How Much Should a Hairdresser Charge in the UK?

TL;DR: Most UK hairdressers price by copying the salon down the road, then absorb the colour time, the product cost and the gaps between clients themselves. Your price should start from what a chair-hour has to earn, not from a rival's window. This guide covers the chair-hour, why colour is mispriced more than cuts, a worked example with real numbers, and how to handle "from" pricing without an awkward conversation at the till.

Ask ten UK hairdressers what they charge and the cut prices will be roughly similar, because everyone copies everyone. The colour prices will be all over the place, because that is where the real cost hides and almost nobody has worked it out.

The honest answer is: enough to cover your chair time, your products and the slots you cannot fill, then pay yourself properly. Copy the salon next door and you copy their margin without ever seeing their books.

Before you write a single price, work out what an hour in your chair has to earn. Every other number hangs off this, and most stylists have never sat down and done it.

A chair-hour has to cover more than your time:

• Unbillable time. Gaps between clients, no-shows, consultations, cleaning down, stock orders, the books. A full day rarely holds more than five or six properly billable hours.
• Standing costs. Rent or chair rent, insurance, towels and laundry, card fees, water and heat, your own training.
• Product. Colour, developer, foils, treatments. On a colour client this is a real material cost, not a rounding error.

Price the chair honestly first, then check it against the area. Market-first, costs-second is how a fully booked stylist still ends the month short.

A cut is mostly your time. A colour is your time plus a tube-by-tube material cost plus far more chair occupancy, and that is exactly where pricing goes wrong.

A full head of foils that ties up your chair for two and a half hours and uses £18 of product cannot sit at "a bit more than a cut". Priced like a long cut, it quietly loses money every time. The fix is to price colour as chair-time plus product, not as a cut with a premium bolted on.

Say a chair needs to bring in £40 an hour once you have accounted for rent, products, laundry and the gaps you cannot fill. That is your chair-hour value, not your wage.

Now take a full-head colour and cut that genuinely occupies the chair for three hours and uses £20 of product. At a £40 chair-hour, the time alone needs £120, plus the £20 of product, so the job needs to bring in around £140 before it has earned its slot. Price that service at £95 because "the salon down the road charges £95" and you are funding the difference out of your own pocket, every single time.

A 45-minute cut, by contrast, needs nearer £30 to clear the same chair-hour. Suddenly the cut looks healthy and the colour looks underpriced, which is the opposite of how most price lists are built.

These figures are illustrative; your rent, your product cost and your real billable hours will differ, which is why a copied price misleads. To run the sum on your own numbers, a hair salon pricing calculator (Pricing Calculator Premium, £14.99) is an 8-sheet Excel workbook that costs in chair time, product and a target margin so each service on the menu reflects what it actually needs to earn.

"Colour from £60" feels flexible and safe. It is also the most common cause of awkward till conversations in a salon. The client reads £60, the work runs to a £110 full head, and the gap is now yours to explain while the next client waits.

Hair genuinely varies by length and thickness, so you need not abandon ranged pricing. If you use it, do two small things on the menu: show the realistic top, not just the floor ("full-head colour £60 to £110, depending on length and thickness"), and add one line of context ("final price confirmed at consultation"). That moves the money conversation to the start of the appointment, where it belongs.

If you are not VAT-registered, the price you quote is the price the client pays. Check the current figure on GOV.UK before you assume either way, because it moves and a growing salon with strong retail sales can creep towards it.

If you register for VAT, ask your accountant how to show VAT on your client prices, and check your menu still leaves a margin once VAT is accounted for. That is a calmer decision when your records are clean rather than guessed.

A calculator gives you a defensible floor, not a number every client will accept. Your area, your reputation and how booked you are all move the final figure, and a newly qualified stylist building a column may sit slightly under full margin on purpose for a season. That is a legitimate different decision when it is made deliberately with a date to review it.

What costs you is the accidental version: a menu copied from the salon down the road, never costed, quietly underpaying you on every colour for years. If you do nothing else, cost one chair-hour and re-check your colour prices against it.

A price you have worked out still has to be presented cleanly, or it gets discounted at the chair. Our guide to a hair salon price list template shows how to structure the menu so the colour work reads first, and a hair salon price list and service menu (Price List & Service Menu, £4.99) gives you a 3-file template to put it on paper.

And the consultation that confirms a colour price should be a written one. A hair salon business document set (Business Documents Premium, £19.99) gives you the consultation and patch-test record forms that sit behind the price, so the number and the paperwork agree.

Cost the chair first, price colour as time-plus-product second, and let the menu carry numbers you can defend. That is the difference between a stylist who is busy and one who is paid.

This article is general guidance, not tax advice or legal advice, written for UK hairdressers and salons. Verify current VAT thresholds and HMRC rules on GOV.UK before making registration or pricing decisions.

More practical reading for UK hairdressers:

• How to Start a Hair Salon Business in the UK
• Chair-rent vs employed staff at a UK hair salon: choosing your operating model
• Self-Employed Hairdresser? What to Sort First
• Hair Salon Essential Business Documents