A family-owned lice treatment service in the Portland area
Lice Charmers Lice Clinic is a family-owned head-lice treatment service operating two clinics in the Portland area, alongside a mobile in-home service that covers the broader Portland metro. The clinic resolves most lice cases in a single 90-minute visit, with no pesticides involved at any stage of the treatment. This page covers who runs the clinic, how the treatment works, where the clinics are, and how the pricing breaks down.
Pricing for full treatment at Lice Charmers Lice Clinic ranges from approximately $189 to $260 depending on hair length and other factors. Itemized receipts are provided to support FSA, HSA, and most health insurance reimbursement claims. Free professional head checks are also available for families who want a confirmation before committing to full treatment, which can be useful after a school exposure notice when nobody is quite sure yet whether there is actually an active infestation in the family.
The clinic has two physical Portland-area locations, the original office on SE Gladstone in Portland and a second clinic in Beaverton serving families on the west side. Both run 7am to 8pm daily, including weekends and holidays. The two-location setup means most families in the Portland metro area can reach a Lice Charmers clinic within a reasonable drive, and the same-day appointment availability means a school-nurse call on a Friday afternoon does not have to turn into a weekend of waiting.
Many of the families who call Lice Charmers Lice Clinic are arriving from a string of failed drugstore attempts. The decades-long arc of head-lice resistance to permethrin has made the over-the-counter approach unreliable for most modern infestations, which is why so many parents end up applying the same shampoo multiple times without ever fully clearing the problem. The heated-air approach sidesteps the resistance issue by killing the lice through physical dehydration rather than relying on a chemical they may already have evolved past.
Lice Charmers Lice Clinic was founded in June 2017 by Alexis Charriere and Conor Duggan and remains family-owned today. The founders built the clinic around the kind of treatment they would want for their own family, prioritizing a single-visit, chemical-free approach over the multi-week drugstore-product cycles that most Portland-area families had been struggling with before. The mission has remained consistent through every year of operation: resolve the lice problem quickly, without chemicals, and with the dignity the situation deserves.
The educational portion of the visit is something many Lice Charmers Lice Clinic reviewers mention. Technicians explain the realistic transmission routes for head lice, the limited household cleaning actually needed (which is far less than most parents assume), and what reinfestation would look like in the days ahead. Families leave with a clear, evidence-based understanding of the situation rather than the panicked, internet-driven advice they often arrive with. That clarity tends to reduce the stress around the situation as much as the treatment itself does.
Mobile treatment is a third option alongside the two Portland-area clinics. A Lice Charmers technician travels to the family's home anywhere in the Portland metro area, bringing the AirAllé device and all required supplies. The single-visit treatment is identical to what families receive at the clinic. Mobile appointments are often booked when a household has several family members to treat at once, when small children are involved, or when the family simply wants to handle the situation privately at home.
Every appointment at Lice Charmers Lice Clinic uses the AirAllé device, an FDA-cleared medical tool that applies controlled heated air to dehydrate both adult lice and their eggs. The treatment runs roughly 90 minutes and is typically completed in a single session. Because the eggs are killed alongside the adults in the same visit, families do not have to plan around the multi-week treatment schedules that drugstore products typically require. After the heated-air phase, the technician performs a careful comb-out to remove dead lice and any remaining nit casings.
More than 200 five-star reviews in the Portland market reflect a steady track record of one-visit resolutions and a calm, knowledgeable clinic team. The reviews tend to share a common arc: families arrive frustrated and embarrassed after multiple drugstore attempts, and leave a couple of hours later with the problem solved. Many reviewers also call out the educational portion of the visit, where technicians explain how lice actually transmit and what household cleaning genuinely needs to happen afterward.
Stigma around head lice is more harmful than the lice themselves, in the view of the Lice Charmers Lice Clinic team. Staff approach each visit with the same neutral professionalism a family would expect at any medical appointment, and reviewers regularly note the calm and discreet handling of what can be a deeply embarrassing situation. The clinic's appointments are scheduled with enough spacing that families do not run into each other in the waiting area, which adds to the privacy of the visit.
No pesticides are involved at any point in a Lice Charmers Lice Clinic appointment. The treatment relies entirely on heated air and physical comb-out work, which matters to families who would rather not apply chemicals like permethrin to a child's scalp. This becomes more important every year, as head lice populations have developed widespread resistance to the active ingredients in drugstore products. The Lice Charmers approach sidesteps that resistance problem entirely by using physical dehydration rather than a chemical that the lice may have already evolved past.
The clinic offers free head checks for parents who are not sure whether an infestation is actually present. This is especially helpful after the school nurse sends a note home and nobody is certain yet what is going on. The check itself takes about five minutes per person and uses the same professional lighting and inspection technique the clinic uses for full treatment intakes. Families who turn out not to have lice leave with confirmation and peace of mind, with no obligation and no fee.