Most salon menus are built on a feeling.
You opened, you looked at the salon down the road, you landed a few dollars under them, and you've been nudging those numbers ever since. It feels safe. It's also how thousands of skilled stylists end up working full books for part-time money.
Pricing isn't a vibe. It's the one lever that decides whether all that talent behind the chair actually pays you. And the salons getting it right aren't charging more for the sake of it — they're charging from the numbers, by service, on purpose.
Here's how to do the same.
Quick Takeaways
- The average U.S. salon nets just 8–15% profit — there's almost no cushion for underpricing
- Your floor price is your cost, not your competitor's menu
- Product should run roughly 8–12% of a color service's price; above that, you're losing money on every formula
- Tiered stylist pricing lets budget and premium clients both say yes
- Small annual increases beat rare, painful jumps — and clients barely flinch
Start With the Floor, Not the Shop Down the Street
Before you look at anyone else's prices, you need to know the one number they can't tell you: what a service actually costs you to deliver.
Every service has three real costs baked in — your time, the product you use, and a slice of your overhead (rent, utilities, software, insurance, the back bar). Add a profit margin on top, and you've got a floor. Charge below it and you're paying clients to sit in your chair.
The cleanest way to find that floor is to work out a target hourly rate, then price each service by how long it takes.
Add up what you need to earn plus what it costs to keep the lights on, divide by your realistic billable hours (not the hours you're open — the hours you're actually behind the chair), and you've got a per-hour number.
A 45-minute cut and a three-hour balayage should never carry the same markup, because they don't carry the same cost.
This matters because the margins are unforgiving. The average hair salon nets only 8–15% profit, with most landing near the bottom of that range. There's no room to absorb a mispriced service across a few hundred appointments a year.
What Salons Actually Charge — and How to Use It
Benchmarks are a sanity check, not a strategy. They tell you whether your floor lands in the real world. Here's where U.S. prices sit, based on StyleSeat's national salon data:
- Service Typical U.S. range
- Men's cut $15–$40
- Women's cut $10–$90
- Blowout $20–$100
- All-over color $75–$200
- Highlights $20–$200
- Balayage $75–$450
- Keratin treatment $80–$400
- Updo / special occasion $50–$325
Those ranges are wide on purpose — they span budget chains to luxury suites, and rural Wyoming to downtown LA, where men's and women's cuts both run noticeably higher.
The point isn't to copy a number. It's to confirm your cost-based floor isn't wildly out of step with your market, then position deliberately within the range based on your skill, demand, and brand.
If your floor comes out above the local average, that's not a problem to fix by discounting. It's a signal to either tighten your costs or raise your value — better consultations, better rebooking, a better chair experience — so the price makes sense.
The Product Test That Catches Hidden Losses
Color is where profit quietly leaks, because most salons charge a flat fee and eat the difference when a formula runs heavy.
There's a fast gut-check: product cost should sit around 8–12% of the color service price. Under 8% is excellent.
Over 12% means your price is too low, your usage is too high, or both. The trap is the flat rate: if you set aside $30 for color on a $300 service but the formula actually costs $40, that $10 walked out the door — and if your stylist earns commission, you paid them on it too.
The fix is to know your real product cost per service instead of guessing, then price so parts (product) and labor (time) are both covered every single time.
Long, thick, or color-corrected heads cost more to service, so they should cost more to book.
Price Your Stylists in Tiers
One flat price for every stylist leaves money on the table at the top and scares off clients at the bottom.
Tiered pricing — junior, senior, master — fixes both ends. Budget clients self-select into a lower tier, premium clients happily pay more for your most-booked artists, and the gap is transparent enough that nobody feels nickel-and-dimed.
A common structure is a $10–$20 step per level on cuts and blowouts, with bigger steps on high-skill work like balayage and extensions.
There's a retention bonus, too. Money is the number-one reason stylists leave. A visible price ladder gives your best people a concrete reason — and a clear path — to stay and grow their column rather than take it elsewhere.
Raise Prices Like a Professional
Not raising prices is its own decision — and it's a pay cut. At even 3–4% annual inflation, holding your menu flat for three years quietly hands back close to 10% of your income.
The pros don't do dramatic, once-a-decade jumps that shock clients. They do small, predictable increases of around 5–10%, reviewed roughly once a year. When a stylist is consistently booked solid, that's the clearest signal it's time.
How you communicate it matters more than the number. GlossGenius recommends giving clients 30 to 60 days' notice, telling regulars personally rather than blasting an apology to social media, and stating the change without over-explaining:
"Starting [date], there's a small increase in my services to reflect rising product and operating costs. Thank you for your continued loyalty." State it, then stop talking. Loyal clients almost never leave over a few dollars — they're paying for you, not your price tag.
The Bottom Line
Good pricing isn't about being the cheapest chair in town or the most expensive. It's about knowing your real cost on every service, setting a floor that pays you, checking it against the market, and nudging it up a little each year before inflation does the nudging for you.
Tracking what each client actually costs you — time, product, and history — is what turns pricing from a guess into a system.
A booking app like MyCuts keeps that history in one place: who booked what, how long it took, which formula you used, and what it cost.
So when it's time to set a new service price or raise an old one, you're reading your own numbers instead of guessing — and you can spot the heavy-product, time-eating clients who've been quietly costing you money at the current rate.
Set your floor. Check the market. Raise a little, every year. Do that, and the chair finally pays you what your work is actually worth.
