How to open a beauty salon: requirements, equipment and a realistic budget

You've found the space: twenty-five square metres, a shop window facing the street, rent you can live with. In your head you can already see the treatment bed against the wall, the shelf of products and your first client in for a facial. Then you type "how to open a beauty salon" into a search engine — and get buried under regulations, minimum technical requirements and cost breakdowns that all contradict each other.

Take a breath: the path is well-trodden, and thousands of beauticians have walked it before you — most of them with less money than you think you need. But the order matters: paperwork, then premises, then equipment, then clients. And a price list before the first one walks in.

One caveat before we start: contribution amounts, flat-rate tax figures and the requirements for running the business change practically every year. Treat everything tax-related and legal in this article as a rough framework, and check the current figures and conditions with the relevant institutions — the Chamber of Trades and Crafts, the Tax Administration, your local economic affairs office — before you sign anything.

Qualifications: do you have the paperwork for beauty work

Beauty therapy is, as a rule, a licensed trade — you can't open one on goodwill alone; you need proof of professional qualification. Sort this out first, because everything else depends on it — and it takes the longest.

Three routes to the paperwork:

• You already have a secondary-school beautician qualification — the cleanest route: you go straight to registering the trade.
• Retraining — adult education programmes for beauticians. In practice they take anywhere from a few months to two years and cost from a few hundred to a couple of thousand euros, depending on the school and the programme. If you've been working in a salon without the paperwork, this is the most common route.
• Employ someone who has the paperwork — you run the business, and a qualified beautician on staff covers the professional requirement. Perfectly legitimate, but you carry a salary cost from day one.

Check the exact requirements — which qualifications count, whether work experience is recognised, where courses stand — with the Chamber of Trades and Crafts before you enrol in any programme. Don't buy an €800 course only to find out it doesn't count.

The trade licence and taxes — briefly, because the numbers keep changing

For a solo start, the most common choice is the flat-rate trade: tax is paid in bands based on turnover, contributions go out monthly, and the bookkeeping is minimal. Once you outgrow the flat-rate thresholds or take on more staff, you switch to a trade with full books — but that's a worry for year two, not for month one.

For your budget, plan roughly: fixed monthly outgoings (contributions plus flat-rate tax) typically come to a few hundred euros a month — and you pay that whether you've seen one client or seventy.

How to do it:

• Before you register, pay for an hour of an accountant's time. Tell them your expected turnover and whether you plan to hire — you'll get the exact figure for this year's outgoings and a recommendation: flat-rate or full books. The best €50 or so you'll spend on the entire project.
• Don't plan around numbers from forums. Last year's post is already out of date. Check current amounts with the Tax Administration and the Chamber of Trades and Crafts.

The premises: what gets checked when you work on skin

This is where a beauty salon differs meaningfully from a hairdresser's. You're performing treatments on skin — cleansing, waxing, skincare — so the sanitary requirements are stricter and inspectors take them more seriously. Minimum technical requirements typically call for hot and cold running water in the treatment room, a toilet, ventilation, washable surfaces and a separate area for cleaning and sterilising tools. Request the exact list for your line of work from the relevant office in advance — not after you've signed the lease.

How to do it:

• Before signing the contract, check three things: does the treatment room have (or can it get) a water connection, what is the ventilation like, and can the electrical installation handle the machines you're planning to run. Adding plumbing later can cost more than all your equipment put together.
• Put a condition in the lease that it only stands if the premises pass the minimum technical requirements. A serious landlord will agree to that.
• Keep the refurbishment modest: fresh paint, washable flooring and good lighting typically come in somewhere between a few hundred and fifteen hundred euros. Knocking down walls and moving pipes can wait for salon 2.0.

Equipment: a realistic cost breakdown, in ranges

A hairdresser needs a chair and scissors; you need a treatment bed, a steriliser and machines. Here are real-world ballpark ranges — for new or lightly used equipment of decent quality:

• Treatment bed: €250–700 (hydraulic and electric ones go well beyond that — you don't need one to start)
• Steriliser and disinfection trays for tools: €150–500
• Magnifying lamp: €60–150
• Work stool and equipment trolley: €100–250
• A basic facial machine (e.g. an ultrasonic skin spatula): €200–600
• Wax heater and waxing supplies: €80–200
• Towels, linens, disposables: €150–300
• Opening stock of products: €500–1,500
• Disinfectants and small inventory: €100–250

Add up the lower ends and you come out at around €1,600 for a modest but proper start. The upper ends come to around €4,500 for a solidly equipped salon. Anything beyond that — permanent hair removal machines, radiofrequency, body-contouring devices costing thousands of euros — you buy only when your existing clients are asking for it, never up front "just in case". An expensive machine standing in the corner is the most expensive piece of furniture in the salon.

A good trick: watch the classifieds for salons that are closing down or refitting. A year-old bed and trolley do the same job at half the price.

A price list from day one — and why "I'll see how it goes" isn't a plan

Your price list isn't a piece of paper on the wall — it's the decision that determines whether the salon survives. Let's run the numbers — hypothetical, but honest.

Say rent, utilities and your monthly contributions and tax come to €600 in fixed costs, and the materials for a facial average €7:

• Charge €25 per treatment and you keep €18 of it. To cover the €600 of fixed costs alone, you need 34 treatments a month — before you've paid yourself a cent.
• Charge €40 and you keep €33 per treatment. Your fixed costs are covered after 19 treatments — nearly half as many.

A low price doesn't "attract clients until word gets around" — it sentences you to running flat out with a full book just to break even. And raising prices later is ten times more awkward than charging a fair price from day one.

How to do it:

• Research five salons in your area and position yourself in the middle or slightly above — never at the bottom.
• If you want an opening promotion, offer a discount with a deadline ("until the end of June"), not a permanently low price. A time-limited discount expires; a low price becomes your image.
• Publish your price list — on your booking page and on the door. A client who knows the price before she arrives never makes an awkward scene when it's time to pay.

Your first 20 clients

The first twenty don't come from ads — they come from your own circle and their recommendations. The goal of the first month isn't a full calendar; it's twenty women who've had a treatment, are happy with it and are ready to recommend you.

How to do it:

• Start with people you know, but with rules: a promo price with a deadline, an appointment booked through your normal booking system, and a request for a recommendation or review after the treatment. Free "trial" treatments create clients who expect free forever.
• Take before-and-after photos — with explicit consent — and post them on Instagram with a local caption ("facial cleansing, Trešnjevka"). In beauty, a photo of the result is the strongest ad there is.
• Open a Google Business Profile on day one and ask every happy client for a review. Ten reviews in your first month are worth more than a paid ad.
• Set up a partnership with a hairdressing salon in the neighbourhood that doesn't offer beauty treatments: she recommends you, you recommend her. The same clients, zero cost.

Online booking before you open — not after

The most common mistake when opening: the booking system gets "sorted out later", so the first week looks like this — you're mid-treatment, your phone is ringing, the client on the bed is waiting, and the one calling gives up and phones another salon. Sort out bookings before you open, for two reasons.

First: the calendar fills up in advance. Announce your opening date with a booking link and you greet your first working day with booked appointments instead of hope. Second: you look professional from day one. A salon where an appointment takes two clicks to book, and the confirmation and reminder arrive by e-mail and push notification — with the SMS add-on enabled, the reminder reaches a client without the app by SMS too — inspires trust before the client has even walked through the door.

How to do it:

• Manually: a notebook and a phone work while you have five clients a week. But every missed call is a lost booking, and every forgotten reminder is an empty treatment bed.
• Automatically: set up a public booking page before you open. In Appointa you open the demo for your industry and see a ready-made beauty salon — services, price list, calendar — then reshape it into your own. The client books herself in, the confirmation and reminder go out automatically, and every no-show stays recorded on the client's file. You can also attach a pre-appointment intake form to the treatment, so the client enters her allergies and contraindications herself when booking — they're on her file before she's even on the bed.

And one more thing: the appointments you put in the calendar have to actually happen. Before you open, read how to reduce client no-shows — it's cheaper to learn from other people's wasted Wednesdays than from your own.

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Want to see what your salon looks like online — before you spend your first euro on equipment? Open the Appointa demo for a beauty salon: ready-made services, a price list and a calendar for your line of work, and a booking page you can share on day one. And the Starter plan is free — up to 30 appointments a month, just right while your client book is still growing.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I open a beauty salon without beautician training?

As a rule, not directly — beauty work requires proof of professional qualification. Your realistic options are retraining through an adult education programme, or opening a trade in which the professional requirement is covered by an employed beautician with the right qualifications. Check the exact requirements for your situation with the Chamber of Trades and Crafts before you pay for any course.

How much money do I realistically need to open?

For equipment, plan on roughly €1,600 to €4,500, depending on whether you're buying modestly or solidly. On top of that, add the rental deposit and first month's rent, the refurbishment (from a few hundred euros upwards) and a reserve to cover three months of fixed costs while your client book fills up. In practice, most openings fit within €3,000 to €10,000 — and a reserve for the first few months matters more than a fancier machine.

Can I take bookings before the salon physically opens?

You can and you should — it's the easiest way to greet your first working week with a full calendar. Set up your booking page, announce your opening date with the link and let clients pick their own slots. Just leave the payment for the salon itself: the treatment is paid for on arrival, however you arrange it — booking in advance doesn't mean paying in advance.