A proper weave or wig install, on your own sofa in Marrakech

Here is the part nobody warns you about with a long install: comfort starts to matter around hour two, when your neck aches and you just want to move. At home you can. Take a call, eat something, half-watch a film while she works. There is the privacy of it too. Your hair goes in flat, sometimes with your own leave-out hanging loose and unstyled for a good while, and not everyone wants an audience for that stretch. Your own bathroom is two steps away when she needs to wet the hairline or rinse a section. None of the salon shuffle, nobody you have never met studying the back of your head.

Bring your own bundles, or tell the stylist the texture, length and colour you are chasing and she sources them before the visit. The install sits on a braided foundation, neat and never so tight it stings, and then the wefts go in. Where a weave lives or dies is the top. A closure or frontal has to be bleached, plucked and laid so the parting looks like skin instead of mesh, and that slow fiddly bit is exactly the part a rushed chair skips. She does not skip it.

• Sew-in wefts on a cornrow base, with or without a leave-out
• Closure sew-ins for a finished top and no heat on your own hair
• Frontal installs melted ear to ear and tinted to your skin
• Bonded and quick-weave methods when you want less tension

Travelled with a unit? She will make it wearable. That means customising it for real: bleaching the knots if you want them gone, plucking the part so the hairline looks grown and not drawn on, laying the lace with a hold that survives a Marrakech afternoon, trimming baby hairs only as far as you want (some people love them, some cannot stand them, both are fine by us). If you want nothing glued near your skin, say the word. An elastic band, combs or a braided base will hold a unit down without a drop of adhesive. Brand new wig still in the packet? She will wash it, style it and fit it until it stops looking like a wig and starts looking like hair.

The Marrakech heat and a few hours in a chlorinated pool are not kind to a fresh install. The stylist seals and styles with a week of rooftops in mind, and she will be straight with you about the upkeep. Wrap it at night and keep a small edge brush in your bag. Go easy on heavy oils near the tracks. When the trip is over, or the install has had a good run, taking it out matters just as much as putting it in. A weave that gets yanked takes your edges with it. Book a removal and she unpicks the thread slowly, washes your own hair underneath and hands your scalp back in good shape, ready for whatever is next.

Pick a time online and tell us two things: the method you want, and where the hair is coming from, your bag or ours. The stylist arrives with everything else, sets up in your room, and works at the pace a proper install needs, so keep the afternoon clear rather than wedging it between a tour and a dinner. When it is done she clears away every loose thread and shows you the back in a hand mirror. Then you pay, once it sits exactly how you pictured it. No deposit up front, no surprise total, no dash across Gueliz with the braids half in.