Guide
A hijab-friendly hair salon in Istanbul, what that should actually mean
444 words
A hijab-friendly salon needs one thing above all: a working area that cannot be seen from the rest of the floor, including from the street and the waiting area. Everything else, female staff, a curtain, a quiet appointment time, follows from that. Ask to see the area before you book, not after you arrive.
The phrase is used loosely
Plenty of salons in Istanbul advertise themselves as hijab-friendly. In practice that can mean anything from a fully separate room to a chair with a screen next to it that anyone walking past still sees behind. The word costs nothing to put on a website, which is exactly why it tells you nothing on its own. What tells you something is the answer to a specific question about the room.
Four questions worth asking any salon
Can the working area be seen from the street, the entrance or the waiting area? Who else will be in the room during my appointment, and can that be arranged? Is there an extra charge for it? And can I see the space before I commit to a booking? A salon that has genuinely thought about this answers all four in a sentence each. A salon that has only written the word on a page usually cannot answer the first one.
Why it matters more for extensions than for a haircut
A cut takes forty minutes. A full head of strand extensions takes three to five hours with your hair completely down and being handled the whole time. That is a long time to be uncomfortable, and discomfort is not a small thing when the person fitting your hair needs you sitting still and relaxed. It also changes the practical question: a screen you can tolerate for forty minutes is not the same as one you will sit behind for five hours.
How ours works
We have a separate area on the salon floor that is not visible from the rest of the room, the entrance or the street. You mention it when you message us, we reserve it for the length of your appointment, and there is no extra charge. If you want to see it before booking, come by, we will show you. If it is already reserved for the day you wanted, we will tell you that rather than promise it and improvise on the day.
What we do not claim
We are not a women-only salon and we do not describe ourselves as one, because it would not be true. We are a mixed salon with a private area in it. If what you need is a space where no men are present at all, ours is not that, and you are better served by a salon built around it. We would rather say this here than have you find out on the day.