Pressed Roots, the Dallas-founded silk blowout bar built around textured hair, is opening its first salon outside Texas, with a new location planned for 1325 5th Street NE, Suite C, in Washington, D.C. The opening is expected in early December, marking the company's first step onto the East Coast after years of steady growth across the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston markets.
Founder Piersten Gaines started Pressed Roots with pop-up events before opening the brand's first permanent salon in Dallas in 2020, according to houstonchronicle.com. Those early pop-ups, held in the Boston, Atlanta and Dallas areas, helped validate the concept before Gaines built out brick-and-mortar locations, according to the PR Newswire announcement distributed by PR Newswire. Gaines, a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Business School, has since grown the company into four profitable locations across Texas, per the same announcement.
The business expanded its original Dallas salon by 1,500 square feet in 2023 before opening a fourth Texas location in Houston on May 9, 2024 — its first outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area. That Houston salon, which the Houston Chronicle reported spans 1,924 square feet and can accommodate up to 50 stylists, reached profitability within its first year, according to the PR Newswire release. Once the Washington, D.C. salon opens, Pressed Roots will operate five corporate locations.
A Signature Silk Blowout, Now in the DMV
The D.C. salon will offer Pressed Roots' signature silk blowout in a range of finishes, along with trims, detoxifying and deep-conditioning treatments and other add-on services, per the PR Newswire announcement. The Houston Chronicle previously described the brand's signature styling options as including silky straight, loose curls and beach waves. Gaines said the East Coast expansion advances the company's vision of reaching more women nationwide, according to the release.
Every stylist who touches a client's hair at Pressed Roots must first complete a structured curriculum covering consultation, hair health, technique, service execution and hospitality, per the PR Newswire release. That mirrors training requirements described at the company's Texas locations, where Plano Magazine reported that stylists go through an intensive boot camp before ever serving a guest, with continued education built in throughout their time at the company. A separate account from Dallas Innovates described that training as a two- to three-day mandatory program covering the brand's styling method, mission and core values.
Gaines has said cosmetology schools generally don't teach stylists the range of techniques textured hair requires, a gap Texas Metro News reported is central to why training occupies so much of the business. Pressed Roots has framed its approach around a 90-minute styling technique it calls the Pressed Roots Method, developed to avoid damage, according to Dallas Innovates — though other accounts of the method's duration have varied, with Black Enterprise describing it as getting customers out in about 90 minutes.
Funding, Franchising and a Bigger Footprint
The D.C. opening is backed by Pressed Roots' latest funding round, which the PR Newswire announcement says supports both the Washington location and continued corporate and franchise expansion. The company has raised $6 million in total funding to date, according to the release, building on the $3.1 million round Gaines secured in 2024 from tennis star Naomi Osaka, former HP CEO Meg Whitman and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's Schultz Family Foundation, as reported by D Magazine. Former Neiman Marcus CEO Karen Katz has also invested in the company, per the Houston Chronicle.
By April 2025, the company had grown to four locations and 200 employees, all working as employees rather than independent contractors, D Magazine reported. The D.C. expansion is expected to grow the Pressed Roots team by 50 percent, according to the PR Newswire release, and will create opportunities for licensed beauty professionals across the DMV to build textured-hair expertise. Pressed Roots established a franchise program in 2025 and expects its first franchised salons to open in 2027, with the DMV and broader Mid-Atlantic prioritized for future company-owned growth, per the announcement.
The company says it has grown revenue more than 20 times since opening that first permanent Dallas salon and is on track to surpass 150,000 services by the end of 2026, according to the release. Pressed Roots describes itself as a first-to-market luxury express salon experience for women with textured hair, a positioning Black Enterprise has also used to describe the brand. Its team has previously compared the concept to a Drybar for women of color, as Dallas Innovates put it.
Joining an Existing D.C. Textured-Hair Scene
Pressed Roots won't be the only textured-hair specialist in the district. The Kolour Lab, located at 704 O St NW inside The District Hair Lounge, already specializes in maintaining the health and integrity of textured hair alongside color, precision cuts and extensions, including K-tip and micro-link styles customized to a client's hair type and lifestyle, according to its own site. Gaines has said Pressed Roots aims to make expert, consistent textured-hair salon care more accessible to women, a mission that industry data helps explain: a 2017 Mintel report cited by Black Enterprise found that 65 percent of the U.S. population has textured hair, a demographic that spends an estimated $11.4 billion annually on hair products and services.
