About Me

Hello, I’m Debby Smith, and this is my directory.

It started with a bad manicure. I’d moved to Luton and needed somewhere new, so I did what everyone does: typed “nail salon near me” into Google and picked one from the map. What I got was a rushed set, a technician who clearly hated her job, and a gel that lifted within four days. The salon two streets over or, in other words, the one I found three months later, the one I still go to hadn’t appeared anywhere on that first page.

That’s the problem I’ve spent 8 years trying to fix.

What’s actually here

UK Nail Salon Directory lists more than 15,000 nail salons across the United Kingdom. Every one of them sits in one of twelve regions: the East Midlands, East of England, Greater London, the North East, the North West, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the South East, the South West, Wales, the West Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber.

You can browse down from a region to a town or search for the place you’re standing in right now. Each listing gives you the things you actually need before you pick up the phone:

• The salon’s rating and how many people have left one
• The full address and phone number
• Opening hours, day by day
• Practical details — whether they take walk-ins or need an appointment booked, whether there’s a loo, that sort of thing
• Photos, where the salon has them
• No sponsored top spot. No “featured” salon that paid to sit above better ones. The order you see is the order the data gives us.

Where the information comes from

I’d rather tell you this plainly than have you wonder.

Salon details — addresses, phone numbers, opening hours, ratings and review counts — are compiled from publicly available business listings and refreshed on a regular cycle. That means the directory is broad: nearly twenty-four thousand salons is more than any one person could ever visit. It also means it isn’t perfect. Salons close. They move. They change their Tuesday hours and don’t tell anybody.

So please ring ahead before you travel, and if you spot something wrong, tell me. Corrections from readers and salon owners are the single best source of accuracy I have, and I read every one.

Advice worth reading

Alongside the directory there’s an Advice section, where I write up the questions people keep asking. How to get acrylics off at home without wrecking your natural nail. What to expect from a fill. Which treatments are worth the money and which ones aren’t.

The rule I write for is simple: if the honest answer is “you don’t need a salon for this,” I say so. A directory that tells you to book an appointment for everything isn’t a directory; it’s an advert.

The Reviews section is where longer write-ups will live. It’s empty at the moment, I’d rather it stayed empty than fill it with things I haven’t properly looked into.

If you run a salon

Small nail salons are some of the hardest-working businesses on the high street, and most of them are close to invisible online. A cracking technician with no website and no marketing budget loses out to a chain with a paid ad. That isn’t a fair fight.

Being listed here costs you nothing. If your entry is wrong, missing, or shows the wrong photo, get in touch and I’ll fix it. If you’ve closed or moved, tell me that too — an out-of-date listing helps nobody, least of all you.

How the site pays for itself

Hosting, data and the hours it takes to keep this running all cost money, so some pages carry affiliate links to nail products on Amazon. If you buy through one, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

What that never buys is a position in the directory. Salons cannot pay to rank higher, appear more often, or have a bad rating hidden. If that ever changes, this paragraph will change with it.

Say hello

I’m a one-woman operation, so replies aren’t instant but they do come. Corrections, complaints, salon recommendations, or a note to say a listing helped you find somewhere decent: all welcome.

You’ll find me on the contact page.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you find somewhere brilliant.

Debby Smith
Founder, UK Nail Salon Directory