My Korean Perm

I’ve heard good things about Korean digital or setting perms but there are no salons in Salt Lake City that offer them.  So when I was up in WA I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and get one.

Uploading my consciousness to the hive mind

Crazy looking, right?  This machine is imported from Korea and uses heat and ceramic rollers to set the curls.

My mom took me to the Korean stylist she frequents. I was scared of ending up with an ajumma hair style, worries that were not assuaged when the stylist was sporting a very ajumma-ish hairstyle herself and didn’t speak much English.

But I showed her photos of what I wanted and she said that a setting perm and a cut with lots of layers would give me the style I wanted.  I think she could tell I was a little nervous so she admonished me to trust her, so I did.  Don’t mess with an ajumma!

I’m really happy with how it turned out.

The curls/waves are supposed to last for 6-12 months and are really low maintenance.  My stylist said if I want more pronounced curls to twist my hair into ringlets as I blow-dry it or that I could just towel-dry my hair for looser waves which is what I usually do (and what I did in the photo above).   If I feel like getting fancy I’ll put my hair up in two buns overnight and in the morning I have a ton of curls.

This is the first time I’ve done anything major to my hair and happy (and relived!) with how it turned out.

The whole process (cut-perm-style) took about 3 hours.  I don’t remember all the different steps but Karen Cheng, an Australian blogger I follow, has a good post about her experience getting a similar perm.