Running a hair salon in Oakville means a lot of things. But some of our favorite parts as hairstylists have nothing to do with hair at all. It's the client who sends her sister, her coworker, her neighbour our way, without us ever asking. It's the ones who take five minutes out of their day to leave a review that makes our whole team smile. It's the client who shows up to her appointment with a coffee in hand for whoever's doing her hair that day, just because. Haircut by Mon

We're Tired, We Love What We Do, and You're the Reason It's Worth It Running a salon is hard some days. We won't pretend otherwise. There are early mornings, late nights, a team to look after, and for those of us with kids, a family trying to get a piece of us too. Some days it's a lot. Why We Keep Showing Up But then a client sits down in the chair. Someone who's been coming to us for years. Someone who trusts us with more than just their hair, honestly, they trust us with t

Is It Damage, or Is It Mineral Buildup? What Summer Really Does to Your Hair You might have mineral buildup and not even know it. If your hair's been feeling rough, looking a little dull, or not taking colour the way it used to, most people assume that's damage. Sometimes it's not. The Real Culprit: Mineral Buildup At our Oakville hair salon, we've been seeing a lot of this lately. Pool chlorine, lake water, well water from the cottage, it all sits on the hair shaft over the

Grey Coverage vs. Grey Blending: What's the Difference? We hear this from clients at our Oakville hair salon constantly. They're tired of the harsh grey line. Tired of coming in every four weeks just to keep it covered. Here's the thing: managing grey doesn't have to mean full coverage every single time. There's more than one way to approach it, and the right one depends entirely on you. Why the Harsh Grey Line Is So Common Most people default to full grey coverage because it

What Low-Maintenance Hair Colour Actually Means (And Why It's Not Boring) There's one question almost nobody asks before picking their hair colour. How often do you actually want to be back in this chair? At our Oakville hair salon, that answer shapes the colour plan from the very beginning, not something we figure out after the fact. And yet most people walk into a colour appointment thinking about the technique first (highlights, balayage, a gloss) instead of thinking about

Why We Created the Kind of Salon We Actually Wanted to Work In We didn't want to create another beautiful Oakville hair salon where nobody could fully relax. By the time we opened Eleven + Co., we were both tired of things this industry doesn't always talk about honestly. So we built something different, for two different reasons that ended up pointing the same direction. Elise's Reason: Tired of the Factory Feeling Honestly, I was tired of being told exactly how to do my job