Salon Vim Bugis review

Like many of you, you probably stumbled upon this blog while looking for an unbiased review of Salon Vim - the hair salon well frequented by sponsored bloggers.

Well congrats! I'm not one of those sponsored bloggers, and in fact I paid over $200 to have my hair coloured there. Was it worth it? You bet.

Like you, I read many of those blog posts before coming to a site with unbiased reviews of this salon. It sounded as if they were pretty good with hair colours so I decided to give them a try. At first I gave the 313 branch a call and made an appointment...but due to some unexpected circumstances, which freed up some time for me, I decided to try to Bugis outlet instead. Why? Because I felt the person answering the 313 outlet's phone was quite curt and impatient to me. In comparison, the person who answered the phone at Bugis was much more helpful.

PS: the hairdresser behind me (on the right) is quite hot. Can tell by that girl's happy face  huh. Lol.

So I always wanted red hair.. well not Mcdonald's red but I imagine a lovely auburn or Desperate Housewives' Bree's hair colour would look nice... on me. Don't Ask why. It's probably got something to do with the fact that red clothes look nicer on me.

BUT.. every time I go to a hair salon and ask to colour my hair red, FIRST, the stylist would advise me against bleaching, and convince me that I should just highlight my hair and the red would show.

EVERYTIME they have proven me wrong, well..at least the past 3 salons (that's the number of times I have tried to dye my hair) I went to have disappointed me. My hair always turned out looking slightly tinted...or tinted orangey and only visible in the sunlight.

So this time I insisted on having my hair bleached. Steve, the stylist at Bugis looked at my hair and felt my hair texture and strongly advised against bleaching as he said it would damage my hair (FYI, I didn't request for a specific stylist, he was just assigned to me). This was nothing new as I have been told this the past 3 times in previous salons, so I insisted on bleaching it again. I had previously indicated in the colour chart that I wanted a shade of red that looks like

 this...

Out of the Loreal colour chart, there were only 3 colours at the bottom of the chart labelled with something like looked like 'Magi mix'..sorry I can't remember if this is the actual name, but the colour I chose was one of these... a Magenta red.

Steve actually asked me why I wanted to bleach my hair, and when I poured out my woes, he assured me that this particular product is guaranteed to make my hair red, because he is very familiar with it and knows how it turns out on Asian hair. Furthermore he assured me with my fine thin hair, the red would seep in easily and I won't have a thing to worry about. Long story short, I decided to take another chance with this salon (stupid huh..NOT.).

I was initially worried that it would turn out looking this orange..

Well it turns out..after 3.5 hours of painstakingly adding the dye, and doing all sorts of treatment on my hair..it did turn out as what I wanted. I must say that even though I waited a very long time, I was impressed by their equipment and Steve's dedication to ensuring that he dyed as much of my hair as possible.. in fact, after a very thorough dyeing, he put my hair in a cling wrap and warmed it up with some sophisticated looking machine and then re-dyed (touched up) my hair thoroughly. I mean, which hairdresser would do that? Plus he washed my hair.. like 4 times?

That's because he advised me to go for this Redken treatment that consists of 3 steps and my hair needs to be washed after every step...and he steamed treated it too! Although I'm not sure at which stage was this.  Apparently the treatment will make the colour last longer and also protect my hair.

At first, I told him the treatment was pretty pricey, at $115, then he offered me a 20% and then I asked if I could have a discount for my hair colour (originally $125) as well, which he graciously gave me, so yippee!

Bottom line is..he treated my hair really well.. and I'm very pleased by his professionalism and the way my hair turned out.

Plus there are other perks too, like free coffee, tea, water and they even give you this biscuit which Steve says I must try because it's very nice. Haha. I didn't have much of an appetite then, so I brought it home and have yet to try it.

I can't show you a proper picture of what my hair looks like, because my phone ran out of power in the salon, so this picture is taken at home, in bad indoor lighting, it actually looks completely red but I guess the light isn't sufficient to illuminate the bottom bits.

*---the next day ---*

The sun is out!

Here it is in full glory!

Give them a try at 235 Victoria Street, Bugis Village, Singapore. 

Tel: 6837 0073 / 6837 0045 .