Walk In Barbers in London: What to Expect

A walk in barber in London does what the name says. No appointment, no deposit, no app: you turn up and you take the next chair that comes free. What changes from shop to shop is the wait. One chair and a queue on a Saturday can cost you an hour of your afternoon. Six chairs usually costs you a few minutes, unless every man ahead of you is halfway through a forty minute fade. Here is what actually decides it.

What decides your wait, and it is not the bench

Most men walk in, count the people waiting, and make a decision on that number. It is close to useless. What matters is what is happening in the chairs.

Every service has a real length behind it, and ours are on the booking page because they are what the work takes:

• Beard trim, 15 minutes
• Crew cut or short back and sides, 20 minutes
• Haircut or head shave, 30 minutes
• Skin fade, taper fade or wash and cut, 40 minutes

So four men ahead of you having crew cuts will clear out faster than one man who sat down two minutes ago for a wash and cut. We run six chairs at once, which means on a normal weekday something is finishing somewhere every few minutes. On a Saturday afternoon when half the shop is doing fades, the whole room moves at forty minute intervals and it feels much slower even with the same number of people in it.

Walk in, look at the heads rather than the bench. A row of nearly-finished necklines being cleaned up is a five minute wait. A row of half-blended sides is not.

Ask, as well. Anyone here will tell you the honest number rather than the number that keeps you in the shop, because a man who waits forty minutes after being told ten does not come back.

The two hours to avoid, and the one to aim for

We are open 9:00am to 7:30pm Monday to Saturday, and 10:00am to 6:30pm on Sunday.

The first hour of a weekday morning is the quietest the shop ever gets. If you have any flexibility at all, that is the hour to use. Nobody has come off a shift yet, the school run has not finished, and you will usually sit straight down.

Two stretches are reliably busy. Saturday from about eleven onwards, and the last two hours of any weekday, when people arrive straight from work at more or less the same time.

That second one has a bit of arithmetic in it worth knowing. If a skin fade is forty minutes and the door shuts at 7:30pm, then the last fade of the day has to start by ten to seven. Turn up at quarter past seven wanting one and there is not enough shop left, however empty it looks. A beard trim at that hour is fine. A wash and cut is not.

Sunday is a shorter day by two hours, an hour later at the start and an hour earlier at the end, so the same number of men are trying to fit through a smaller window. Sunday mornings are still easy. Sunday from four onwards is not the time to chance a fade.

What to ask for on a walk in, and what to ring about first

Short work is what walk-ins are built for. A crew cut at £10, a short back and sides at £14, a beard trim at £11: all of it is fifteen to twenty minutes and none of it needs planning. A standard haircut at £15 in a 30 minute slot is nearly always fine too.

The forty minute services are where it turns into a gamble. A skin fade or taper fade at £17, or a wash and cut at £18, will get done if there is room, and will cost you a wait if there is not. Come in the morning for those, or book the slot and stop thinking about it. The full list of services has every price and every duration on it, so you can work out your own odds before you leave the house.

Two things worth a phone call rather than a walk. Two of you at once, a father and son or a pair of you off the same shift, needs two chairs free at the same moment, which is a different proposition from one. And any combination that stacks up to three quarters of an hour or more, like a head shave with a beard on top. Ring 020 7286 4777 and we will give you a straight answer, including "not for another half hour" if that is the truth.

If you are over 60, the £10 rate is a weekday thing, Monday to Friday. It applies to walk-ins exactly the same as bookings. On a Saturday it is the standard haircut price, which catches people out.

And if you are having a beard done with your cut, it is £24 for the pair rather than £26, because the trim comes down a couple of pounds when it goes on the end of a haircut.

Is a walk in barber in London worth the trip?

That depends on how far you are coming, and this is the bit people underestimate.

We are at 354 Harrow Road, W9. Westbourne Park is about ten minutes on foot, Warwick Avenue about twelve, and Paddington is a fair walk or one stop on the Bakerloo. The routes are written up properly in our guide to getting here from Warwick Avenue. Round trip, a wasted journey from any of those costs you twenty minutes and change, which is roughly what you would have waited if you had just sat down.

If you are walking from Maida Vale, Westbourne Green or the far end of Harrow Road, chancing it costs you almost nothing and you should chance it. If you are coming across from Kilburn or up from town, spend the two minutes on the phone or the booking page first.

One local note for this week. Carnival is Sunday 30 and Monday 31 August this year, with Panorama on the Saturday night, and getting across this corner of West London is slower for the whole weekend. Term also starts in the first week of September, which we went through in the back to school haircuts piece. That puts both on top of each other: Saturday 29 August is carnival Saturday and the last Saturday before term at the same time. It is the one day this year we would not chance a walk in. Come earlier in the week, or take a weekday morning once term has started.

Before you set off

Know your number. If you can say "grade one on the sides, scissors on top, leave the fringe" you are through the consultation in thirty seconds and into the chair, and on a busy day that speed is worth having.

Bring a second option, too. If the fade you wanted is a forty minute wait and you have somewhere to be, a short back and sides now beats a skin fade you did not get. We would rather do the honest smaller job well than rush the big one.

And if you are told twenty minutes, take it and go for a walk up the road. Twenty minutes here means twenty minutes.