Hj interiors: gina conway aveda salon and spa in wimbledon

Gina Conway's new spa and salon has brought some Californian sunshine to the heart of Wimbledon. Fact file

• Name: Gina Conway Aveda Salon and Spa
• Address: 20 Wimbledon Hill Road
• Owner: Gina Conway
• Budget: £335K
• Staff: 45

Gina Conway’s mission has always been to bring joy to her clients through impeccable customer service, a professional and educated team and a warm welcome. She’s continued this positive philosophy with her new salon in Wimbledon. When the lease ended on Gina’s former salon in Wimbledon, she discovered the space inside Elys Urban Beauty, which is an emporium for in-store beauty treatments and decided it would be the perfect fit. Gina Conway Aveda Salon and Spa now sits alongside a collective of service-orientated beauty brands adjacent to the Elys of Wimbledon department store. Spread across three floors, the boutique salon and spa feature a dedicated hair and scalp consultation area, a retail space, a vintage blow-dry bar on the ground floor as well as the luxury salon and spa services upstairs. The modern and whimsical style of Gina’s salon belies the legal battle that began the whole process. “The project was in a legal battle from the beginning as the tenants did not want to leave,” explains Gina. “Once it was settled in court another battle began.

The salon has transformed into the Manhattan atelier meets chic Parisian space that Gina had envisioned.

We had the challenge of cutting a hole in the large department store wall to adjoin the two buildings.” By all accounts it was a bigger job than first thought. “It was like Jenga as once you took one brick out the building started to shift,” recalls Gina. Now all the drama is over, the salon has transformed into the Manhattan atelier meets chic Parisian space that Gina had envisioned. Materials such as raw wood, concrete, exposed brick and pops of teal herringbone tiles have been used to break up the different spaces of the salon. Grass, moss and living walls (a feature in all three of Gina’s other salons) give the space a calming feel. This is enhanced by the predominantly blue, green and grey shades which are used over the three floors. On the ceiling vintage ladders with plants laced between the rungs make guests feel like they are in a secret garden. Gina was focussed on her pursuit to find the perfect pieces for her new salon. “I fell in love with some Eammes-style Perspex chairs I saw in a little salon in Strasbourg, France,” she reveals. “I got the name and chased them up! It turns out the brand is called Cinderella and they are from Paris – just 10 minutes from where I live,” she says. A fairy-tale story that’s befitting of the happily-ever-after ending the salon deserves.

Gina’s top tips:

• Involve your team: Get your staff to put forward their ideas, so they have input and believe in the design.
• Stay in control: If you have a project manager, don’t let them do everything. If something gets decided on without your consent and it goes wrong, you will only have yourself to blame.
• Make yourself known: We only moved across the road but some clients still struggled to find us. We put a sign in the window of the old salon that said: ‘Look behind you!’