The processes of cutting, cleaning, coloring, styling, and arranging hair are known collectively as hairdressing. When the practice of hairdressing relates specifically to men and includes the grooming of beards and mustaches, it is known as barbering.
Humans use a wide variety of tools, however, and attach much importance to hairdressing.
Sulfur bonds are involved in the permanent wave process, and other elements are significant in understanding how to change the color of hair. Hairdressing as an art form uses the principles of color, as in the art of painting. One of the features that sets it apart from painting is that the product has an opinion about the work of art. The tools used in the sculpture or shaping of hair include brushes, combs, scissors, razors, hairpins, clips, such curling implements as hair rollers or curling irons, hairdryers, setting lotions, sprays, and mousses. Perhaps the single most important element in the art of hairdressing is communication between the hairdresser and client and that between the client and the world at large.