THREE CROSSES: Back from maternity leave and open three days a week, Lucy’s home salon has just been named the best in the UK

A beauty salon run from a house in Three Crosses, open three days a week, has been named the best home salon in the UK.

Lucy Hellyer Jones opened Lucy’s Beauty Studio on Cilonnen Road in 2016 after leaving the spa trade. On Saturday 15 August she collected the Hair and Beauty Awards‘ national Best Home Salon title at Manchester’s AO Arena, in what she says is the salon’s tenth year.

“To now be able to say that a little home salon here in Swansea has been named Best Home Salon in the UK is something I’m incredibly proud of,” she said.

Three days a week, and a baby at home

The salon opens Tuesday to Thursday, and Lucy has only recently come back to it after maternity leave with her daughter. She returned, she says on her website, “with fresh energy and an even greater passion”, and used the time to set up something new alongside the treatments.

Her clients come for waxing and tinting, lashes, nails, facials and chemical peels, massage, pregnancy treatments and wedding make-up. She holds Level 2 and 3 beauty therapy qualifications, a holistic therapies qualification and a degree in spa management and advanced therapies, and spent five years in spas before going it alone.

She said she wanted to show “just how professional, skilled and successful home-based beauty businesses can be”, and that a welcoming space where clients get “exceptional care” had always been the point.

The academy she opened on the way back

The new arm is Lucy’s Beauty Academy, launched as she returned from leave. It runs accredited courses in nails, from a manicure course through gel, builder gel and extensions to an e-file course and an “ultimate” nail course, plus lash lifting, brow waxing and tinting, brow lamination and one-to-one masterclasses.

The courses are accredited so that students can get insured and start earning straight away, she says, and are taught one-to-one or in small groups at the salon.

“I’m incredibly passionate about raising standards within the beauty industry,” she said.

The award

The Hair and Beauty Awards is a UK-wide awards scheme with regional finals feeding a national final, and Best Home Salon is one of its categories. This year’s was the first held in Manchester after a move from Birmingham, a full-day event at the AO Arena with a trade show, the ceremony hosted by Jake Quickenden and a festival-style after-party headlined by Professor Green. Lucy’s was the national winner in her category.

She has been in the industry for 15 years, and marks the award as coming in the salon’s tenth. A “Make-up and Mimosas” evening, where clients learn to do their own make-up, is the next thing on the salon’s calendar.