Your hairdresser totally knows you’re lying about these eight things.

What is it about sitting in front of a salon mirror that turns us all into compulsive liars?

Is it embarrassment? Fear of being judged? Determination to seem like you’re in control of your hair, and therefore your life?

Whatever it is, we’ve all stretched the truth about our hair at least once. Whether you take the, “Oh yeah, sorry I haven’t been here for a few months, I took a spontaneous trip to rural Africa…” route, or throw in a little, “No, no, I definitely haven’t been trimming my own fringe,” there’s a little part of you that assumes you’ll get away with it.

But of course, you don’t. Come on — your hairdresser is a trained professional. You think those jagged ends are going to slip by unnoticed? Here are seven instances where your little white lies don’t even come close to fooling your stylist.

1. “No, I haven’t dyed my own hair.”

Tried a cheeky 8-wash colour between salon visits, and thought you were in the all clear because the colour had all ‘washed out’ by the time your next appointment rolled around? Not so fast, you sly fox.

“A lot of people don’t think semi-permanent colours count as having colour in their hair, because the box colour says it lasts up to eight washes. A colourist’s eyes are so finely tuned to such subtle colour and texture differences in the hair that we can see it straight away,” explains Karen Lewis from Blondie’s Hair in Melbourne.

2. “There’s no colour in there, it’s all natural.”

With this one, you mightn’t even be aware you’re not telling the whole truth. It’s easy to assume that if you haven’t coloured your hair in a year or so, it counts as ‘uncoloured’ — but that’s not the case.

“Unfortunately, the ends of people’s hair can be more than a year old. Often women with long hair have ends that are more than five years old, so that’s five years of colour build-up, sun, wind and heat styling. Although it may not have been coloured for a year, the previous colours are still in the ends of the hair,” Karen explains.

“Also, clients think if they were blonde, and at some stage coloured their hair back to dark or their ‘natural’ colour, they now have healthy natural hair. This isn’t the case. All good hairdressers will treat the hair as if it is still blonde, taking care with future lightening and colour changes.”

Watch Carla style her hair into heat free curls. (Post continues after video.)

“It is important to be honest about your colour history as it will have an effect on the result of your hair and also the condition,” adds Alisha, a stylist at Edwards and Co. “Also, mentioning your lifestyle can be important as frequent swimmers may need to do extra home care to look after their colour.”

3. ‘Oh yeah, I’m really good at styling my hair, I throw in a few loose GHD curls every morning…’

Let’s get one thing straight: it’s okay to suck at doing your own hair. Plenty of us do. If you over-exaggerate what you’re capable of on a daily basis, or straight-up lie about it, you’re going to end up with a style you can’t actually manage once you leave the salon. If you need it to be wash ‘n wear, just say that.

“Good hairdressers won’t judge,” Karen says.

“We want to give you a hairstyle that suits your lifestyle. If you’re not going to blow wave your hair paper-straight, its better we don’t give you a cut that only looks good when styled that way.”

4. “My best friend’s a hairdresser, I just got her to trim my ends a bit…”

Yeah, look, if you’ve taken to your own ends with a pair of kitchen scissors, it’s going to be very evident. You might as well own it.

5. “I don’t know what my last hairdresser did, but my fringe is so wide and blunt…”

Ditto #5. Unless you actually went to a different hairdresser in the interim, in which case your hairdresser has probably figured that out already.

6. “I use an organic colour at home.”

If by ‘organic’ you mean ‘henna’, your stylist is going to work this out pretty quickly. “Henna has a chemical reaction with professional colours,” says Alisha. Is saving face with a little white lie really worth having your hair go a completely weird colour? Probably not.

7. “I only straighten my hair a few times a week and I always use a heat protector.”

“The truth: ‘I straighten it every day and probably don’t use a heat protector’,” Alisha says. Go on, you know it’s true.

It really does make a huge difference – we recommend Clairol Professional Volumation Volume Heat Protection Lotion ($19.50).

8. Not having an appointment.

It sounds completely ridiculous, but there are people out there who rock up to salons and lie about having an appointment.

One Sydney hairdresser, who asked to remain anonymous, recently encountered a woman who claimed to have an appointment booked, despite the salon being completely booked out until late June.

“She said, ‘I came in yesterday and another girl said I could have an appointment today!’ I gave her a ‘Did you?’ look, then she sheepishly said ‘are you the only one who works here?’ and desperately looked around for other staff. I said, yes,” she recalls.

The moral of the story: if you’re going to lie about booking an appointment with a staff member who doesn’t actually exist, you’re going to be caught out. Especially if it’s a small, one-on-one appointment business.

Have you ever been caught lying to your hairdresser?