Zoltan Hair · Maddox Street, Mayfair
Ten-minute mornings, for months at a time.
Straightening and perming is the whole of my work — sleek straight, bouncy curls, and anything in between. But what you are actually buying is simpler: hair that dries into shape on its own, frizz-free and shiny through London weather, chosen for your hair at a proper consultation. Some hair I can change a great deal. Some I will tell you to leave alone for now. Either way you get a straight answer.
Find my treatment & price Read about the treatments firstThirty-five years ago.
Twenty-seven years of it.
Before London knew the word.
The brief I work to
These are the aims. Hair sets the ceiling — and you will hear where yours is at the consultation, not afterwards.
Ten minutes, not forty-five
Wash, towel, shake into place. Your morning stops depending on a blow-dry and a skill you never asked to learn. I give you back your mornings.
Weather stops winning
Frizz-free and shiny through damp streets and heated offices — the daily London cycle that kills blow-dries.
Volume, either way
Too much, taken down 60–80%. Too little, lifted at the root. Both directions are my work.
Curls redrawn, not fought
Root lift, body waves, or your own curl restructured into a pattern that behaves.
Picture-ready on holiday
Pool, humidity, no tools in the bag — and the photos still look like day one.
Anywhere on the spectrum
Sleek straight to defined ringlets. The consultation finds your point; the chemistry gets it there.
For women
Women's treatments
Six treatments and the partial versions of them — from a light seasonal smoothing through to permanently straight, and cold or hot waving in the other direction.
- Straightment Semi · Demi · Permanent
- Wavement Cold · Wavement Hot
- Fringe, hairline, root volume and partial work
For men
Men's treatments
Short hair and longer gentlemen's work, priced flat by band. Finished deliberately natural, so nobody should be able to name what you have had done.
- Straightment for Men — curl, frizz and sides that stick out
- Wavement Cold for Men — texture and movement
- Top only, or all over
Everything here travels in one of two directions
Whichever door you came through, the decision underneath is the same one — and it is simpler than the internet makes it sound.
Down — less curl
Volume, frizz and curl taken out. From a light polish that lasts a season, through to permanently straight. Straightment is my system for this.
Up — more curl
Curl, movement or root volume put in — whether the hair has never held a shape, or has simply gone flat. Wavement is my system for this.
One more thing worth saying plainly: because I do both directions, I earn the same whichever one you need — so I have no reason to talk you into either. A straightening salon recommends straightening. What you get here is whichever answer your hair actually supports, including “neither, for now”.
Why my treatments are not called keratin
Ask for “a keratin” in one salon and you get one thing; ask in the next and you get something else. Brand names and country names tell you nothing about strength or commitment — which is why I have spent thirty years boiling this down to names that do. Down or Up is the direction. Semi, Demi or Permanent is the commitment: Straightment Semi is the semi-permanent tier — weeks, then it washes out clean. Straightment Demi is demi-permanent — months, fading soft with no line. Straightment Permanent means exactly that — the treated hair never goes back. Simple enough to explain in one breath, and I would happily see the whole industry name things this way — no licence, no permission needed, take them. If your hairdresser starts saying Semi, Demi and Permanent, or Down and Up, I ask one small thing: tell them where you heard it first. And the commitment is the trade, obviously — do not expect a Permanent result from a Semi, and do not expect a Semi’s easy exit from a Permanent. The market will keep using its names in the meantime — so every treatment page lists what the same chemistry is called elsewhere, and you can always translate.
I have given up selling conditioning treatments in London
There, I said it. Fashion is hard on hair — bleach, irons, extensions, and the daily handling nobody counts — and for ten years I tried to sell the proper answer to it: repair programmes, conditioning plans, a standing hour in the chair each month, a simple treatment at home each week. It hurt to watch, because I really wanted to help — and almost nobody wanted it. Not the hour, not the homework. The weekly treatment at home was never going to happen, however much either of us pretended it might. I was caring more about the hair than its owner did, and you cannot run a plan on that. So I surrendered — and built the conditioning into the appointment itself, where nobody has to remember it. The chemistry is the gentlest that will still do the job. When hair arrives properly compromised, the honest plan is still repair first, treatment later — you will hear it straight, and it costs you a consultation rather than a mistake. And I spent years as a colourist and a cutter too, which is how I can read what the bleach did, what the box dye did, and what the cut must do once the texture changes.
You do not have to name the treatment. That is my job.
Keratin · Glyoxylic · Cysteine · Thioglycolate · Amino acid · Tannin · Collagen · Enzyme · Hydroxide · Acid · Ammonium
Every one of those is a chemistry — and every one has been packaged, renamed and sold to you as a brand. Nanoplastia. Botox. Brazilian Blowout. Rebonding. Korean perm. The internet will tell you to walk in and ask for one by name. Please don't. You bring the brief — the mornings you want, the frizz you are done with, the volume you miss. Naming the treatment, and choosing the chemistry inside it, is my half of the job.
A brand name tells you nothing about whether it suits your hair. The right chemistry depends on how coarse the hair is, what colour is already on it, how much it has been bleached, what the last person used, how much curl you actually want gone — and how much you are willing to do at home afterwards. Get that wrong and the result is not disappointing, it is damage.
So I hold several systems and several strengths within them, and I choose between them at the chair. Straightment and Wavement are my own systems, mixed to the hair in front of me. A salon that carries one product has to make every client fit that product. That is not how this works.
And there are things on the high street I will not use at all. Ask me about glyoxylic acid and you will get the regulators' evidence rather than a sales line. If the honest answer is “nothing, not yet — your hair needs three months first”, that is the answer you will get. It costs me an appointment and saves you your hair.
No surprises
Things I would rather you heard from me than found out in the chair
None of this is in anybody else's brochure. It is all true, and knowing it in advance is the difference between a surprise and a plan. The full, per-treatment version is on every treatment page.
There is a smell
The product can smell during application, and the iron can smoke — anything heated to 200 degrees does, think of food — plus whatever styling product is already on your hair joins in. And at home, for a day or two, when your hair is wet you might catch yourself looking around for the wet dog. That is your hair. I work next to an open window, it passes, and you will have been told first.
Some systems shift your colour
Not all of them, but some lift or warm what is already on your hair. Where yours is one of them, you hear it from me before we start, not at the mirror afterwards. I spent years as a colourist — we plan it rather than suffer it.
Some hair drops
Bouncy for a fortnight, then it sits down. There are ways around it — roots left alone, a lighter strength, different tension — but they only work if I know beforehand that volume matters to you. Say it at the consultation, not afterwards.
The first two visits, we are getting to know each other
I know the chemistry. What I do not yet know is your hair — or your life with it: your mornings, your expectations, what it has been through. So the first time I work slightly under rather than slightly over — I can add more next time, I cannot take it back out. By the second visit we both know where we are — including whether I am the right stylist for you at all. I am not saying I am. I am trying.
My “perfect” may not be your “perfect”
I might see a result I am pleased with — even, healthy, doing what the chemistry should. You might want it flatter, or curlier, or with more root left in. Neither of us is wrong. Tell me what you want in your own words, and tell me afterwards if it was not that — not to complain, so I can adjust it next time.
And I am not a perfect experience
I run a busy chair, not a luxury experience. Sometimes I am running behind, and sometimes there is more than one client in at once. What does not get rushed is the chemistry and the checking. If you are on a hard deadline, tell me when you book and I will say straight away whether it is realistic.
Why a treatment, rather than just looking after it better?
A fair question, and the honest answer is not the one that flatters me.
In an ideal world you would not need me
You would come in every few weeks for a conditioning treatment, and in between you would tie it up, air-dry it and leave it alone. That works. It genuinely does.
But almost nobody in London lives that way
Most of the people who sit in my chair are one of two. Either they can afford the upkeep and have not got the two hours a month — the standing appointment is the first thing cancelled, every time, because something at work moved. Or the time is not the problem and the money is, and a couple of hundred pounds a month on something that lasts three weeks is not a sensible way to spend it.
Either way you end up in the same place
Hair that never gets properly looked after, and gets fought with instead. Rushed. Ironed. Pulled up. Every day.
That is the actual case for this
One appointment, and the hair looks after itself for months. Not because it is magic and not because it is free — it costs your hair something and I have been straight with you about that. But it turns the upkeep from something you keep having to find time and money for into something you did once.
And if you are someone who can do the standing appointment and the careful routine — tell me. That is a legitimate answer and I will say so.
The consultation happens in the chair, on the day
Included with every treatment, at no charge — and it is the part I refuse to rush. The real decision is made with your hair in my hands: what it has been through, how your mornings work, what you actually want. Every treatment is tailored; nothing is off a shelf. People time appointments around trips to London — and if you want a steer before you book, there are three ways in.
Free
Two photographs and a sentence about what annoys you. You get a direction and no more — a photograph is worth a thousand words and touching your hair is worth a billion; anyone who gives you a definite answer off a photograph, me included, is guessing. Works from anywhere.
Mini consultation — online
Booked video call
Up to fifteen minutes: history, colour, upkeep, plan. It is paid and it is modest — not a deposit, and it does not come off the treatment — and the exact fee sits with every other figure on the booking page.
The full consultation — in person
Before you commit
For hair with real history — bleach, previous chemistry, damage from somewhere else — or before correction work. Your hair in my hands, the honest answer and a plan, before you book a treatment day.
Where
Maddox Street, Mayfair W1. A minute from Oxford Circus, Regent Street and Liberty. By appointment only, no walk-ins.
The salon, honestly
It is a comfortable room and it is a busy one. I sometimes run behind, and there may be another client in at the same time. It is not a hushed spa experience — what you get is my full attention on the chemistry and the result. Tell me if you are on a deadline.
Included
Blow-dry and finish are included with Demi and Permanent straightening, and with men's treatments. On Straightment Semi and partial work it is an add-on — the calculator shows it. A haircut on the day costs less than a haircut on its own; both figures are on the booking page.
Correction work — the exception to exact pricing
If a treatment somewhere else has gone wrong — a straightening or a perm — that is a Correction appointment: the one thing I cannot price from a page, because no two are the same. It starts from a published floor and usually runs higher, and you get the real figure before we start, not after. The Correction page explains how it works, including what to do today.
Press, over the years
VogueTatlerThe Sunday Times StyleHarper's BazaarElleThe TelegraphGlamourDaily MailGood HousekeepingRedBridesPorterWoman & HomeGet the Gloss
Real prices, published — where you book.
Answer four questions about your hair and the calculator gives you the exact treatment and the exact price for your length and texture — before you commit to anything. Every figure lives there, always current. The one exception is correction work, and it is marked as one, with the reason.
Women's treatments Men's treatmentsI have done my best to make the guides on this site accurate. If you spot something that does not sit right, tell me — I am always happy to listen, and to learn.