Now you have the code. This is what you do with it.

Read it before you touch it.

Dry. No product. Hands off. Wet hair usually reads tighter than it is. Product usually reads looser. And the moment you comb it, the clumps break and you are reading your own work instead of her hair.

If she arrives with it pinned up, take it down and give it a minute to fall. If it has been blow-dried straight this morning, you cannot read it at all — say so. Read the new growth at the root, or book her back. Guessing here costs you the whole consultation.

Where you take the section

Mid-back. Not the hairline: it is finer, it behaves differently, and it will pull your reading looser than the head really is. Not the nape: it is usually a level or two tighter and will pull it the other way. The mid-back is the section that tells the truth.

Then look at one thing only — the size of the repeating shape. Tight small repeats sit low on the ladder. Long open repeats sit high. Until your eye is trained, ask yourself what you could wind it on: pencil-width is the tight end, can-width is the loose end. You will drop that crutch inside a week.

The three transitions

Everything else is fine judgement inside a band. These three are the only hard calls on the ladder, and they are the ones worth learning by heart.

One head, more than one pattern

Most heads have more than one. Take a second section from the other side at the same height. Usually they agree closely enough. Sometimes they genuinely do not — one side tighter, or a crown section doing its own thing.

The Scale records the dominant pattern. When the sides disagree, read the majority and say the difference out loud. That asymmetry is very often the exact thing she is unhappy about, and nobody has ever named it for her.

Look at the nape and hairline separately too — not to score them, just so you know what is there. They frizz first, they process fastest, and they are where you get caught out.

Two systems, two jobs.

Walker is a pattern taxonomy — type 1 to 4, with A, B and C. It names the shape. It is what your client has read online and it is what she will tell you she is.

The Scale is a treatment-reading scale. It exists to end in a decision, so it counts the way a colour chart counts: the number climbs as the hair gets straighter, the same way it climbs as hair gets lighter. That is not a criticism of Walker, it is a different job. Both sit on the chart side by side so nobody has to give up the number they arrived with.

Look at the root first.

The frizz reading is not a severity score. It reads where the frizz starts on the strand, and that is a better question because severity is a judgement two stylists will argue about, while where it starts is a fact you can see in one look.

f1 into f2 is the root joining in, and that changes the job completely. Frizz through the lengths is usually wear — years of heat, sun, handling, hairbands. The hair grew fine and life happened to it. Frizz from the root is the hair doing it as it emerges, which means it will keep doing it, and nothing you do to the lengths will stop it.

Root frizz has more than one cause: emerging texture, new growth, short broken hairs, mixed fibre diameters, mechanical wear at the scalp. The reading records that it is there. Working out why is the consultation.

Humidity does not create frizz out of nothing. Water gets into the fibre, the hair swells and moves, and what was already there shows itself.

The letters are a ceiling, not a destination.

Hair is dead. Structurally it does not repair, and nothing moves an N back from a D. Products can make damaged hair look and behave far better — that is real, and it is worth doing — but the structure underneath is what it is.

So the condition letters are never somewhere you are taking her. They are the limit on how far the number is allowed to travel. A z3 asking for s10 is seven levels: on NNN that is a conversation, on NDH it is a no. The code makes the no visible before anyone has to argue about it.

Damage climbs — usually

The ends are the oldest hair and have had the most done to them, so damage tends to work upward. That is a tendency, not a law. A chemical service, traction or heat can compromise a root directly. Read what is actually there rather than assuming a sequence.

What X means

X means one thing: stop and test before committing. It is not a severity grade and it is not a verdict. It says the code does not decide this one — you do, with the hair in your hands.

Where it matters, that means a strand test with the actual product you intend to use. The only reliable answer to will this hair take this is this hair and this chemistry. Nothing else predicts it.

And the history questions do something the total does not. Halfway through the asking she remembers the thing she had forgotten — the perm before the baby, the box colour she did herself. The points are the excuse to ask properly.

Distance is subtraction. That is the whole point of one ladder.

Write the code for the hair in front of you. Then write the code for where she wants to go. The difference between the two numbers is the level of change — and that is the job, stated in a way you can both look at.

It works identically in both directions. Taking curl out or putting it in, you are moving the same number, just the other way.

The ranges overlap on purpose. Four levels sits inside both demi and permanent, because distance on its own was never enough to choose. What chooses is the condition, what she is willing to commit to, what has already been done to the hair, and the chemistry available.

In teCsture, semi, demi and permanent describe commitment — how long it lasts and how much of the hair it changes. The words are borrowed from colour because every hairdresser already understands that ladder. It is not colour chemistry.

Down and up mean chemical

A down takes curl, wave or frizz out. An up puts curl, movement or volume in. Both mean changing the hair itself. Tongs and a brush move hair too — that is not an up. An up alters the fibre, so it grows out and it never washes out.

Going down she can try it gently first and see how she likes it. Going up she commits. Say that before she sits down and you will never have the argument afterwards.

And there is a third answer that keeps you out of trouble: not yet. Some hair cannot take a direction until it has been repaired, and the code is how you show her that rather than just saying it.

Distance, then the gate, then the bottle.

1 · Distance. How far she is asking you to move the pattern, and which way. Subtraction.

2 · The gate. Whether the hair permits it. Condition decides this, not distance. Never call a move comfortable because the number is small — a heavily processed w7 can be a worse candidate for three levels than a healthy z3 is for five.

3 · The chemistry. Which product, what strength, what technique. Your problem, not hers, and it comes last.

Price the level of change, not the bottle.

That last line is the commercial argument for the whole system. Two clients asking for "keratin" can be one level apart or five levels apart, on hair with completely different histories. Priced by the product they pay the same. Priced by the level of change, they pay for the work you actually do — and you can show them why.

T and W. Curl hides length.

Two numbers, in centimetres. T is true length, the strand stretched out — what you are actually working on: surface, product, hours. W is worn length, where it sits when you let go — what she sees in the mirror and believes her hair is.

A tight z3 can carry T58 and wear it at 24. Same head of hair. It is why two clients who both say "shoulder-length" are an hour apart in the chair and a hundred pounds apart on the bill. Measure from the same reference point every time, on the section the pattern came from, or the number is not worth writing down.

For anything priced by length, price on T. That is the length you are treating.

And T and W do a second job in the consultation. A down releases the curl, so worn moves toward true — she will leave with visibly longer hair than she arrived with. Say both numbers before you start and that is a pleasure instead of a shock. An up runs the other way: she loses worn length, and unwarned, that is a complaint.