Salon pricing: how to set prices that actually make money

Pricing is the lever owners are most scared to touch and the one that moves profit the fastest. The fear is understandable — raise prices, lose clients. But the bigger risk is the slow one: prices frozen for years while wages, product and rent all climb. That's not holding steady; that's a pay cut on a timer.

Start with cost-per-chair-hour, not the competitor

Every price should be built from three things: the true cost of a rostered hour (wage plus super, leave, leave loading, workers comp and payroll tax — the loaded cost, not the headline rate), the overhead that hour has to carry, and a profit margin on top. Only then do you glance at the market — to position, not to set.

Most owners cost the colour tube but never the hour. Once you know what a chair-hour truly costs to keep open, the floor price for every service falls straight out of it — and you stop pricing at a loss without knowing it.

— Matt Grumley, Founder

Build a floor price for every service

A floor price is the lowest you can charge for a service and still cover cost plus your target margin. Below the floor, you're paying the client to sit in the chair. Set the floor first, then layer a 3–4 tier stylist ladder above it (junior to senior) so the senior columns are priced to demand.

The annual rise, done without guilt

Price rises shouldn't be dramatic events — they should be a quiet annual habit:

• A warm, non-apologetic note to clients — you're not asking permission, you're informing.
• 4–8 weeks' notice so nobody's surprised at the desk.
• Capped near 10% so it never feels like a shock.
• Run once a year, and timed away from EOFY when everyone's already feeling the pinch.

A lift of even $20–50 in average spend lands on every client, every visit, with no new clients required. Our findme.hair dataset of close to 13,800 Australian salons shows exactly where a salon sits inside its local price band — and regional salons usually have more headroom than the owner believes, sitting 20–30% under capital-city prices.

Then check the margin actually landed

A price change isn't done until you've checked the gross margin on the new menu, line by line, with the labour cost most owners leave out. That's the difference between a price list that looks profitable and one that is.

Every forward figure here is an honest estimate from your own numbers, shown as a scenario — not a promise. Award rates reset every 1 July in Australia, so we re-check them before advising, and tax and legal calls go to your registered accountant.