“Not every colourist has got the spare £500 for education”

There’s a global audience thirsty for education from Tia Lambourn, founder of Derby’s Bay Studios and The Blonding Bible online training. Here, she discusses the key drivers in colour education right now

Tia Lambourn

I didn’t have any expectation or goal of being an educator. I just wanted to be able to do a client with confidence and not turn people away. When I started almost 10 years ago, lived-in colour and balayage were on the rise and I didn’t have a clue how to do them! I started taking classes so I could feel more confident behind the chair. It was around the same time as Instagram taking off, being a good visual focus point. People wanted to see a good ‘before and after’. I was very much in the right generation when all this happened. And you always remember someone who helped you. You remember how they make you feel.

But not every colourist has got the spare £500 plus for education. With some students I meet in classes, they’ve joined my Blonding Bible online subscription at £24 a month first, with weekly videos. For someone wanting to dip their toe into education, it can be daunting knowing what’s the right class to book and it’s a lot of money to lay on something that they’re not sure if they’re going to like. That’s where you tend to go more into the online realm, because it can be a lot more affordable. They love education, and they want more of it, but their budget might not allow for classes just yet.

Colourists want to give their clients the best service and nine times out of 10 it means that it’s going to take them longer in the salon. We’re talking four-and-a-half hours instead of two-and-a-half. Your pricing has to be right, and that comes down to a confidence perspective, and also where they might not have the clientele that has the budget. So they’re trying to manipulate techniques in a cheaper way so that it’s more sustainable for their clients, or they want to figure out a way to attract more clients who do have the budget to pay for these longer, more intense services.

It’s a point of frustration in classes – ‘I’d love to do that, but my clients just won’t pay for it’. I always say to people: “I’m not going to teach you the quick and cheap way of doing things, because unfortunately, to get from A to B, it’s going to take four hours and it’s going to cost more than £200”.

I always ask students: ‘Are there any classes you’ve been on recently that you really enjoyed?’. And increasingly people are telling me about independent educators, such as myself. I think it’s because they’re looking more for techniques. Not everyone uses the same colour, so people are looking for an independent whose work has its own brand behind it. Social media helps you see these independent stylists with amazing hair on their Instagram. Often people ask me, ‘Who have you learnt from? Whose classes have you been to?’

It’s split 50/50 in terms of what people want to see from me. First, it’s how I can get someone super-blonde safely in one session. How it is achievable in a four-hour session rather than a seven-hour session. ‘What lightener do you use, how much of it, and what’s your foil placement like?’ They want a little bit of an insight, almost like a map of where to put their foils and how to get that bright face frame.

Second, after lockdown where a lot of clients have embraced their natural colour, stylists are now trying to figure out what’s the best way of creating a blend between what they used to have – a more high maintenance colour, whether it be scalp bleach, or full head highlights – and a colour that they love, and that grows out soft. How do I incorporate lowlights without it looking stripy? How do I make the perfect blend? What products do I use, where it doesn’t bump the base?