Hair Color
Your go-to destination for Wella Professionals Color. Unlock #ProTips, refine your techniques and explore must-have formulas for vibrant, lasting results.
10.06.2020
How To Help a Client Losing Hair Due to Cancer
As stylists, we’re often confronted with conversations that go far beyond your expertise of suggesting the length and color of clients’ hair. You discuss their lives! No topic is off-limits: relationships, school, community, childbirth, job loss, domestic abuse, and even cancer.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and we’re here to help by sharing what a client with cancer may be experiencing and might need to consider if hair loss becomes inevitable during their treatment.
A client needs to prepare for losing their hair. Some of these preparations involve:
- Consider a shorter hair cut first.
- Use clippers all over, as a way to take control.
- Scalp Hypothermia – Using a cold cap to cool the scalp. A cold cap is used for a period of time before, during, and after each chemotherapy treatment to try to prevent or reduce hair loss.
- Wig – how to choose, apply, and care for it.
- Experimenting with headwear and accessories.
- Caring for their hair and scalp during treatment.
- Learning how to recreate eyelashes and eyebrows.
- Finding support from others that have experienced this type of hair loss.
- Donating their hair.
How you can help a client through this journey:
- Find an organization that will accept the client’s hair to turn into wigs for themselves or others.
- Help them choose a wig before they lose their hair. This can allow them time to get used to wearing one and reduce the feeling of such the drastic change.
- Custom color and style their wig so it looks as close to their precancer look as possible.
- Help them with stenciling eyebrows and applying eyelashes.
- Offer monthly Scalp Dermabrasion treatments.
- Be there for them when their hair does come back!
Knowing how to navigate this very emotional and life-changing journey is key and we hope this helps give some guidance during a difficult time. For the month of October, Wella Store is also offering stylists an opportunity for one person to win a customized wig for a client in need, click here to learn more.
Thank you for all that you do behind the chair, every day.