Best salons for colour and balayage

EK

Elira Krasniqi

Hair: cuts, colour and treatments

Elira follows hairstyling trends and hair care, from cuts to colour and treatments. She writes about the techniques that give a healthy result and how to tell good work from an expensive mistake.

Colour is the most consequential thing you can book in a salon: it costs the most, lasts the longest and is the hardest to undo. This page ranks the five best addresses in Pristina for colour and balayage, chosen only from the salons in our directory that actually offer the service and ordered by the panel's overall scores.

The five run from the overall ranking winner, which publishes every colour price, to two specialist hair houses and two names where the work is visible on Instagram but little else is published. Under the table you will find what each one brings, plus a short guide to the terms on a colour menu.

How we built this ranking →

Colour, highlights, ombre, balayage: what you are actually booking

A full colour covers the whole head in one shade and is the baseline service; at B&B Elegance, the only salon of the five with public prices, it costs 40 euro. Highlights lighten selected strands from the root using foils and read as an all-over effect; B&B lists them at 100 euro. Ombre and shatush create a gradient that stays darker at the root and lightens towards the ends; B&B prices this from 120 euro.

Balayage is the freehand version: colour painted onto the surface of the hair so the transition grows out softly without a hard line, which is why it needs retouching less often. It is also the most labour-intensive, which shows in the price, from 140 euro at B&B Elegance. Wherever the word "from" appears, the final price depends on hair length, thickness and how much lightening the starting colour needs, so send photos when you ask for a quote.

One more planning note: lightening work often runs over several hours and, for dark or previously coloured hair, sometimes over more than one appointment. Ask how long your target shade realistically takes before you book in the same week as a wedding or event.

1. B&B Elegance

The overall number one is also the safest colour booking for a first-time client, for one simple reason: it is the only salon of the five where you know the full price before you sit down, colour 40 euro, highlights 100, ombre from 120, balayage from 140. Besirja has more than 20 years of hair experience, and the same visit can add a blow-dry, brows or makeup.

Elira and Fjolla, who write our colour coverage, both gave it their maximum 15. The practical details are equally published: Jakov Xoxa street, Monday to Saturday 09:00 to 17:00, bookings by phone, WhatsApp or Viber.

2. Etrit Hair

The clearest specialist case on the page. Etrit Tullumi has more than 15 years in the trade and opened his own salon in 2019 with balayage named as the house speciality, alongside cuts, professional colour and highlights. The bilingual website with its gallery lets you check the portfolio before you commit, and the salon sells premium haircare for aftercare, the part of a balayage that happens at home.

Prices are not published, so ask for a written quote. Hours are Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 18:00, on Rruga C.

3. A&L Hair Studio

If the colour on your head is already wrong, this is the address the ranking points to. Lumnije and Agim, over 30 years of experience, position themselves as colour technicians and take on correction work, the slow, technical rescue of botched box dyes and over-bleached lengths. The studio works by appointment only, which suits long correction sessions.

Donika rated it the best salon in the city outright. The caveats are informational: no published prices or hours, and an address that differs between sources, so confirm both when you book.

4. The Hair Space

A hair salon whose work circulates on Instagram and Facebook but which publishes no service list, address, hours or prices, so we cannot say in detail what its colour menu covers. It earns its place through the panel scores, Fjolla in particular ranked it 13 of 15. Treat it as a portfolio-first choice: review the feed, message for a consultation, and get the price and timing in writing.

5. VOGUEhair

The veteran of the five: founded around 2005 by Armend Gashi, staffed by more than eight people in Pejton, and an official Olaplex partner, which matters for exactly this page, Olaplex is a bond-repair system used during lightening to limit damage. Blonde work and balayage are named strengths.

No public prices, and directory addresses conflict, so confirm the location. For heavily lightened blondes who want a bigger team and bond-building products in the process, it is the strongest alternative to the specialists above.

How to choose a colourist

Whichever name you pick, the same checklist applies:

• Scroll the salon's recent Instagram work and look for heads that started like yours, not just finished results.
• Ask for a consultation first, especially for lightening; a serious colourist will want to see your hair history before quoting.
• Get the quote in writing with everything included: toner, treatments, blow-dry.
• Book more time than you think you need; gradients and corrections are measured in hours, not minutes.

Caring for colour afterwards

A colour's real cost includes the weeks after. Freshly lightened hair wants sulphate-free washing, less heat and a toner refresh after some weeks when yellow tones creep back; ask your colourist to write the plan down. Hot water and sun both fade colour faster; cooler washes and a UV-protecting spray in summer stretch the interval between visits. Etrit Hair stocks premium haircare precisely for this phase, and VOGUEhair's Olaplex partnership extends into take-home bond care.

The honest budgeting question is therefore not what the appointment costs but what the look costs per month. A balayage from 140 euro that grows out gracefully for four months can be cheaper in practice than a 40 euro full colour that needs a root touch-up every four weeks. Your colourist can estimate both rhythms for your hair in the consultation; ask for them side by side.

The signals of a serious colourist

Across the five names, the same positive signals recur in different forms: a portfolio you can inspect, all five maintain Instagram, a way to verify the operation, Etrit Hair and VOGUEhair run real websites and B&B publishes its entire price list, and a named person who answers for the work: Etrit Tullumi, Lumnije and Agim, Armend Gashi, Besirja.

The warning signs are equally consistent and worth naming plainly: a quote that cannot be put in writing, a promise to take you from dark brown to platinum in one afternoon, and a refusal to discuss your hair history. None of these is specific to any salon here; they are the general filters the panel itself applied.

Practical notes for Pristina

Verify locations before you set out. Among the five, only B&B Elegance and Etrit Hair publish a street you can navigate to without doubt; A&L's address differs between sources, directory entries for VOGUEhair conflict with each other, and The Hair Space publishes none. A one-line message saves a crossed-town detour.

And if your colour plans involve an event, work the schedule backwards: colour two to three weeks out, any trial styling after that, and the final wash routine agreed with your colourist. The salons with fixed hours close at 17:00 and 18:00, so big transformations belong on a free morning, not after work.

The ranking comes from the scores of five reviewers, each of whom ranked all 15 salons from 1 to 15. The sum gives the total, out of a maximum of 75.