What is Ethical Beauty?

We are a Proud Ethical Beauty Advocate.

When you choose to come see us for your nail care needs, you are choosing to support an ethical beauty business, filled with a highly trained, well-paid professional staff in a beautiful environment with the highest quality products.

We are a Certified Safe Salon.

We provide extensive training and follow safety standards that are above and beyond State regulations. All of this requires investment in training, special equipment and supplies to ensure healthful nail services.

We are proud to be part of the movement redefining the industry and providing a better, safer environment for our customers and our employees. This includes:

Paying our employees a fair,
living wage - legally

Using the best products to minimize
potentially harmful ingredients
whenever possible

Following safe beauty practices
in all of our services

We are an Ethical Employer.

Being an ethical employer is more than just paying our staff a living wage - it's also about paying them a legal, fair wage.

Many nail salons pay their employees cash under the table, often at rates below minimum wage (and sometimes nothing at all - see the New York Times article below) or misclassify their employees as independent contractors, placing all of the tax burden on the employee.

These employment practices enable salons to have low prices at the expense of the employee. In addition to mis-treating and underpaying their staff, these businesses are essentially practicing tax evasion by avoiding paying thousands of dollars in employer taxes every month. This ultimately hurts the employee because they miss out on things like social security and unemployment benefits, as well as the ability to verify their wages in order to get a car loan or approval for a home loan or lease.

We know about these practices because we have employees that have worked at salons that engage in these practices. And we are proud to say we've recently been audited by the US Department of Labor and our case was closed with no action, meaning we are doing everything as we should be according to US labor laws.

We are a Safe Salon.

At LACQUER, safety and cleanliness is priority. We are a Certified Safe Salon® which means the entire staff has undergone extensive training on safe and healthful nail care and we practice the highest levels of sanitation.

• all of our services are soakless, meaning we do not soak the hands or feet in water, we use warm towels instead - this is better for your skin, and the environment and ensures a safe service free of cross-contamination
• our technicians wear a new pair of disposable gloves for every service
• all of our files and buffers are single
• use our metal implements (nippers, pushers, and clippers) are sterilized in a medical grade autoclave after every use (you may ask to see ours if you'd like - we're pretty proud of it, it's super fancy!)
• we use hospital grade EPA to sanitize all hard surfaces in the salon
• we will not perform services on any clients that have medically diagnosed conditions that are contagious or put anyone's safety at risk

These are little things that not every nail salon does, and sometimes the things you don't always notice, but they make a big difference in cleanliness and safety for clients and employees.

Read our tips on How to Spot A Safe & Ethical Salon