A Salon Makeover: Casey Brookshire’s New Studio

Casey Brookshire – owner of MOD Hair Salon – just celebrated her two-year anniversary with Sola Salon Studios in Carlsbad, CA — and, she did it in style, revamping her entire suite to reflect her salon’s mod values.

When you’ve been in the industry for twelve years, you know exactly what makes you tick. “I’m not the kind of person who likes to come to work, clock in and be told what to do,” Casey admits.

Thanks to a mentor she met early in her career, the stylist knew how to run a business; when Casey launched MOD Hair Salon, she was a natural. “Yeah, you work around the clock,” Casey says. But she’s happy running the show, and that passion shines through in all aspects of business — even the salon’s décor!

Last fall, Casey decided it was time to makeover her studio space. The project was more of an overhaul, actually — one that began when Casey switched to Square Up for her scheduling needs. With her new appointment app running, the tech-savvy entrepreneur decided it would be a good time to revamp an outdated website, and buy a new domain, too. From there, things snowballed.

Before Pic

Casey switched out her product and color lines. And, she’s launching a YouTube channel to demonstrate at-home styling techniques, an idea inspired by one of the Sola workshops Casey attended in 2015.

“I figured if I was better connected with clients, that would generate more interest and revenue,” Casey says, adding, “Remodeling the salon from the inside just seemed like a natural fit to go with everything else I was changing.”

The stylist’s biggest qualm with her original space was the logo. She’d done the lettering for it herself in paint, directly on her suite’s wall. “The wall is textured, and the lines were wonky,” Casey says. A new sign, then, was the synthesis for the major remodel that followed.

Adding a vinyl sign would have been straightforward — but it wouldn’t have been perfect, given the wall’s texture. “And metal,” Casey says, “would have been too hard to fabricate.”

Luckily, Casey’s dad works in wood; over three months, he helped his daughter create the perfect logo via a painstaking process that involved routing letters with a stencil. From there, Casey ordered lights on Amazon so her new sign would be “all lit up and bright,” she says.

Things didn’t exactly go off without a hitch, though. The first problem was finding a way to “float the letters,” as Casey puts it. Her dad ended up making a brace for them, and screwing each letter together. “We finally got the whole sign put together, we put it up — and then the lights weren’t working,” Casey says. So, she and her dad took everything down, and ordered new lights.

Speaking of lights, Casey saw an opportunity to create the ideal lighting for before/after pictures, which is another initiative Casey’s been running on Facebook and Instagram.

The solution was to create two backdrops – one for light hair, one for dark – on the wall opposite MOD Hair Salon’s new logo, and add three hanging pendants. The pendants give off warm light, and diffuse the existing scheme, thanks to gold dipped bulbs Casey found on Amazon.

Placing her pendants proved challenging because of the salon’s foam tiling. Casey didn’t want to destroy that, and her solution involved pushing the tiles up, and hanging skinny shower curtain hooks from the wood beams above. “I had to put the lights on pulleys, so I can adjust the height for different people,” Casey adds.

Mod mood light set, Casey was ready to further enhance the ambiance with a living wall. She learned about Woolly Pockets online, and removed some shelving in order to hang the moisture-resistant military-grade material over her sink.

“You put plants inside, and they hang over so that it ends up being a living wall,” Casey explains. The pockets are modular, and she has plans to grow her living wall, especially after she realized how much her clients love the greenery: “I’ve had a lot of really positive feedback, particularly from having the plants inside,” says Casey, adding, “It literally freshens the air!”

Casey finished her space with a few DIY, Pinterest-inspired touches, such as the sputniks. That nod to the space age era was created with Styrofoam balls, wooden bamboo skewers and paint. “Everyone is amazed that you can make something like that, and it didn’t cost a fortune to buy,” says Casey. She did the wall art herself, too, and the look is contemporary-eclectic and a tad rustic — “a blend of styles,” Casey explains.

She also added a new drink station with loose and bagged tea, coffee, hot chocolate and an inconspicuous water cooler.

Her original space was fine, but this one feels much more like home. Like any major remodel, Casey’s salon makeover was well worth it in the end!