A Guide to Lash Salon Set Up
Getting Set Up for Success: A Guide to Preparing Your Lash Trolley Ahead of Appointments for the Smoothest Appointments Ever!
We’ve all heard the age-old adage that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This is of course true in all walks of life, and certainly carries over to your eyelash extensions treatments. Here is our guide to getting set up for your lash appointments so that each and every client gets the best possible service without any stress on your part!
Why is Setting Up Important?
Without the right setup and without any forethought, you’re setting yourself up for a stressful situation. No client will thank you for taking time out of their appointments to find this, that, and whatever else that you really should have had nearby already.
Having a tidy set up, whether you’re working from a salon or from home, and regardless of how much space you have will give clients a good first impression compared to a setup that is cluttered and untidy.
Putting your tools away properly also ensures their longevity, and that you are maintaining high levels of hygiene and cleanliness—if you’re cleaning your tweezers properly and then leaving them laying on the surface of your trolley, they may not be as clean as you think, so it’s well worth investing in tweezer storage of some kind to ensure that your tweezers are safe and clean between uses.
Tip 1: Good Storage
We’ve gone into more detail about good eyelash extensions storage solutions in other blog posts so we’ll keep it brief here, but in short, you should store your lash supplies so that they are easy for you to access, but aren’t strewn about on your lash trolley.
Take a look at furniture from somewhere like Ikea which is simple and quite cost effective so that any additional stock or things like replacement bed covers and pillow cases can be stored away neatly when you’re not using them.
If you’re really pressed for space, get some cute storage boxes and put them underneath your lash bed, making sure you still leave room for your legs. A good beauty bed cover will hide what’s under the bed almost entirely, but as they are designed to stretch to fit different beds, so you might just see a little bit of the bottoms of whatever you have under the bed, hence our suggestion that your storage is cute!
Tip 2: Surplus Stock
As a Lash Tech, you don’t always know what you’re going to need from one client to the next so it’s quite normal to end up having lots of additional stock when it comes to lash extensions in particular. With things like eyelash extension glue and your lash pre-treatment products, you can have a much more streamlined collection as you know what you like to use and how much you get through in an average month.
With eyelash extensions themselves, we highly recommend that you stock up on mixed length trays which allow you to apply a wide range of lash styles for a lot of different clients without taking up too much space. If you move to a larger space, or if you find a niche in lash styling, it’s a great idea to start stocking up on single length trays so that you get exactly what you know you need any time you need to do a restock.
Tip 3: Lash Palettes
Lash Palettes will save you a lot of time when it comes to getting set up for individual clients. If you have a handful or regulars, you can even use one palette for each of them so that when they come to visit, you can get to work right away!
Use your lash extension tweezers to take the individual strips of lashes from the lash boxes and then apply them to your palette, arranged by length and curl. If you have a palette organiser, store your palettes with the lashes on them in between appointments. To keep track of which lashes are on each palette, stick a piece of tape to the top corner of the palette and use your lash mapping pen to write the thickness and curls. The lash strips themselves have the length on them, so that will already be easy for you.
Setting up a palette only takes a couple of minutes at the beginning of a lash set once you’ve discussed with clients what they’d like from their lash set but it will save you a lot of time during the set fiddling with lash boxes, and makes your treatments run like a well-oiled machine!
Tip 4: Take Your Time
It’s always a good idea to take some time between your appointments to reset your workspace at the very least. We do advise that you take time to stretch and move about a bit, as well as hydrate and have a snack, but setting aside 10-15 minutes between each client will help you to tidy up any disposables, replace the bedroll on your lash bed, disinfect your tweezers and straighten up the tools and products on your lash trolley ready for your next client.
All in all, a well set up space will save you time and stress, and will give your clients a good first impression. You’ll also be more aware of how much stock you have at any given time, which will prevent overstocking, and wasting products!
