Behind an unassuming glass door, two young East London founders have quietly been working on opening one of Hackney Wick’s most instantly characterful new ‘third spaces’.

Hour Studio is a hybrid hair salon and coffee room that pools the creative passions of self-taught barber FJ and proud hospitality professional Kayla.

The result is an informal all-day hangout for the community, that’s flexible and big enough to host events into the evening, too.

The business is the natural progression of their determined career paths. “I was obsessed with my hair when I was 15 or 16,” admits FJ. “I would go home after school and fix my hair every day. Then I started doing it for my friends, too, but it wasn’t seen as a serious career path. People laughed it off and school still always pushed going to university.”

Undeterred, FJ turned a room at home into his makeshift studio and leaned heavily into growing a reputation via social media, building up a YouTube following of over 100k in the process, all while also studying Business Management at uni, as advised.

Kayla too was discouraged by teachers from her “improper” early career in hospitality, which also started at just 16, working in a Marriott Hotel, then moving through pubs, fine dining and cafes.

“I was always being told to go to university, too” she agrees, “To do something ‘proper’, but I was like, you know what, I kind of enjoy doing this. It gave me a lot of self-doubt for a while, but I just kept taking it day by day, and suddenly I’d got eight years experience under my belt now that I can now use to its full potential."

So, the ambitious duo decided to look for a location to strike out on their own terms. Growing up in nearby West Ham, they’d known Hackney Wick as “kind of like a dump” during their youth, says FJ, but Kayla’s dance background meant she was also regularly coming to the area’s dance studios, and could see the potential for them to set up shop in one of the growing number of small artistic studio units.

They started up a flight of stairs at Main Yard in a tiny unit without its own front door. “If you wanted a coffee, you basically had to already be a hair client,” laughs Kayla. But steadily they’ve grown to a point where they have the confidence to move and take on a ground floor space.

FJ tells us that his experience with the many different hair types his East London upbringing (and YouTube success) brought into that early bedroom studio has stood him in good stead to attract a strong local clientele.

But the goal was never just a quick in‑and‑out barbershop doing decent coffee: “With the move to a bigger unit, we wanted to create a space that is the direct opposite of transactional,” says Kayla, “and instead make it somewhere anyone can just come in and hang out and make it their third space. Calling it Hour Studio is unisex, inclusive, and deliberately ambiguous. We want it to feel like a living room, not a café or salon, so we’ve designed it with sofas, board games and not too many tables.”

The coffee side of the business is “specialty and small‑menu by design,” she says, using direct‑trade roasters to better support farmers and pricing intentionally to keep drinks accessible to locals.

The duo’s Filipino heritage shaped the tone from the beginning, as they wanted to bring that sense of familial hospitality and warmth into a London hair studio – a place where you’re going to feel looked after, not simply processed.

Now that the ground‑floor space is open, the focus is moving to hosting more events, ranging from live DJ radio broadcasts to supper clubs, mini performances and other afterhours uses.

It’s also, in the spirit of our mutual support network, also the official pick-up point for online orders of The Wick Book, giving more local a first look inside the space.

The coffee is top notch and the welcome is warm, so even if you’ve already got a copy of the book and your hair is looking tight, there are plenty or reasons to drop in and hang out.