A Hairdressers I won't be visiting again - Ania's Hair and Beauty in Cardiff

4 Clifton St
Cardiff CF24 1PW

029 2049 6699

I recently bought a KGB Deal Voucher for a Hydrating hair mask treatment and a style, cut and blow dry for Ania's Salon on Clifton Street in Splott. It cost £15 for a treatment that was supposedly worth £80.

Well I went a while ago for the treatment and this is what I thought.

Sorry no photos!! I wouldn't have taken any with my hair the way it was to be honest!

The salon itself is very nice. Modern and quite chic although they share the ground floor with a tattoo parlour so the window contains tattoo info (although I like tattoo's so had no problem with that) what I was a little put off by was the burley tattooist coming through the salon and the sound of the tattoo gun going whilst I was having my hair washed, not the greatest of sounds really! I would say this would put a number of people off from the start! But that aside the place was nice! Very clean and not all blingy or OTT as some salon's are these days.

Pretty comfortable styling chairs and hair wash chairs, as I sometimes find them very hard, which can be a bit much if your going to be sitting in one for a few hours having treatments done.

The staff were very friendly and chatty as with most salons. The junior or trainee girl washed my hair and applied the hair mask giving me an amazing scalp massage for around 15 mins, which was great, it got nice and deep into my roots and properly massaged the treatment into all my hair. When finished I will say the hydrating mask had left my hair shiny and silky and that stayed for a number of days, which I was very pleased about. But the treatment should have cost around £30-£40 and I'm not sure it was good enough to warrant that cost, especially when applying my Naked Beauty hydrating treatment myself, which cost £7.99 for a large tub that will last me months, has a very similar effect.

What wasn't so good was my cut. I have fairly simple hair. No complicated layering or any weird style. It's just straight and long, with a slightly chunky and curving fringe. Now that's where the slight problem came in - the curving fringe! She cut the length great, perfectly level all the way across, but that's pretty simple I hope. Then she started cutting my fringe. She took of a perfect amount from the front and seemed to get the centre part fine. The curving part was the issue, she curved the first part ok but then just didn't seem to get the rest right. After drying my hair she decided the fringe was still too long and took a little more off which eventually just gave me a straight fringe with almost no curve.

When I got home and actually tied up my hair for work I also realised she had left quite a few stray chunks on the sides of my fringe. As it curves it got longer on the sides and she seemed to have not cut the longest area at all so it just straggled on the ends when my hair was pulled back and looked completely wrong. It should have been trimmed shorter also as it is still part of my fringe. It really wasn’t acceptable for a cut by someone who is meant to be a trained hair stylish, and the fact that it should have cost in the reason of £30 is ridiculous!

They were also a little understaffed on the day, just the junior and the hair stylist and she had 3 other clients when I was there so I assume she just rushed my hair as I was on a voucher and not really paying full price. Still this is not really an acceptable practice as for most companies the whole point in putting out a voucher like this one is for repeat custom, which she certainly won’t be getting sorry!

What annoyed me even more was that the stylist also had to leave me to answer the phone or take calls a number of times during my cut, as the junior could not handle the call for reasons unknown to me. I have a simple hair cut that takes other stylists 15 minutes tops to sort and she took calls at least 4 times during my cut. Meaning I ended up hanging around for over 30 minutes just for her to cut and dry my hair – and do it badly after all that! I think a number of the calls may also have been personal calls to as they were undertaken in Polish not English as you would assume clients to speak in. She also only went to the diary on 1 occasion, so I can only assume the other calls were not for appointments. If I am correct and this is the case, taking personal calls in the middle of doing some ones hair whilst you are clearly understaffed is pretty ridiculous!

Sadly this only gets a 1 star from me! The hydrating mask may have been good (but very expensive!) but the cut just wasn't up to scratch, I could find many places to get a better cut at that cost. Plus the quality of service just wasn't that nice. Not a place I would actively recommend others to go to. Just glad I didn't pay full price now!