5 salon "super powers" to boost your well-being - How A Little Outer Care Amplifies Your Inner Beauty

There is a reality in beauty which often gets overlooked : Nurturing and well-being flow in both directions. In fact, one of the most powerful things you can do to feel good on the inside is to visit a beauty salon or spa for care of the outside. How does professional beauty flip the script, shifting beauty from the outside in ? It acts as a very special form of self-care that contributes to wellness in a meaningful way, in part, because someone else is doing the caring for you. And the experience makes you happier, more self-confident and fully empowered to embrace your own unique beauty.

I sat down with my team and we looked at all of the ways that receiving a professional beauty service helps boost your well-being. Here’s our top 5 reasons why and how outer/inner beauty works.

1. The power of outside in – Look Good, Feel Good is a fact

Let’s face it, when you feel good about how you look, life just seems better. An incredible 96% of women feel better about themselves after having a manicure. A more recent study revealed that 80% of respondents said the way their hair looks influences their personal outlook.  Even more profoundly, the “Look Good Feel Better” non-medical, brand-neutral public service program  pioneered this connection by teaching beauty techniques to people with cancer to manage the appearance side effects of treatment.  Experience from these free workshops, run by caring volunteer beauty professionals, showed that patient who attended had better self-image and reduced anxiety.

2. The power of Self-Care & Touch

Self-care is crucial for your physical, emotional and mental well-being, and a salon appointment is self-care squared. Pampering yourself at home is great but having someone else do your hair, manicure your nails or massage your body is even better. It says you care about yourself. It also makes you feel cared about, which as per scientific research buffers against stress, increases positive emotions and promotes resilience. Having someone else care for you is like a cushion beneath you and a canopy above you, thanks to the power of touch. It’s responsible for everything from boosting babies’ immune systems to driving the release of neuropeptides linked to uplifting emotions in adults. Most recently, research from the University of Miami’s Touch Research Institute indicated that specific touch receptors convey emotion to the brain. In other words, a back-massaging chair is not a masseuse when it comes to the benefits of touch.

3. The power of Tailor-Made & Customized Beauty

As our ambassador, the iconic Rossano Ferretti says: “Beauty is not perfection but the art of showcasing everything about you that is unique, real and personal”. Having your unique and authentic self seen and heard gets a boost from the customized beauty that only the professional industry offers. Going to one of our Wella salon partners and having an expert do a personalized consultation, color, cur and style can result in astonishing transformations. Our iconic OPI brand is famous for its original shade names and nail artists all over the world embrace its collections, so they can provide clients with an exciting new color palette and products for bespoke nail beauty and art. In care, System Professional offers hyper-customized hair care, while Wella Professionals’ new Color DJ is the world’s first personalized color-care mask created with an iPad app that’s connected to an on-site mixing machine. Inclusive, customized solutions like these, which combine professional expertise with new technologies, help broadcast inner individual beauty to the outside. 

4. The power of Experiences

When you want more satisfaction out of life, spend on experiences ! Abundance of research have placed experiences over possessions on the happiness scale. Not only is today’s salon or spa visit a curated experience with a nurturing social connection, it’s one that pays off most when looking good is a must. The transformations and impact we can have in the hands of the right expert are incredible, especially when compared to more extreme interventions and esthetic surgery that some people reach for these days. That’s why salons and spas are pre-event destinations before important meetings, conferences, dates, weddings, vacations and holidays. There’s clearly both an expectation and an understanding that starting off looking good will lead to success and an even better end-experience.

5. The power of Relationships

Many of us value our connection with our beauty professional just as much as we value the services they provide, which results in lasting relationships. Last year’s study conducted in UK showed that 69% of adults are in a relationship with someone, while 74% are committed to a hairdresser - and have been for an average of eight years and two months. There’s no denying that there’s a unique kind of intimacy that forms during the time you sit in the chair and surrender yourself to expert care of your stylist or nail artist. For many of us, visiting a salon becomes equal to seeing a good friend ( and sometimes a proxy for a therapist), which, coupled with the outer beauty effect, contributes to that “twinkle in the eye” that Vidal Sassoon often referred to.

So go ahead, pick up the phone and make that feel-good hair or nail appointment – it can make a world of difference to your well-being, energy and confidence. And if you need a tip where to go, as it so happens, I know a few people… ;-)

As always, happy to hear what you think.

Cheers

Sylvie