Hair salon. Photo: VCG

Those who think they have had a bad hair day might want to think again.

A man who went to a French hair salon walked out with a burnt forehead that forced him off work for a week after his stylist attempted an Egyptian burning technique he hadn't actually mastered.

Police said that the client, who remains anonymous, filed a complaint last week after going for a haircut in the small Brittany town of Lannion.

His stylist "put gel on his hair, took a lighter and suddenly, he lit it on his hair. The victim panicked and was burned on the forehead," a police officer told AFP.

Police discovered an "Egyptian technique, which has only recently arrived in France, where you burn a bit of hair to make it more malleable to style, more for kinky hair," he said. But the hairdresser, a Libyan in his 30s who speaks English, "didn't master this technique."