Booking a haircut can be stressful when you’re trying to schedule around convenience. You’re doing the mental gymnastics to make sure you’re booking on a day when you don’t have a lot going on so you can really enjoy your scalp massage and not feel rushed in making decisions. Then you want to consider the rest of your week, because ideally you’ll have something planned — a dinner with friends or a team happy hour — where you’ll show off your fresh cut and blowout.
Ahead of September with back-to-school chops top of mind, some people are considering an alternative approach to cutting their hair, timing it around the position of the moon (not a block in their Google Calendar).
The New Moon energy
Laura Guerrero-Nieto, a cultural worker, activist, and community organizer in LA, grew up tracking the moon. “As a child, I loved finding [the moon] in the night sky and was in awe every instance when I saw her full or with a Cheshire cat smile,” she recalls. When Guerrero-Nieto reached her mid-twenties — a time when many of us experience major life changes and periods of uncertainty — she began charting the moon’s cycles, specifically the New Moon phase.
New Moons happen at the beginning of every monthly lunar cycle. In astrology, the New Moon is a time to plant seeds of intention. That idea “intuitively resonated with my heart,” Guerrero-Nieto explains. She had cultural wisdom to back it, learning about ancient indigenous farmers who harvested during the New Moon to maximize abundance of crops to feed their communities, and Asian traditions where haircuts took place just before the Lunar New Year to shed back luck or energy and transition into a fresh start. In an effort to welcome her own personal “cycles of rebirth and transformation,” Guerrero-Nieto began aligning her salon appointments with the new moon. “[It] allowed me to move from simple aesthetic motivations into spiritual ones,” she explains.
“Ironically, I notice the clients who choose to believe in external factors, like the moon, tend to believe in themselves. It’s peculiar yet impactful.”
Hairstylist Sal SalcedoWhile the Full Moon often gets a lot of love, according to tarot reader and high priestess Solaris, the New Moon is a more helpful barometer when it comes to manifesting, or plotting a change or a new beginning — something like a haircut, be it a trim or a big chop. “The New Moon basically marks a new cycle and a new beginning,” explains Solaris. “It’s a raw energy to work with. In the case of beauty, it’s a great time to set a new style for the way that you want to carry your energy throughout the month.”
The rise of the New Moon haircut
When scheduling an appointment for a New Moon haircut, Guerrero-Nieto calls hairstylist Sal Salcedo who says that requests for an appointment in alignment with the New Moon are becoming more common in his salon. “Clients are constantly in the salon, during either New Moon or Full Moon, most of the time without a conscious realization,” Salcedo says. “Though the number of people who make a conscious decision to come in during the New Moon has slowly increased through the years — it’s definitely a conversation that continues to grow amongst clients and the people they know. Perhaps 10% of clients make the decision to come during this time of the month in particular.”
The whole concept of a New Moon haircut, Salcedo says, is rooted in spiritual awareness. “I definitely see a stronger sense of empowerment among clients who choose this path,” he explains. “Ironically, I notice the clients who choose to believe in external factors, like the moon, tend to believe in themselves. It’s peculiar yet impactful; it’s hard to describe in a few words. There’s this sense of connection to the magic that lives out there but also within, connecting to earth, the stars, and the cosmos.”
“Cutting my hair at the New Moon brings presence and ceremony to what could be a routine trim.”
Laura Guerrero-NietoGuerrero-Nieto says that her New Moon haircuts feel different. “Cutting my hair at the New Moon brings presence and ceremony to what could be a routine trim,” she explains. “I feel a deeper sense of care and appreciation for my hair, which grounds me.” Most astrologers agree that cultivating a sense of gratitude for your hair is important. “Yes, my hair looks great, but this is really about feeling great within my being and my hair being an extension of that internal expression,” Guerrero-Nieto adds. According to the 1.2 billion TikTok views on videos tagging #newmoonhaircut, many people are interested in exploring this approach.
Planning your New Moon haircut
Planning a haircut around the New Moon doesn’t have to be a precise science. Each of the four major lunar phases (in order, New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, Last Quarter) lasts approximately seven days. You can look to the sky to clock the size of the moon — although a New Moon is often invisible to the naked eye. “I do a simple Google search and also listen to weekly and monthly astrological podcasts from my favorite astrologers — Ghost of a Podcast and Embodied Astrology — and add the dates to my calendar,” offers Guerrero-Nieto. Solaris recommends using the Time Passages app, which shows exactly what phase the moon is in. You can also look ahead if you’re planning for next month, which Solaris says is a great time to get a haircut.
Not only are we heading into a New Moon on September 14, but there’s planetary alignment as well, making it a great time to schedule your cut. “The planets are going to be direct starting in September,” says Solaris. “Most of the planets are heavily retrograded in the summertime. But by September, we’re in the clear.”
As for what Guerrero-Nieto is envisioning for her fall haircut, it’s going to channel energy instead of trends. “For the New Moon after the Summer Solstice I’m going to play with luscious waves and curls and will ask Sal for the best style to promote volume and body,” she says. “I want my hair to roll like the waves of the ocean.”
