Your client shows you a video: dry hair at the start, heavy and glossy at the end. She wants the same "hair botox". What she hasn't seen is the state of the hair fibre three months later.
We don't offer this service at Les Ateliers Crépus, and we'd rather say so in writing than leave you to guess. It isn't a judgement on the salons that offer it: many added it to their menu because clients kept asking, without anyone ever opening the bottle for them.
Point 1What the name covers
I don't recommend botox treatments, and I say so from experience: I had one done on my own hair. It stayed dry for months. I'd rather warn the hairdressers I train than let them find out on a client's head.
Ghana Elin, founderFirst point, the easiest to check and the one clients are least often told: there is no botulinum toxin in a "hair botox". The name is a marketing term, it matches no regulatory category, and two bottles with the same label can contain formulas that have nothing in common. You never assess "botox": you assess the product you have in your hands.
What's sold under this name falls into three families, and the distinction isn't a chemist's detail. It's what separates a treatment, a surface cosmetic and a chemical process, each with a different level of liability.
- Coating treatments, rich in film-forming agents and silicones, which wrap the hair fibre and add shine. They don't repair anything: they cover.
- Protein treatments, based on amino acids or hydrolysates. Sometimes useful on weakened hair, often too concentrated for coily hair, which stiffens and breaks at the next detangling.
- Straightening in disguise, activated with flat irons, which changes the shape of the hair. These are no longer treatments but chemical processes, with all the obligations that come with them.
This classification isn't theoretical: it determines what you have to tell the client, what you have to record, and what you're taking on when you apply the product. A salon that files all three families under one trade name can't give an honest account of what it's selling.
Point 2What the service promises
The promise comes down to one word, and it's the right word: repair. The sales pitch talks about filling in damaged areas of the cuticle and making hair supple from the very first session. Add to that a promise of speed, two or three hours in the chair for an instant result, where real work takes several appointments and a client who sticks to her habits at home.
You have to acknowledge what works, or you won't understand why the service caught on so fast: it spread through demand, not through training, and the instant effect is real. On damaged hair, a coating gives a shine the client hasn't seen in a long time. The problem lies in what you're charging for: a surface result on a texture where everything happens underneath.
Point 3What it does to coily hair
On coily hair, the film settles on a naturally uneven surface. It fills, flattens and adds shine, and the before-and-after gap is more spectacular than on straight hair. That's what fools the client, and sometimes the professional: the scale of the visual change is mistaken for a measure of repair.
The same film then stops water and treatments from getting in. For a few weeks, the hair looks lovely under its coating, then dries out underneath without any visible sign. The curl pattern loses its spring, detangling becomes hard again, and the client books another treatment to get the effect back: you're creating dependence on the product where you promised repair. The direct consequence for you is that a diagnosis carried out in the following weeks is worthless, because porosity, elasticity and how the hair responds to detangling are all masked. Better to postpone the assessment until after a gentle clarifying cleanse, as explained in our article on the salon diagnosis.
When the product is actually a straightener, the effect doesn't fade. The shape of the hair is permanently altered, and the line where new growth begins becomes a breaking point: hair that carries two textures along one length breaks at the junction, never anywhere else. It's the mechanism described in our article on straightening without chemicals, and it's dealt with gradually, with scissors.
Point 4Where your liability lies
A salon that applies a product to a client is answerable for it, and the third family raises an issue that goes beyond appearance. Some straightening products release formaldehyde when heated with flat irons or a dryer. The Food and Drug Administration, the US health agency, has issued a warning about these products and about the symptoms reported by clients and by the professionals who apply them: eye, nose and throat irritation, breathing difficulties, headaches.
In Europe, formaldehyde is banned as an ingredient in cosmetics, and since 31 July 2024 any product likely to release it above a very low threshold must carry the statement "releases formaldehyde". Remember this: "formaldehyde-free" claimed by a sales rep is not proof. Only the ingredient list and the safety data sheet tell you what you're about to heat, in a room where you breathe.
The question also concerns your team. A client is exposed once; the person applying the product is exposed at every appointment, often in a poorly ventilated space. It's this repetition, more than any single session, that should weigh in the decision to put the service on the menu or not.
Signs that justify refusing the service
- The product has to be activated with flat irons to "work".
- A sharp smell, watering eyes or a scratchy throat during application.
- You're promised a "relaxed" or "tamed" texture for several months.
- The supplier won't share the ingredient list or the safety data sheet.
- The client is pregnant, breastfeeding, or mentions asthma or a contact allergy.
If symptoms appear, in the client or the team, you don't open a window and carry on: you stop, rinse, and refer to a doctor.
Point 5Answering a client who asks for one
A flat refusal gets you nowhere. A client who asks for this treatment is expressing a real need, and if you don't hear it, she'll get it met elsewhere, in worse conditions. So your first move isn't a refusal but a rephrasing: suppleness, shine, detangling that doesn't tear, length that shows. None of these needs a coating. If you're still considering a service of this kind, three questions to the supplier are enough.
What exactly does the product contain? A serious supplier shares the full ingredient list and the safety data sheet without being pushed. A refusal or a "trade secret" is an answer in itself.
Does the treatment change the texture? If it needs flat irons to activate, or if the pitch promises a softened curl for months, you're not holding a treatment. The client has a right to know she's committing to a transformation, and that new growth will create a line of demarcation.
What happens when the effect wears off? If the only answer is "we do it again", the service hides the cause instead of treating it. A client who comes back every three months to get an effect back isn't loyal: her hair has stopped improving. That leaves the most common case in the chair, the client who has already had several. Our position is about the products, never about her: you don't comment on the past, you take the hair from where it is.
Point 6What we offer instead
Suppleness and shine in coily hair don't come from a coating. They come from hair that's properly detangled, properly cleansed, wrapped in a treatment that penetrates, then dried without being roughed up. That's what the Rituel Texture® does, and it's a service you can charge at its true value.
It starts before the basin, with Chadian finger detangling, using the fingers on dry hair, in at least six sections. Next comes the Moisturising Detox, a two-step cleanse with a gentle clarifier followed by Le Shampoing Réparateur, worked section by section and zone by zone. The Lengths & ends massage applies Le Masque Réparateur from ends to roots and leaves it on for ten minutes, under a cap if you have one. Detangling with the Peigne de Man Dol' then follows on hair coated in mask, before rinsing. Protective drying is done after applying La Crème Coiffante, in small sections and with constant movement. The sixth step, Lock in moisture, completes the service.
Six steps, every seven to ten days, and a difference you can measure by the second appointment. A coating fades and leaves the hair drier than before; a complete routine builds from one session to the next, because the client leaves knowing how to repeat the same steps at home. It's a commercially sound position: you're selling a method and follow-up, not an effect to be renewed. Our articles on salon treatments and porosity explain how to adapt it to each head of hair.
Frequently asked questions
Does hair botox contain botox?
Why doesn't Les Ateliers Crépus offer this treatment?
Is "formaldehyde-free" a guarantee?
What should I offer a client who asks for one?
A client has already had several: where do you start in the salon?
Go further
Sources
- "Hair Smoothing Products That Release Formaldehyde When Heated", U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
- Regulation (EU) 2022/1181 amending Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on cosmetic products, labelling of formaldehyde-releasing substances, applicable since 31 July 2024.
