How to Create and Charge For Dreadlock Extensions

Liz Kidder, a stylist at Salon Aniu in Amesbury, Massachusetts, has only been in the industry for 7 years but quickly developed a passion (and reputation!) for her dreadlocked creations.

Recently, she took her short-haired coworker, Kerin, to a long red-headed dreadlock beauty! Though it’s not a conventional salon service or popular client request, we think it makes for a fun, unique story.

Here’s how she did it:

The dreadlock extensions were made ahead-of-time with loose "wet and wave" human extension hair. To make one: take a small section of loose hair and tangle it into a ball. Then roll the ball into more of a rope-like shape between your palms. Then, using a crochet hook, pinch the dread with one hand and pull the crochet hook through the dread, back and forth, quickly, with the other hand. Continue this until the entire dread intertwines tighter, leaving the very top of the dread loose and frayed.

“Once all of the extensions were made, I attached them to Kerin's hair in one day. I started from the nape, took 1-inch square sections, and brick-laid the sections starting from the bottom and working my way to the top/front of her head,” she says.

“To attach the dread: I took the section of her 2-3 inch long hair and back-combed it. I took the frayed end of the dread extension and pinched it over the section of her back-combed hair. Then I took the crochet hook and tangled together her hair and the extension hair to dread them together.”

“No products, no chemicals, no bonds, no elastics and voila. She went from short to long hair in 5 hours!” she says. “These dread extensions will stay permanently attached to her hair unless she decides to cut them out. Her natural hair will dread into them as they grow out. Now I have a dread-head-friend!”

Froms tart to finish, including the creation of the extensions and attaching, she says would probably charge about $20/dread. For regular new dreads (no extensions) she charges about $8/dread and for routine maintenance she charges $60/hour. So it really depends on how much hair they have and how big/skinny they want each dread.