Left Handed Hairdressing Scissors

Mixing them up won’t provide the best results and can even cause you problems with your styling hand if you’re not careful.

The proper thing to do is avoid right handed scissors if you’re left handed and pick up hairdressing scissors that were made for you. Many brands offer scissors for left handed stylists, so there’s no excuse to pass up the opportunity. Left handed stylists should start to use left handed scissors from day one, and that doesn’t mean styling scissors, it means every kind of scissor. By forcing your hand to use a tool meant for right handed people, you can cause problems for yourself. Right handed scissors are not designed to be flipped over and used by left handed stylists. Some leftie stylists do this by resting a finger on the other ring and having the tension knob facing the customer’s head, which is impractical.

Switching from a right handed pair of hairdressing scissors to a left handed pair may cause confusion and problems at first. What might happen is that the blades will bend the hair at the ends instead of snipping through it cleanly, making the styling process more time consuming. To avoid this problem, try and cut without moving your fingers, using just your thumb to accomplish successful cuts. You might have to keep practicing this until you get the hang of it. Avoid pushing your thumb all the way through the thumb ring, because this pressure causes the hair to bend. You get this habit by using right handed scissors but can be easily overcome. Simply place a rubber insert into the thumb ring to make you get used to snipping with the tip of your thumb.

How to identify a left handed scissor? First observe the blade where you are meant to place your finger, this should be on the top. The blade where your thumb is supposed to go should be on the bottom, underneath the blade your finger controls.  You may have seen brands of scissors that are built with reversible tension mechanisms that let you switch the scissors around, which is fine for those who are used to cutting with right handed scissors and do not wish for the tension knob to face the customer’s head. However, these shears are still designed for right handed stylists.

Do the correct thing and choose a pair of left handed hairdressing scissors from the start!