What the extension price doesn’t include

The message arrives most weeks, and it’s always some version of the same one. How much for extensions? It looks like a question with a number for an answer, and it isn’t, and explaining why takes longer than anyone wants to read in a DM. So here it is written down.

There are two numbers in an extension appointment. She’ll tell you both, in person, once she’s seen your hair.

Number one: her time

The menu price is application. K-tips are priced by the hour, from $130, because they go in strand by strand and how many strands your head needs isn’t knowable from a photo. Sew-ins are priced by the row, from $245, and a row runs about ninety minutes. Both hold with a non-refundable deposit — $40 for k-tips, $50 for sew-ins — and both come off the service, so the deposit isn’t an extra, it’s the front of the bill.

What that number doesn’t cover is worth reading twice, because it’s where the surprises live. Application pricing is application only. It doesn’t include the wash, the blow-out, or the style. If you want to walk out finished rather than installed, add those when you book — it’s the same appointment, it just needs the time on the calendar. And for k-tips it doesn’t include the cut either.

Number two: the hair

The hair is bought separately, and it’s bought for you. Matched to your color, your length, your density. Ordered about a week to a week and a half before your install so it’s guaranteed in the room on the day.

“You’re paying for hair chosen for your head, not whatever’s in a drawer.”

That’s the whole argument for splitting the numbers. A package price that quietly bundles the hair has to assume an amount and a quality of hair, and the way that assumption gets met is with whatever’s in stock. Hers is a purchase you can see, sized to what you actually need. If you need less, you buy less.

It’s also why the Instagram answer doesn’t exist. To price the hair she has to see how much of it there’ll be, what it’s matching, and how far down your own hair goes. She can’t guess density from a photo, and she won’t send a number she’d have to take back in person.

How people actually pay for it

She doesn’t pretend this is cheap. It’s a real expense and it gets talked about like one.

Most people split it in two. The first payment buys your hair and holds the chair; the balance is due when you’re done sitting in it. Afterpay and Klarna both work here, and on bigger appointments she has broken it into three payments before when that’s what made the thing happen. None of that is a special arrangement you have to ask for carefully — it’s the normal way this gets paid for, and she’d rather structure it than watch somebody talk themselves out of the appointment.

The consult itself is $20 and forty-five minutes — longer than the color consult, because there’s more to look at. She checks your density, your hairline and your hair’s history, tells you which method your hair can actually hold, and quotes the hair. Ten dollars holds the consult and the twenty comes off your service.

Then there’s the ongoing number nobody mentions in the DMs either: move-ups every four to six weeks, for as long as you’re wearing them. Worth knowing before you order, not after.

Two numbers, both said out loud, neither of them a surprise on the day. That’s the entire reason this starts with a consult and not a checkout button.