Cumnock hairdressers are making preparations for life post-lockdown as excitement builds for a reopening that many have been waiting for.

Local hairdressers closed quickly after the COVID-19 outbreak in March but even though many are busy planning social distancing and hygiene measures for reopening, all agree that salon life will never be the same again.

Allana Kirkpatrick, co-owner of Generations Hairdressers alongside sister Sharon McCurdy, said: “We’ve got another two employees to think about so we were panicking about their wages. We were thinking, would we open back up? A few hairdressers aren’t because of the stress of having to fork out for PPE, but we know we’ll be busy when we go back so that keeps us going.

“We’ll have to limit the amount of people in the shop so we can social distance, we’re thinking three people at most. We’ve also been buying disposable gowns, masks, new brushes and will be sanitising stations after every customer. ”

Despite Scottish government plans to introduce a four-day working week, Charlene McCready, owner of Ahead of Hair, says hairdressers may be working more hours to accommodate the backlog.

Charlene’s salon will be operating on an appointment-only basis.

Charlene said: “We won’t do walk-ins as we want everyone to be safe as possible. We’ll be working longer hours and more days to try and accommodate everyone as we’ve got 12 weeks’ worth of hair to do.

“It’s going to be crazy. We can’t accommodate as many people in one day and it’ll be in a chair, miss a chair. But we’re fully equipped with PPE and hand sanitiser everywhere. We’ll do a mega clean between every customer.”

Charlene added: “We’ll definitely give our older clients a phone first as some of them come in every single week for a blow dry and a catch up.

“They’ll be desperate to get in but we’re telling them to persevere and hang off on the home dyes and bleaching kits.”

Holly Best, owner of The Colour Room, said: “We applied for the self-employment grant but that’s all the financial support we’ve had. We’ll have to halve the number of appointments to cut down on the amount of people in the salon at the one time.

“We’ll be sanitising stations, only taking contactless payments and wearing PPE. We’ve completed a COVID-19 online course which outlines what might be expected for hairdressers as we’ve no official guidelines yet.

“When we have an official date for reopening, we’ll move from there. I’m hopeful for the middle of July.”

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