Yelp is notorious for its, shall we say, picky reviewers. So may be nothing short of miraculous that, with 118 reviews, The Light Fantastic Salonspa at 146 Fillmore St. has a perfect five stars.

So when we went to get to know Marlo Sawalha and Tania Tucciarone, The Light Fantastic’s founders and owners, the obvious first question was: What’s their secret?

“Never looking at our Yelp reviews,” Marlo said with a laugh. “Really, just never looking at our Yelp reviews.”

Tania added: “I think we really have great clients that are just super sweet to us.”

That may be, but it’s safe to say that Marlo, Tania and the rest of the salon’s staff must be doing something right in their array of hair and skin services. And in talking with them about their business and its history, the one thing that keeps coming up is comfort. Marlo and Tania love what they do and feel very comfortable in the workplace they’ve made for themselves, which in turn seems to be why they’re so good at making clients feel at ease.

The two are very comfortable with each other, too, which is no surprise given that they’ve been working together for years. They met in Phoenix, Arizona in 1997 while working at a salon together—Tania doing hair, Marlo doing skin. Tania moved to San Francisco in 2003, and Marlo, feeling like she needed a big change in her life, joined her in 2007. 

Before founding The Light Fantastic together in 2008, they worked at a salon downtown that was the polar opposite of their current business. 

“It’s a grind,” Marlo said of working in a corporate spa in downtown San Francisco. “It’s really easy to lose sight of what you’re doing, because you’re just, ‘Get ‘em in, get ‘em out.’”

That downtown salon eventually fell apart and, with more than 20 years experience apiece, the two realized it was time to strike out on their own. 146 Fillmore Street was the first place they looked at, and within a few weeks after initially walking through the front door to check the space out, they were ready to move in. 

They chose the name "The Light Fantastic" after the phrase “to trip the light fantastic”. Commonly attributed to the poet Milton, it means to dance lightly or nimbly, and they wanted to convey a light and airy sensibility. And even though the space was covered in black and gray paint when they first arrived, they could see right away that this was the place. 

Why did they choose to look in the Lower Haight in the first place?

“Because it’s amazing,” Tania said. “Because it’s the greatest neighborhood. It’s so chill.”

“I like the other salons around the neighborhood too,” Marlo said. “We wanted to be in a little hub where all the other hair salons were.”

They’re not just saying that to be good neighborhood boosters, either. A year after moving their business to Fillmore Street, both Tania and Marlo moved four blocks away, in houses right across the street from each other. They are proud Lower Haighters.

“When you reach a point where you come to a neighborhood like this, and you don’t need to work for commission like downtown, you’re already established,” Marlo said. “You want to be in a neighborhood. It’s comfortable for your clients, it’s comfortable for us.”

It turns out the previous occupant of 146 Fillmore Street was an artist who specialized in installations using large light fixtures, which Marlo just found out from a client who had always assumed that was where the name originated. But Marlo and Tania had no idea — it was just pure serendipity.

"I think the Yelp reviews probably reflect that same feeling we had when we finally landed," Marlo says. "There's no formula. You either love it or you don't, and if you don't you move on. If you do, you just keep progressing to the comfort levels of clients. Customize their treatment. That's the most important thing. Nobody wants to feel like a number."