Pricing your work without guessing
How to build a price list from your actual costs and time, handle the variables that make beauty pricing hard, and raise prices without losing your regulars.
Start from the hour, not the competitor
Copying the salon down the street tells you what they charge, not what your work costs. Work out what you need to earn per hour after products, rent, supplies, card fees, taxes and the unpaid hours you spend on admin. That number is your floor.
Then price each service as that hourly figure multiplied by the real duration, plus the products that service consumes. If the result feels high, the problem is usually the duration, not the rate.
Charge for the variables explicitly
Beauty work is not one price. Waist-length is not shoulder-length. Removing someone else’s install is not the same as starting fresh. Very dense hair takes longer, and that time is real.
Write these as modifiers rather than absorbing them. A client who sees a clear line item for extra length is far less likely to feel surprised than one who is quoted a flat price and then asked for more at the chair.
- Length tiers with a stated price for each
- Density or thickness adjustments
- Removal or takedown as its own service
- Hair or product supplied by you versus by the client
- Travel or after-hours surcharge if you offer it
Make the consultation a real step
Some work genuinely cannot be priced from a photo. Colour corrections, repairs and major transformations depend on what is actually on the head. Mark those services as consultation-required so the system asks for a conversation instead of committing you to a number you will regret.
The AI receptionist follows the same rule. When a request does not match a pricing rule, it routes the quote to you rather than guessing.
Raising prices
Give notice, give a date, and give it in writing. Four to six weeks is enough for regulars to plan and short enough that you are not carrying old prices for a season.
Do not apologise in the announcement. State the new price, state when it starts, and thank people for their business. Most clients stay. The ones who leave over a modest increase were usually the hardest to schedule anyway.
What the numbers should tell you
After a few months, your analytics will show which services actually make money once you account for the time they take. Almost every business finds at least one service that is popular and barely profitable.
You do not have to drop it. You can reprice it, shorten it, or make it the entry point that leads to something better. But you should know which one it is.