You know the feeling. You’ve found a salon that looks lovely, the photos are nice, the price is right. And you still hover over the button, because you have no idea whether the person holding the scissors is any good. Booking somewhere new is a small leap of faith every single time.
That’s where the Top Rated badge comes in. It’s the one thing on a salon’s page that wasn’t written by the salon, and it’s decided entirely by people like you who went in, sat in the chair, and said what they thought afterwards.
What the Top Rated badge actually means
Top Rated is our yearly badge of excellence. Once a year we look at real client reviews and real bookings. The salons that have consistently delivered get the badge on their Treatwell page for the following twelve months (a full year of bragging rights).
Here’s the important bit: it can’t be entered, applied for or bought. There’s no form, no fee and no judging panel sitting in a room deciding who deserves it. Nobody at Treatwell picks favourites (we wouldn’t dare). The reviews do the picking.
It’s also not a one-good-week award. A salon needs to keep that standard up across the whole year. That’s why the badge tends to sit with the places that are brilliant every Tuesday afternoon, not just the ones having a moment.
How salons earn it
Two things have to be true at once. A salon needs enough reviews for there to be real evidence, and a high enough proportion of those reviews need to be five stars (quality and quantity, no shortcuts). Volume alone doesn’t do it, and one glowing review doesn’t either.
We group the thresholds by salon size, so a one-chair studio isn’t up against a salon with twelve stylists and twelve times the reviews. Small independents win these every year.
How to spot a Top Rated salon when you’re booking
The badge sits right at the top of a salon’s page, and you’ll also see it in the list when you’re browsing treatments. If a salon has won it more than once, the previous years’ badges sit further down the page, which is the bit worth scrolling for. One badge is lovely. Five in a row is a salon that has never had an off year.
You can also skip the scrolling entirely and search Top Rated salons only, by ticking Top rated venues in the search filters. Every result is a salon whose clients rated it into the top tier, which makes “where should I go?” a much shorter conversation with yourself.
Why your review matters more than you’d think
It’s the only thing that decides the badge
No review, no data. A salon that’s brilliant but rarely reviewed can miss out on a badge it deserved, purely because not enough people said anything (which is a bit heartbreaking, honestly). Your two lines are one of the inputs, and for a small salon they count for more than you’d guess.
It’s the thing the next person is reading
Think about how you choose. You scroll to the reviews and you look for someone who wanted roughly what you want. That’s exactly what your review does for the next person standing where you were, hovering over the button.
The useful ones aren’t the long ones. They’re the specific ones. “Asked for a trim and they actually kept the length” tells a stranger more than five lines of lovely thank you. Name the treatment, name the person if they were great, say what you were worried about beforehand. It takes about as long as waiting for a kettle to boil.
Had a treatment recently and never got round to saying anything? Your past bookings are sitting in your account waiting for you (no judgement).
And yes, you get something back for it
Reviews aren’t a favour you do us. They earn you points through Treatwell Rewards, which every Treatwell account is already signed up to. You don’t have to join anything, and if you’ve booked with us before you’re already in (points and all).
How the points work
You earn points every time you book and pay through Treatwell, and you earn more of them when you pay online in advance than when you pay at the salon. Once you’ve built up enough, they turn into a voucher you can spend on any treatment bookable through Treatwell. The current rates, the milestones and what each one is worth all live on the Treatwell Rewards page, so that’s the place to check what you’re working towards.
Just remember to be logged in when you book, otherwise the points have nowhere to land (we’ve all had that sinking moment).
Reviews earn points too
Leaving a review earns you points on top of what you’ve already collected for the booking, as long as there’s something in it. One decent sentence does it, and you’ll see how many points the review is worth while you’re writing it.
So the loop closes on itself rather neatly. You book, you earn points, you leave a review, you earn a few more, and the review you left helps decide who’s wearing a badge this time next year.
What a missing badge does and doesn’t mean
Plenty of brilliant salons don’t have one, and it’s worth knowing why before you write somewhere off. A salon that joined Treatwell recently hasn’t had a full qualification year yet. A salon whose clients love it but never review it won’t have the volume. And a salon that had a wobbly patch can miss out one year and win it back the next, because we judge each year on its own.
So treat the badge as a strong yes rather than a veto. If a salon without one has a run of recent reviews that sound like the treatment you want, that’s still a good sign. The badge saves you time; it isn’t the only evidence there is.
How to leave a review
You don’t have to go looking for it. After your appointment, a review request arrives on its own, and you can leave your review straight from there. If you’ve left it a while, your past bookings live in your Treatwell account and you can review from there instead.
Two things make a review properly useful to the next person:
- Mention the treatment you actually had, not just the salon
- Mention the person who did it, if they were brilliant, because reviews that name someone are the ones people read twice
That’s it. No essay required.
Go on, book something lovely
You’ve got the badge decoded, you know how to find the salons wearing one, and you know that your two lines afterwards are what puts it there next year. The only thing left is the fun part. Browse salons near you, read what real clients said, compare prices, and book for whenever suits, whether that’s this evening, Saturday morning, or the second you finish reading this.
FAQs
Do Top Rated salons charge more?
No. The badge has nothing to do with price. It’s calculated from reviews and bookings, not from what a salon charges, and plenty of badge holders are the most reasonably priced places on your street.
How many reviews does a salon need to qualify?
Plenty. That’s rather the point. A Top Rated salon has built up a real body of reviews across a full year, and the large majority of them are five stars. The bar moves with salon size, so a one-chair studio and a twelve-chair salon aren’t held to the same number, but both had to clear it.
Do I have to leave five stars?
Absolutely not. Leave the rating you actually think, every time. A review system only works if it reflects what really happened, and an honest four stars with a reason is more useful to the next person than a reflexive five.
Can a salon lose its Top Rated badge?
Yes. We judge each year on its own, so a badge isn’t permanent. That’s the point of it: it tells you a salon was excellent recently, not that it was excellent once.
How long does the badge last?
A full year, until we award the next round. Previous years’ badges stay visible further down the salon’s page, so you can see whether this is a first win or a long run.