The Directory
Every salon we stand behind, in one place. None ranked, none paying for placement.
Downtown
A family-owned salon in a Hargett Street loft, open since 2008. Owners Dana Hunter Rosa, Aspen Johnson, and Meghann Holland still take chairs. The work skews toward color, with balayage, blonding, and correction across the menu, plus DevaCurl-certified cutting for natural texture. Two downtown locations share a roster.
Known for: Color & curls
Mordecai
Crazy Combs has been on Wake Forest Road since 2001, in the stretch between historic Oakwood and Mordecai just outside downtown. Owner Traci Farmer is a Raleigh native and fourth-generation stylist whose floor work is multi-dimensional color, modern cutting, and keratin. The team includes seven stylists and a dedicated nail artist.
Known for: 24-year-old downtown salon
North Hills
Andrayah Parker founded Geometry in 2017 as the salon she would have wanted as a kid being told her curls needed straightening. The studio works on coily, curly, and wavy hair exclusively. A seven-stylist team uses Geometry's own cutting and coloring method, with appointment-only booking.
Known for: Raleigh's curly-hair-exclusive salon
Falls of Neuse
A 13-year stretch on Falls of Neuse in North Raleigh's Wakefield corridor, run by owner Megan Moore since 2013. The salon is one of the Triangle's Aveda Concept locations, which puts the back-bar and stylist training inside Aveda's certification track. The team skews senior, with multiple stylists past the five and ten-year marks.
Known for: Aveda color and spa
North Raleigh
Lisa Smilez has been working out of a studio inside Phenix Salon Suites on Poyner Village Parkway since 2016, focused on healthy natural-hair care for 3b and 4c textures. The service catalog is built around two-strand twists, silk press, curly cuts, locs, and natural-hair color work. Solo practice.
Known for: Natural hair, 3b/4c specialist
Hillsborough Street
Doris Gonzalez opened MANE on Hillsborough Street in 2024 after twelve years behind the chair, the last four working independently. The salon she built is color-forward, with lived-in blondes, dimensional brunettes, and color correction across a nine-stylist bench and an in-house educator on staff.
Known for: Lived-in color, Hillsborough Street
Mordecai +1
Kiki Palcowski opened Menagerie on Crabtree Blvd in November 2020 and added a second location in Wendell Falls two years later. Both locations run an Aveda + Oribe practice with a slow, consultation-first flow and a stylist team more interested in getting it right than getting it fast.
Known for: Aveda color, two locations
Falls of Neuse
A North Raleigh salon Christina Kirkey opened as a single chair in 2015 and has since grown into a sixteen-seat shop with its own in-house education ladder. The work centers on color, with blonding, balayage, and color correction sitting alongside a hand-tied extension line the salon designs and sources itself.
Known for: Color & extensions
Five Points
A booth-rent salon on Oberlin started in 2020 by three stylists who had outgrown commission salons and wanted the autonomy without the isolation. The work skews color, with balayage and lived-in blondes the bread-and-butter and color correction the work people drive across town for after a bad appointment somewhere else.
Known for: Color & correction
North Hills
Ashley McCauley runs Salon Veritas out of a private studio inside Trade Salon Studios off Six Forks Road in Midtown Raleigh. Roughly twenty years behind the chair, with a service menu that publishes 'starting at' prices on most lines. Color, extensions (HotHeads), keratin, and wedding-day work all on the menu.
Known for: Pricing transparency, Midtown
North Raleigh
Taji Natural Hair Styling runs two locations, one off Sawmill Road in North Raleigh and one on Durham Chapel Hill Boulevard in Durham. The specialty stack is broader than most natural-hair salons: knotless braids, micro and bridal locs, two-strand twists, children's hair, transitioning hair, and men's cuts.
Known for: Natural-hair specialty, two locations
North Hills
Leda Fazal opened Tone in Midtown Raleigh around 2021 after seventeen years behind the chair. The salon's defining service is the Swan Method, her patented one-step hair-extension technique that holds for ten to thirteen weeks. The five-stylist bench also runs balayage, blonding, grey blending, and Brazilian Blowouts.
Known for: Swan Method extensions