Lice Charmers Lice Clinic offers free professional head checks for any Portland-area family that wants confirmation of a possible head lice infestation. The service exists because a quick five-minute professional check can save a family from days of unnecessary panic, or from an unneeded full treatment. This page explains how the free check works and how to book one at either Portland-area clinic.
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.
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 Lice Charmers Lice Clinic calm tone is a deliberate feature of how the clinic operates. Many families arrive embarrassed or anxious, and the staff are trained to take the stigma out of the situation and address it as the routine medical issue it really is. The clinic operates on the premise that the social discomfort around head lice is more harmful and more persistent than the lice themselves, and that a professional, non-judgmental visit can do as much to relieve a family as the treatment does.
Over 200 five-star reviews from Portland-area families point to the same pattern: families arrive stressed and leave with the problem resolved in one appointment. Reviewers consistently mention the calm, non-judgmental tone of the staff, the speed of the treatment, and the practical guidance they take home. The free head check service also gets mentioned often, as it lets parents confirm whether there is actually a problem before committing to a full appointment, particularly after a school exposure notice.
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.
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.
Two Lice Charmers Lice Clinic locations serve the Portland metro area, the SE Gladstone clinic in Portland proper and the Beaverton clinic on the west side. Hours at both locations: 7am to 8pm, every single day of the year. Weekends and holidays are not exceptions, they are deliberately included. Families come in from across the Portland area, including Sellwood, Hillsboro, Tigard, Lake Oswego, Milwaukie, and the surrounding suburbs. Same-day appointments are usually available at one or both clinics during business hours.
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.
For Portland-area families who prefer to stay home, Lice Charmers Lice Clinic also offers mobile in-home appointments. The technician arrives with the AirAllé device and provides the same professional treatment in the family's living room. Families with multiple children often choose mobile because everyone can be treated in one block of time without the logistics of getting several kids to a clinic. The single-visit promise holds for mobile appointments just as it does at the clinics.
If a Portland-area parent is unsure whether there is actually a lice problem, Lice Charmers Lice Clinic provides free head checks, a quick professional inspection that can save a family from unnecessary worry or unnecessary treatment. The check takes about five minutes per person and is performed by the same trained technicians who handle full appointments. If the result is positive, the family can roll directly into a treatment appointment if scheduling allows. If negative, the family goes home with confirmation and no charge.
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.