Tools for Success: 5 Essentials for Your Salon

There are staples most people have in their home like food, water and toilet paper. In similar fashion, there are also staples in the salon. These are things that most salons need to do great nails, offer clean services and run an efficient business. What are some common salon staples that are most likely to be universal and why?

1. Procedure for Disinfection

First will be a process and procedure for disinfection of reusable tools and of surfaces. The process is just as important as the products each salon chooses to use as it ensures the products are used correctly for optimum results. Take a look at the procedure used in your salon, or the salon you go to, to make sure that the products are being used correctly. Some examples of this are contact time on surfaces and sanitizing tools before disinfection or sterilization.

Adobe Stock/ olenachukhil

Per NailKnowledge.org, Sanitizing is reducing the number of bacteria, viruses and fungi to the levels considered safe by health care standards aka washing with soap and water; disinfection means the tools or surface are 99.99% or more free of debris and infectious organisms; sterilization kill s100% of the pathogens on a surface.

Contact time is the amount of time a surface needs to remain wet to be disinfected. Look at the instructions on any wipe or spray disinfectant and it will tell you what the amount of time is for the product to disinfect the surface. There is a pretty wide range of times from one minute to four minutes and even 10 minutes on sprays and wipes. To simplify and clarify, that means the surface must remain wet for the one, four, or 10 minutes in order for the product to disinfect it. If the time is much more than one minute, you would either need to use multiple wipes so you could continuously wipe the surface to keep it wet or a spray to make it easier for the surface to remain wet the correct amount of time.

Disinfection and sterilization processes may slightly vary from one product to another. Check the instructions for the process and/or product that you use to ensure the tools being cleaned are being disinfected properly. Most products are going to begin with scrubbing the tools/implements with soap and water, rinsing, then drying before placing them in the sterilization pouches or the disinfectant liquid. This step ensures that the entire surface of the tool is clean and not just the areas around any remaining debris. Leaving debris on the metal implements after use and placing them in disinfectant or a sterilization pouch prevents the implement from being disinfected or sterilized completely in addition to contaminating disinfectant liquid soaks. Drying the implements after washing and rinsing prevents disinfectant from getting watered down or diluted and becoming less effective.

2.Tools of the Trade

Another salon staple is implements or tools of the trade. Depending on what services are offered, these implements can vary from salon to salon. The sign of quality tools and properly used disinfection procedures will generally be a lack of rust paired with consistent performance. If you are in a position to be operating on a low budget due to low prices, disaster recovery, etc. then purchasing one new implement per quarter can help spread out the expense and keep the selection of tools in great condition. 

Adobe Stock/Dmitry Lobanov

Some common favorite implement staples are the curette and the ingrown toenail rasp. The curette is a small scoop like tool that can remove cuticles from difficult to reach places as well as being helpful to clean out from under toenails gently. The ingrown toenail rasp is beneficial in preventing ingrown toenails by allowing you to gently file the side or corner of a toenail that has either been trimmed too short or has unusually high sidewalls of skin. By keeping the corner slightly rounded, it prevents having a sharp corner, spike of nail, or wide free edge from digging into the skin as it grows which can lead to creation of callous that mimics an ingrown or an actual ingrown toenail.

3. Filtration System

An additional salon staple is a filtration system. Contingent on the services a salon offers, the filtration system may be for the breathing space, the odors, or dust extraction. Some salons may have a system that performs more than one of these services such as a machine that offers the ability to filter the breathing space while also extracting dust. Depending upon the size of the salon and its location within a building, there may be extraction filtration which allows the salon to remove odors and air particles by displacing them through a filtration system then releasing the cleaned air outdoors.

4. Booking System

In the digital age, a salon booking system is gradually becoming a staple. With so many different options available, choosing a booking system can feel like a daunting task. For smaller individual spaces such as a booth renter or salon suite, there are still free options available to book appointments without any frills. Most systems offer everything from simple add-ons like text reminders for appointments to a robust program that can practically run the salon with features that recall client notes, keep inventory, produce e-media, incorporate a POS or even send out birthday coupons.

A program that combines appointment booking with appointment reminders that is additionally the point of sale or POS, can make tracking salon services for taxes a simplified task. It can also become a great resource for service and retail tracking which leads to more productive and efficient product ordering. The size and cost of the program or system used is determined by the number of clients or staff and the budget of the salon. There are some stragglers out there still taking appointments on a paper book, they are getting fewer and farther between the further into the 21st century we get.

5. Atmosphere

One veiled salon staple is atmosphere. Most quality salons large or small will have an atmosphere that puts your mind at ease. The music could be energetic or soft and serene, the overlying feeling of being at ease comes from your subconscious. There is an inherent security in knowing the space is clean, the tools are clean, the staff is well educated and knowledgeable. It is less about the specifics of the décor and more about the sanctuary a client has in a consistently dependable service that occurs on time without external drama interfering in the space.

This ranges from clean and tidy employees to fastidiously maintained facilities front to back. The bathroom is just as important as the reception area in its cleanliness and presentation. Drunken escapades are retold in the breakroom instead of the nail table, employee relationship dilemmas are kept outside the safe space of the salon, and clients feel as though they are the center of the universe for their service provider for the moment of time they are being attended to. There may be some exceptions in smaller one-on-one environments with more privacy; the key is following client body language and interpreting perception. A healthy salon atmosphere is a necessity to returning clientele and staff happiness. 

These five salon staples are a general guide to what you might aspire to have as a student looking to enter the salon, a current nail professional ready to advance to the next level of your career, or a client seeking to find some common elements among higher quality salons. The most important two are disinfection and atmosphere. A quality salon should always be clean, feel safe physically and mentally, and be conducive to feeling your best every time you leave as a professional or a client.