Color & Highlights in West Hartford

Inside Jeunesse Salon and Spa's 16 private suites, a cast of independent beauty specialists accomplishes aesthetic feats with a range of salon and spa services for hair, nails, and skin. Its featured hairstylists and aestheticians boost visitors' outer allure with haircuts, highlights, and facials, while massage therapists knead away pockets of accumulated tension. A variety of packages offer combined services geared toward teens, brides-to-be, and alligators in need of a moisturizing facial and a back massage.

Nail tailors at the posh Off Center Salon & Spa console neglected feet with luxurious pedicures and transform hands into mobile fashion accessories with long-lasting polish. Hybrid CND Shellac polish cures under UV light, creating 10 chip-resistant shields that rebuff palms' attempts to absorb fingers for up to two weeks. T-spa pedicures begin with a fragrant lavender salt soak, which softens soles for exfoliation through a three-step green-tea mask. After scrubbing away calluses by holding them against an even rougher foot, gentle hands dispel lingering tension with an aromatherapy hot-stone massage and deftly paint digits in Chanel hues.

Named Best Hair Salon in Hartford by the Hartford Advocate, L Designs cuts, colors, and styles hairs to the height of follicle fashion. Shape up with a shampoo, haircut, and blow-dry ($40 and up), tame wild locks with a straightening treatment ($100 and up), or get long enough hair to be used as climbing rope with extensions (pricing varies). Friendly, experienced colorists can change tone ($72 and up), selectively shade ($100 and up), or hold hands with a first-time coloree ($90 and up).

Recently remodeled Stylin' Edge Salon burnishes bodies with a wide range of beauty services. Opt for the mani-pedi and let shoe tenants and mitten dwellers take up temporary residence in a soothing soak, sea-salt scrub, and OPI or Essie polishing. Alternately, freshen up your frontage with a facial, during which visages are steamed, cleaned, exfoliated, massaged, and masked until they draw crowds like a radiant disco ball. Waxing services, meanwhile, span the skin spectrum, from a Brazilian bikini wax (starting at $35) to an eyebrow shaping ($12), guaranteed to herd hair follicles into a suitable skin corral and keep them from overgrazing the fragile fields of social acceptability.

Salon Glo's nail designers lacquer lackluster reachers with long-lasting products by Shellac and OPI. Relax in a warm bath of natural light as expert technicians cover finger shields with the innovative Shellac gel-polish hybrid, whose resistance to chipping significantly reduces the need to wear thimbles while brushing pet porcupines. Shellac keeps nails shiny, colorful, and uniformly dressed for up to two weeks and usually removes at a rate of about one minute per finger. With either option for today's deal, Salon Glo treats toenails to their own round of lavishing, polishing each piggy with a selection of radiant pigments. In the basic manicure, brush wielders buff, shape and paint fingernails, leaving hands glossed and ready to elbow feet out of stylish summer sandals.

Avon Hair Company's professional, continually educated stylists wield meticulous know-how in Goldwell and Redken coloring and foiling, imbuing multidimensional hues into skillfully sliced and sculpted manes. Amid the salon's cozy environs, staffers engineer modern, trendy hairdos with straightening treatments, permanent waves, and hair extensions. A smattering of waxing services ousts surplus strands from lips, chins, and third eyebrows.