Brayden Pelletier Earns 2026 NAHA Hairstylist of the Year Nod and Keeps Building

When the Professional Beauty Association dropped the list of 2026 NAHA finalists this spring, Brayden Pelletier's name showed up in two categories. The one that catches the most attention is Hairstylist of the Year. The story behind it is more interesting than just another nomination.

Brayden has been doing this for twenty years. He started cutting hair at sixteen. He spent years inside a large salon company as an Educational and Artistic Director before going out on his own and opening Just B Hair in Atlanta. He is currently Redken's Director of Artistic Development and Design and an Artistic Ambassador for the brand. His work has gone down runways for Marc Jacobs and Diesel, has been featured at multiple seasons of New York Fashion Week, and has touched main stage moments at the MTV Video Music Awards.

That kind of resume is the type of thing that usually pulls a stylist away from the chair. Brayden has done the opposite. He is still cutting, still teaching, and still running a salon that is fully active in his home city.

What Makes the Work Stand Out

If you go through Brayden's recent work, the through line is movement. His haircuts do not sit still. There is a fluidity to the way he shapes hair, a soft handed approach to weight removal, and a confidence with negative space that you can see whether the model is wearing the cut on a runway or whether it is a salon client walking out the door on a Tuesday afternoon.

He has built a reputation for taking complicated cutting concepts and breaking them down into language that working stylists can actually use. That is rarer than it sounds. Plenty of stage artists can do beautiful work in front of a camera and cannot explain what their hands just did. Brayden teaches the way he cuts, with clarity, with logic, and with respect for the fact that the person watching has to walk into a salon on Monday morning and apply what they learned.

That instinct for translation is part of what got him named the NAHA 2024 Master Hair Stylist of the Year, and it is the same instinct that has put him in the Hairstylist of the Year category this time around.

The Atlanta Chapter

Just B Hair Salon sits in Atlanta and operates as the home base for Brayden's local work. The salon name itself, just b, has a personality to it. It is not trying to sound luxury or aspirational or anything other than what it is. The work speaks for itself and the brand follows suit.

What is worth paying attention to as a salon owner is the way Brayden has built a business that feeds both the artistry and the community. International educator on one side, working salon on the other, both of them feeding each other instead of competing for his attention. That is a model worth studying for anyone trying to figure out how to scale a career without losing the thing that made the career worth scaling in the first place.

What This NAHA Cycle Means

The 2026 NAHA finalists were revealed earlier this spring and the winners are set to be announced on Sunday, May 31, 2026, at the Chapin Theater in Orlando, Florida, with the ceremony presented by JCPenney. The Hairstylist of the Year category is the headline of the night for a reason. It is the most competitive cut on the list and it carries the kind of industry weight that follows a stylist for the rest of their career.

Brayden being on the list again is a signal that the work is still moving forward, still evolving, and still landing with the people who judge this for a living. That is the hardest thing to do in this industry. Plenty of stylists win one award and then settle in. The ones who keep coming back to the finalist list year after year are the ones who keep pushing the work itself.

He is also a finalist in a second category this cycle, which speaks to range. It is one thing to be excellent at one specific corner of the craft. It is another thing entirely to be excellent across multiple categories at the same time.

Why This Matters for Working Stylists

It would be easy to look at a story like Brayden's and treat it as untouchable. Twenty years of work, international stages, a salon, an ambassador role with a major brand. There is a temptation to think that the path is for someone else.

The reality is that every one of those things started with the work behind the chair. Brayden was sixteen years old cutting his first heads when none of the rest of this existed yet. The education came after the craft. The ambassador role came after the education. The runway shows came after the reputation. The whole thing is built on one decision repeated every day for twenty years, which is to take the work seriously and keep getting better at it.

That is the real lesson. NAHA finalists are not magic people from a different planet. They are working stylists who kept choosing the craft when easier choices were available. Brayden's name showing up on the 2026 list is a reminder that the path is still there for anyone willing to walk it.

Catch the awards ceremony on May 31 in Orlando. Win or no win, the body of work behind the nomination is the story worth paying attention to. The trophy is just confirmation.

Where to Follow

You can follow Brayden's work on Instagram at @justbhair, and you can see what Just B Hair Salon is doing in Atlanta through the salon's social channels and website. If you ever get the chance to catch him on a stage at Symposium or at a Redken Exchange class, take it. The way he teaches is the way every educator should aim to teach.

Congratulations on the nomination, Brayden. The room is rooting for you.