trick pony barbers about.

A good hairdresser should cherished and given a substantial tip

Pre Covid, I'd have said: barbers, wait on a bench, copies of the Sun. Hair dressers, phone and book, get a cup of tea.

Turkish barber for me, after my DIY attempt ended with my David Bellamy like mess of long hair and beard clogging up my trimmer and in danger of burning it out. I left the question of style to him and finished up with a very neat looking No 2 all over, and then he treated me to a proper cut throat razor clean up of my neck, cheeks, and around my ears, which was scary but amazing as I've never had such a close clean shave, but you do feel a bit vulnerable with someone waving such a fearsome weapon around so close to your windpipe. All for £8 which I thought was very reasonable.

Unrelated, but I saw a certain folk singer with a very short hair style musing ( I think seriously) if she could sue for having to pay twice as much as a woman for the same hairstyle as a man

FWIW I haven't had a haircut since Christmas 2019. I've reverted from semi professional short to old hippy grayish straggly

I go to 3) Tattoos, check, Alcohol license, check, record deck playing vinyl ,check.

I’ve got shoulder length hair which I think gives them enough of a change from the usual razor cuts so they regard it as a challenge to do a good job...

A record deck that didn't play vinyl would be a thing of wonder. Shellac, maybe?

I’ve yet to see them put on a 78....but you never know, they may make a comeback...

My wife's hairdresser every time. It's opposite a tattoo parlour, full of chintz and is 2 minutes walk from our house. The queues you see in barbers put me right off, as did the laddish atmosphere, plus everyone else's angular hair cut in the swish new, nearby  barbers I tried a couple of years ago.

I never ask for a particular person, which my wife thinks is weird, and Arlene, the maitre d', is a fount of gossip on who is in or out around us.

Flow Chart

Do you have a detailed idea of what your hair should look like and a bunch of money?   

Yes  ------->  Hairdresser

|

No, I just want it shorter and neater

|

Do you know how to use clippers?

Yes ---------> clippers

|

No  ---------> barber

Ha, you’re missing something important.  While my wife has cut my hair for the last decade or so I did once go into a hair dressers.  OMG

Barber, as described by many above, wait, sit, buzz, buzz, buzz and if you get your hair washed it’s like a scene from a Bond film where the bad guy is trying to drown 007 but in a sink rather than a toilet.

Hairdresser, again rather like a Bond film but where 007 has stumbled into the harem of beautiful women the bad guy intends to use as some part of his evil plans.  It then continues like a Bond film (Roger Moore) 😮 and you’re pampered with drinks, tea, coffee.  Further pampering continues, you lie gently back in a special sink while your hair is gently fussed over and washed (no drowning in toilets).  There are fluffy towels and cleavage everywhere and the whole thing was about the same price.

It was a nightmare, took about 6 hours as every time they showed me the back it was not quite right.

Cheers

Toby

I was fortunate to do a bit modelling for a local hairstylist in my youth.

Mates could never understand why I'd volunteer to sit in a room of beautiful women, pampering and preening my hair for an evening. 😉

Last time I was at the barber the guy spent about ten minutes having a laugh with his colleague at the next chair about how he'd had a great night out, was hungover and had nicked a customer. 

When he was done cutting my hair he picked up his open razor and told me the shave was free with the haircut and was very surprised when I declined.

Take a picture of a bloke with the sort of hair you want in.

Wouldnt bother with a hairdresser if you just want a regular cut.

Love a Turkish barber for the extras- straight razor, ear flames, eyebrow threading, tons of cologne, whatever else they want to do if they're quiet. 

Go at a quiet time and they will take longer on it.

I keep it pretty simple. I say what length I want the back and sides and sometimes they ask if I want it square or tapered at the back. Bish bash bosh. 

 I walked past the Turkish barber near me several times, and looked in thinking ''He'll just give me the haircut he thinks I should have'', went in at the last minute before travelling to visit relatives, and left with a different cut to what I'd asked for, I consoled myself with having been right about his character.  

Places which cut for men and woman (and anybody in between) seem to be decent, if more expensive, but I only go 3 times a year. 

I've always had a bit of a mild phobia about barbers. Having a head of hair like Worzel Gummidge (shapeless, massive, thick) I've always hated the experience of sitting there staring at myself slowly being turned from a gormless looking **** with long hair into a gormless looking **** with slightly shorter hair. Plus the fact I hate football tended to make the conversations pretty stilted and awkward after the initial "see the match last night?" question.

Since biting the bullet many years ago and buying some clippers, I've never looked back.

I always identified with the bit from Good Omens : "This was not Newt's fault; in his younger days he would go every couple of months to the barber's shop on the corner, clutching a photograph he's carefully torn from a magazine which showed someone with an impressively cool haircut grinning at the camera and he would show the picture to the barber, and ask to be made to look like that, please. And the barber, who knew his job, would take one look and then give Newt the basic, all-purpose, short-back-and-sides. After a year of this, Newt realized that he obviously didn't have the face for haircuts. The best Newton Pulsifer could hope for after a haircut was shorter hair."

It obviously depends on the style but women's short cuts do tend to be a lot more involved than men's (or women's long ones for that matter). I just had my first haircut in 15 months last week, going from shoulder length scrag to an Anne Hathaway inspired crop, and it took almost an hour and a half!

In Portugal going to the barbers is considered an occasion involving smoking cigars and drinking an ice cold beer, so I am told.

So fits in with (3).

I would add that if you have had your hair cut by a really good professional barber, the difference is stunning both to the cut and the experience.Worth the extra few £ just for thta alone.

Clippers can do more than just a No.1... it's pretty easy to blend between combs.