Styleout Bar-Pittsburgh

It has taken me awhile to write this review, because I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about my experience at Styleout Bar.  I went to my appointment with really high expectations.  You know how sometimes you build something up in your head and then the actual experience isn’t anywhere near as good as your imaginary one? That’s kind of how my experience at Styleout Bar went.

Let’s start at the beginning! I have been reading about blow dry bars in New York and LA for quite awhile now. Blow dry bars are hair salons that specialize in just the styling of your hair versus cut and color and styling.  People rave about how amazing their hair looks and how it lasts for days.

I did some research and found there was a blow dry bar right here in Pittsburgh.  Who knew? Apparently, no one.  Every person I’ve spoken to wasn’t aware of their existence either.  Including people who worked at Ross Park.  Weird.

Anyway, after I found out about it, I had to go check it out.  I enlisted my trusty friend and her daughter to go with me and they ended up treating me as a birthday gift.  Thanks Lisa!

The salon is small and set up galley like, very long and narrow.  We each met our stylist and spoke briefly about what we were looking for in a style.  Their website had a couple of choices of style types and each has a name.  I thought there would be a stylebook at the salon, but didn’t see one, so I went with volume and curls as my style of choice.

Since there were only two sinks, I had to wait to have my hair washed.  I spent that time looking around the salon.  I’m not going to lie, I was expecting something a little more luxurious.  The salon is pretty bare bones.  I also thought we would be offered a drink, but that didn’t happen.  I guess I was expecting more of a “special” treatment since I had read so much about that being the experience at other blow dry bars.  Contrary to what I had read, this particular salon does also do color and cutting, in addition to their blow dry styling.  And blow dry styling doesn’t mean just a blow out, it also entails hot tool styling too.

All the stylists were very nice and knew their way around styling. They chatted with us while we were being styled and were friendly.  I was happy with how my hair turned out, but didn’t hold much hope it was going to stay looking that way for very long.  My hair did fall as the day wore on, but the style it ended up in was fine by me.  I was able to resuscitate my hair for three days, so that claim is definitely true, at least for me.  Of course, I can do that when I go to my actual hairdresser too, so it might be more my hair, then the actual blow dry bar.  Excuse my lack of makeup in the photos, because it was HOT that day!

Overall, the experience was fun, but I think that was more a product of who I went with than the salon.  I might go again if I had a function and couldn’t get in to see my own hairdresser.  The salon had many walk-ins the day we were there.  I would recommend making an appointment to avoid a wait.  Similar circumstance to a walk-in nail salon. You might be taken right away or you might wait awhile.

I’m not saying anything was terrible about the salon, it was a good experience, it just wasn’t the luxury experience I was expecting.  Again, that might have been a high expectation on my part.   It definitely was a fun way to spend my day off with girlfriends.  I would think it would be fun to couple with a girls night out.  Get your hair done and then go out on the town.

Have you been to a blow dry bar? What was your experience like?