Kids Haircut Westbourne Park: Parents' Guide

A kids haircut near Westbourne Park means a ten minute walk for you, and probably fifteen with a small child who wants to look at the canal. The shop is at 354 Harrow Road, about 770 metres from the station. There is no separate children's price, so most kids have the same £14 short back and sides as their dads, or a £15 haircut. Book rather than walk in after school or on a Saturday, and if you are pushing a buggy, skip the tube and take the bus.

The walk from Westbourne Park station, with a child in tow

Come out of the station onto Great Western Road and turn north. Within a couple of minutes you are on the bridge over the Grand Union Canal, with the towpath running underneath. Small children tend to want to stop and hang over the railings there, so build the stop in rather than fighting it.

Keep going up to Woodfield Road, turn right, and it brings you out on Harrow Road. Turn right again and we are a few minutes along. The whole thing is flat and short, but Harrow Road is a proper main road with buses and lorries on it, so the last stretch is a hand-holding stretch.

One thing nobody tells you until you are standing at the top of the stairs: Westbourne Park station is not step free. There are about 34 steps between the platforms and the street, and no lift. If you are coming by tube with a pushchair, that is a carry, and a carry with a sleeping toddler in it is nobody's idea of a good start to a haircut.

So if there is a buggy involved, we would take the bus. The 18, the 36 and the 187 all run along Harrow Road, and children under 11 travel free on London buses without needing a ticket. You get dropped close to the door and nobody has to be woken up to get there.

What a kids haircut near Westbourne Park costs

We do not have a children's menu or a children's rate. A child sits in the same chair and pays the same price as the man in the next one. For most kids that works out cheaper than it sounds, because what they need is simple.

• Short Back & Sides, £14, 20 minutes. The one most school-age boys have. Clippers up the sides and back, scissors to tidy the top, and it is the safe answer for school.
• Crew Cut, £10, 20 minutes. Clippers all over, short enough that nobody has to brush it. Good for a child who will not sit still for long, less good for one who hates the buzz.
• Haircut, £15, 30 minutes. Book this when there is real length on top that needs scissors, or when your child is nervous. The extra ten minutes in the slot are what let us slow down.

If a fade is on the wish list, check the school first. Some schools are relaxed about them and some are not, and our guide to school haircut rules goes through what a policy can and cannot say. Everything else, with timings, is on our services page.

For a very first haircut, the advice is different enough that we wrote it up separately: how we handle a first cut covers laps, capes, scissors against clippers and what to do if it ends in tears.

When to come so you are not waiting

We run six chairs, so a child is rarely stuck for long. But two stretches of the week are reliably full. Saturdays once the morning is under way, and weekdays from the end of the school day until we close at 7:30pm. That is exactly when most families can come.

If that is your only window, book it. A booked slot means you walk in and sit down, and nobody small has to sit through a queue of grown men first. Walking in is fine for an adult who can scroll his phone for ten minutes. It is harder on a child.

If your child is not at school yet, a weekday morning beats everything else. The doors open at 9:00am on weekdays, and those first hours are the calmest the shop gets.

Half term is the week to plan for

For community schools in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, October half term runs from Monday 26 to Friday 30 October 2026. Academies and independent schools can differ, so go by the letter the school sent home.

Half term is the one time school-age children can come on a weekday morning, and that makes it the best week of the autumn for a cut. It also means every other family has had the same idea. If you want a morning that week, book the slot now rather than on the Monday.

The timing works out, too. A short back and sides cut in half term week still looks tidy when they go back on Monday 2 November, and one more at the start of December carries them through to the end of term on Friday 18 December.

Make a morning of it at Meanwhile Gardens

Along the canal, just west of the Great Western Road bridge, is Meanwhile Gardens. It started as a community garden on derelict canal-side land in 1976, and it has play equipment, a Play Hut for young children and their carers, and a free skatepark with three interlocking bowls. From our door it is about 900 metres, a twelve minute walk back along the way you came.

We would put the park after the haircut, not before. A child who has spent an hour on the climbing frame is either wound up or worn out, and neither sits well in a barber's chair. A child who knows the playground is next will hold still for twenty minutes quite happily.

Before you leave the chair

Ask the barber what grade went on the sides and write it in your phone. "Grade 2 back and sides, tidy the top, keep it off the ears" is the whole of a school haircut, and next time you can say it at the door instead of trying to describe the cut from memory. If the cut worked, that one line saves you the guesswork every visit after.