Forecast Salon

Forecast Salon runs a twenty-seat styling studio on 28th Avenue South in Homewood, a scale that puts it among the larger independent salons in a neighborhood dense with hair studios. The shop describes its own approach around fashion, creativity, and innovation, and it backs that positioning with an in-house education arm called Forecast University, which trains its own stylists rather than relying solely on outside certification programs.

That internal training program matters for a salon of Forecast’s size. With a twenty-chair studio, the shop needs a steady pipeline of stylists who can work at a consistent technical level, and building that training in-house lets the salon shape new stylists around its own standards rather than hoping outside cosmetology school graduates arrive fully formed. The salon also offers chair rental arrangements for established stylists who want a station without joining as a commission employee, a structure that has let Forecast grow past what a single owner and staff could typically support.

The salon’s public-facing style, visible in the color and cutting work its stylists post to social media, leans toward bold, editorial-influenced techniques: dramatic color blocking, precise summer cuts, and other looks that go beyond a standard trim-and-blowout service. Stylists including those posting under the shop’s Forecast Salon handles have built individual followings around specific techniques, giving prospective clients a way to pick a stylist based on a very particular style before booking.

Forecast has also built sustainability messaging into its identity, describing itself with language around environmentally conscious practices as part of its broader brand. That combination, a large-format studio with in-house training and an explicit sustainability angle, sets it apart from the smaller, single-specialty salons that make up much of Homewood’s salon scene. The shop also serves cocktails to clients during appointments, a small touch that pushes the experience closer to a social outing than a purely functional hair appointment.

Located on 28th Avenue South, Forecast sits within the same walkable pocket of Homewood retail that includes several other salons, boutiques, and restaurants, making it easy for clients to pair a salon visit with lunch or shopping nearby. The studio’s twenty-chair scale means appointment availability tends to be more flexible than at smaller boutique salons, since a client is not limited to a single stylist’s schedule but can choose among a larger roster working the same space.

For a neighborhood that already supports a dense cluster of independent hair salons, Forecast has carved out a niche as the larger, more education-focused option, one built around training its own stylists and pushing more editorial, trend-forward color and cutting work than some of its smaller neighbors. That scale, paired with the shop’s own university-style training pipeline, has let it maintain a consistent standard across a much larger team than most independent salons in Homewood attempt to run.

The salon’s chair rental model also means the specific mix of stylists working at Forecast can shift over time as independent professionals move in and out of the space, a structure different from a commission-based shop where every stylist is a direct employee. For clients, that arrangement usually shows up as a wider variety of individual pricing and specialties under one roof, since chair renters set their own rates and build their own client books even while sharing the salon’s physical space, branding, and front desk. Combined with the shop’s twenty-chair capacity, that flexibility has helped Forecast stay adaptable as trends and staff both shift over time, without needing to overhaul the business itself each time an individual stylist’s specialty or clientele changes.

Homewood shoppers moving along 28th Avenue South will find Forecast positioned among a run of other independent businesses, making a salon visit easy to fold into a longer afternoon of errands nearby.