How to Start a Hair or Beauty Salon in the UK

Is Starting a Salon Right for You?

People do not stop getting their hair cut in a downturn, but they do trade down, so demand for salons is steady while competition is fierce and loyalty follows the stylist more than the sign above the door. The salons that do well have a clear identity, a strong online presence, stylists who are good with people, and systems that keep the diary full and clients rebooking. Many salons add nails, brows, lashes or skin treatments to lift the spend per visit.

The owner's life is different from a stylist's. You still do clients, but you also recruit, train, manage, order stock, handle complaints, pay the rent and do the books, and a quiet January tests the nerves. Staff turnover, stylists leaving with their clients and no-shows are the perennial problems. Owners who thrive are organised, thick-skinned about people issues and disciplined about numbers, not only talented behind the chair, and they treat the business as a business from the first week.

Most owners qualify through NVQ or apprenticeship routes, build a column of regular clients over several years, often as a chair renter or senior stylist, and open when that following is big enough to pay the rent. Beauty therapists follow the same path through Level 2 and 3 qualifications and specialist training. The following you bring with you is the single biggest predictor of a good first year in business, so build it before you sign anything and count it honestly.

Qualifications, Registrations and Rules

• Qualifications, training and the voluntary register. No licence is needed to cut, colour or style hair in the UK, but NVQ or SVQ Levels 2 and 3 in hairdressing or barbering are what employers, insurers and clients recognise. Beauty therapy has equivalent qualifications and specialist courses for specific treatments. The Hair and Barber Council runs a voluntary state register, and insurers will ask what you and your team hold.
• Council registration and licensing for some treatments. Treatments that pierce the skin are regulated locally. In England outside London, councils register practitioners and premises for cosmetic piercing, electrolysis, tattooing and semi-permanent make-up such as microblading, while London boroughs licence a wider range of special treatments. Scotland licenses skin piercing, tattooing and some non-surgical procedures, and Northern Ireland has its own rules. Ask your council before offering any such treatment.
• Wales and the changing rules for aesthetic treatments. In Wales a national special procedures licensing scheme under the Public Health (Wales) Act 2017 requires practitioners who carry out acupuncture, body piercing, electrolysis and tattooing, including semi-permanent make-up, to be licensed. In England the government has consulted on licensing non-surgical cosmetic procedures, and botulinum toxin and filler treatments are already banned for under-18s. Check GOV.UK and your council before adding aesthetic treatments.
• Allergy alert tests and product safety. Hair colour and lash and brow tint can cause serious allergic reactions, so manufacturers' instructions and insurers require an allergy alert test, often called a patch test, before a first colour service and in the other situations the protocols describe, recorded on cards your insurer accepts. The National Hair and Beauty Federation publishes the current protocols. Follow the manufacturers' instructions and age limits.
• Health, safety and the premises. A salon owner is responsible for health and safety: risk assessments, COSHH for chemicals, dermatitis prevention with gloves, electrical equipment testing, a fire risk assessment, first aid and the hygiene of tools and towels. The premises need the right planning use, a new shopfront or signage can need permission, and most salons pay business rates, with relief available for smaller premises through the council.
• Music licensing and data protection. Playing music in the salon needs TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS, because personal streaming accounts do not cover businesses. Client records, booking data and photographs are personal data, so you need a privacy notice, consent for photographs and, for most salons, the data protection fee paid to the Information Commissioner's Office, and marketing messages need consent.

Setting Up the Business

• Sole trader or limited company. A sole trader registers with HMRC for Self Assessment and keeps the admin light. A limited company registered at Companies House separates your personal finances from a business that has signed a lease and employs people, though landlords may still ask the owner to stand behind the rent. The right answer depends on your earnings and your plans, so take an accountant's advice before you sign.
• HMRC, VAT and the chair-rental question. Register with HMRC when you start trading and save for tax from the first week. VAT registration is compulsory once taxable turnover passes the threshold on GOV.UK. Chair rent is standard-rated for VAT once you are registered, and whether a renter is genuinely self-employed depends on the real working arrangements, so read HMRC's guidance for hair and beauty and use written agreements.
• Employing staff or renting chairs. Employing stylists gives you control over hours, standards and the client relationship, with payroll, pension auto-enrolment, holiday pay and employers' liability to run. Renting chairs to self-employed stylists shifts risk and admin to them, but if you set their hours, prices and clients, HMRC or an employment tribunal may treat them as employees, with tax and rights to match. Take advice and write everything down.
• Bank, bookkeeping and salon software. Open a business account before the fit-out starts. Salon software for online booking, reminders, deposits, client records and stock is now standard, and the one you choose shapes how clients book and how you manage no-shows, so trial options. Link the card terminal and the software to bookkeeping software so the month end is a review, not a reconstruction.
• Insurance. Public liability covers injury to clients, treatment risk covers claims arising from the services themselves, and products liability covers the retail products you sell. Employers' liability is a legal requirement once you employ anyone, and chair renters need their own cover. Add buildings or contents and business interruption, and check what your insurer requires on patch testing and qualifications, because that is where claims fail.
• Stock, suppliers and retail. Professional colour, care and styling products come from wholesalers and brand distributors, often with minimum orders, training and sometimes exclusivity attached. Retail products on the shelves are a margin opportunity but tie up cash, so start with a small range your team genuinely recommends. Keep stock records, count regularly and agree who pays for the colour a chair renter uses.

Start-up Costs and What You Need

The lease and the fit-out are the first large costs. A salon needs plumbing for backwash units, good lighting, electrics for dryers and tools, ventilation, flooring that survives colour, a reception area and often a new shopfront and signage, with a deposit and rent in advance before any of it starts. Styling chairs, mirrors, backwash units, dryers, trolleys, beauty couches and treatment equipment follow, and specialist kit for nails, lashes or skin treatments adds up quickly.

Then the running costs: opening stock of colour and products, salon software, card payment fees, the music licence, insurance, business rates and utilities, laundry, waste, marketing and wages, or the gap before chair rents arrive. Your own living costs for several months belong in the budget too, because a new salon rarely fills every chair in its first season, and the stylists you recruit expect to be paid before their columns are full.

Price each item from real quotes, work out what a full week across every chair could earn and what a realistic first-year week will earn, and plan for the difference. Buying an existing salon changes the mix, trading fit-out for a purchase price and inherited staff, clients and equipment, and needs its own due diligence on the lease and the books. Keep a contingency, because fit-outs almost always run over.

Pricing Your Work

Salon pricing is a menu: each service priced by the time it takes, the products it uses and the level of the stylist or therapist who provides it. Work out the cost of an hour of chair time, including rent, products, wages or your own earnings and the quiet hours that are never booked, and set prices that cover it at a realistic occupancy. Quote long or complex colour work after a consultation rather than from a flat price.

Deposits for long appointments and new clients, a clear cancellation window and a stated policy for late arrivals protect the diary, and they must be stated plainly at booking to be relied on. Allergy alert tests need to be built into the booking flow for new colour clients. Small retail margins, add-on treatments and memberships or packages for regulars lift the spend per visit without raising the headline price. Put the terms on the website and in the booking confirmation.

Review prices at least once a year and when costs move, because colour and energy prices change, and raise them with notice rather than apology. Resist competing with the cheapest salon in town, because clients who choose only on price leave for the next discount, while a salon that is clear about its levels, its prices and its standards keeps the clients it wants. Show the full menu on the website, because clients compare before they book.

Finding Your First Customers

• The following you and your stylists bring. Clients follow stylists, which is why most salons open with a stylist's book of regulars and recruit people who bring their own. Tell your clients early, make the move easy with a booking link and the new address, and expect some to follow and some not. Their followings are also why your contracts and culture matter.
• Instagram and the local grid. Salons live on Instagram: before-and-afters with consent, reels of the work, the team and the space, and local hashtags and tags. Post consistently, answer messages quickly, put the booking link in the profile and make sure it leads to a website or booking page that works on a phone.
• Footfall and the shopfront. A high street or neighbourhood salon wins walk-ins and curiosity from the window, the sign and a price list people can read from the pavement. Open with a visible launch, a clear offer for first visits and hours that suit the people walking past, including evenings.
• Booking marketplaces, used with care. Marketplaces such as Treatwell put a new salon in front of people searching for an appointment today and can fill gaps early. They charge commission on bookings they generate and often own the client relationship, so use them for new clients, move regulars to your own booking and track what each booking really costs.
• The Google Business Profile and reviews. People search for a hairdresser, barber or nail salon near them before they book. A Google Business Profile in the right category with photographs of the finished salon, accurate hours, a price list and a booking link, backed by a steady flow of genuine reviews, is what turns those searches into first appointments.
• Local partnerships and events. Wedding venues, photographers, gyms, boutiques and cafés nearby share your clients. Offer wedding and event hair, collaborate on a launch evening or a shoot, and sponsor a local team or school event. Referral rewards for existing clients cost less than any advertising.

Your Website and Online Presence

A salon's website has one job above all: win the booking before a marketplace does. That means a price list that is easy to keep current, online booking you control with deposits where you need them, profiles of each stylist or therapist with their levels and specialisms, a gallery for people who have not found you on Instagram yet, and your policies on deposits, cancellations and allergy alert tests.

Have it live before opening day, with a coming-soon page while the fit-out happens, so that people who notice the new salon can book for the first week and the Google Business Profile has somewhere to send them. DigitalPod designs and builds websites for new and established salons across the UK, and the guides to startup logo and branding and choosing a domain name are a good place to start.

When you are ready for a website, our startup hair & beauty salon website design page explains what a new salon needs on day one, our hair & beauty salon website design page covers the full picture for an established business, and hair & beauty salon website design prices sets out what it costs. Startup websites start from £2,400, and our startup website checklist lists what to have ready.

Mistakes New Salons Make

• Opening without enough of a following, so the chairs sit empty while the rent is paid.
• Treating chair renters like employees, then facing an HMRC or tribunal claim for tax, holiday pay and rights.
• Skipping allergy alert tests when the diary is busy, which can invalidate insurance and injure a client.
• Offering piercing, microblading or aesthetic treatments without checking the council's registration or licensing rules first.
• Relying on a booking marketplace for most bookings and discovering that it owns the clients and the margin.
• Pricing from the salon down the road rather than from chair-time costs, then discounting whenever a week is quiet.
• Playing music without a licence, keeping client records casually and missing the data protection fee, small failures that cost more than they save.

Your First 90 Days

1. Confirm your qualifications and insurance, count the clients you can realistically bring and set the opening budget around that following.
2. Settle the business structure with an accountant, register with HMRC or Companies House and open a business bank account before the fit-out starts.
3. Find premises, check the planning use and business rates, have a solicitor review the lease and plan the fit-out around plumbing, electrics and ventilation.
4. Decide which treatments you will offer and check with the council which need registration or a licence in your area, applying before you advertise them.
5. Decide between employing stylists and renting chairs, read HMRC's hair and beauty guidance, write the contracts or rental agreements and set up payroll and pensions if you employ.
6. Arrange public liability, treatment risk, products and employers' liability insurance, pay the data protection fee and buy TheMusicLicence before the music goes on.
7. Choose salon software with online booking and deposits, set up the card terminal and bookkeeping, and order opening stock from your chosen brands.
8. Write the price menu by service and stylist level, with deposit, cancellation and allergy alert test policies, and build the test into booking for new colour clients.
9. Register the domain, launch a coming-soon page and then the full website with prices, team, gallery and booking, following the startup website checklist, and set up the Google Business Profile.
10. Tell every existing client about the move, launch on Instagram with the fit-out story, ask early clients for reviews and review the first ninety days: occupancy, sources, costs and no-shows.