There's a specific kind of panic that hits about three weeks before you open. You've signed the lease, you've told everyone you're doing it, and suddenly you can't remember if you registered for sales tax, ordered enough towels, or figured out how clients are going to pay you on day one. The dream of owning your own salon is the easy part. The hundred small decisions between "I'm doing this" and unlocking the door for your first client are what trip people up.

This salon startup checklist is built to keep you out of that panic spiral. It's not a generic small business list. It's the stuff that specifically matters when you're opening a salon, suite, or beauty studio, in the order it usually needs to happen.

A quick note before we get into it: every state, city, and sometimes county has its own rules. Treat this as your starting framework, not your final answer. Always verify the specifics with your state cosmetology board, your local health department, and a licensed CPA or attorney in your area.

Phase 1: The Business Foundation (3 to 6 Months Before Opening)

This is the unglamorous part. No one posts about getting their EIN on Instagram. But skip this stuff and you'll be untangling problems for years.

1. Write a real business plan. Not a 40-page document for a venture capital pitch. A working plan that answers: who is my client, what services am I offering, what will I charge, what are my fixed monthly costs, and how many service hours do I need to book to cover them. If you can't fill in those blanks, you're not ready to sign a lease.
2. Choose a business structure. Most independent salon owners go with an LLC for liability protection, though some choose S-Corp status once revenue justifies it. The IRS filing fee for an EIN is free. State LLC filing fees vary widely, generally falling somewhere between roughly $50 and $500 depending on the state. Talk to a CPA before deciding. This is one of those decisions that's annoying to undo later.
3. Register your business name and get your EIN. Check that your name is available with your state and that the domain and social handles are too. Get your EIN directly from IRS.gov. It's free, takes about 10 minutes, and you'll need it for almost everything that comes next.
4. Open a business bank account. Do this before you spend a single dollar on the salon. Mixing personal and business finances is the fastest way to create a tax nightmare and erode the liability protection your LLC is supposed to provide.
5. Register for state and local taxes. Sales tax registration is required in most states if you sell retail products, and some states tax services too. Your state Department of Revenue website has the specifics.
6. Verify your cosmetology and salon licenses. Your personal license is one thing. Most states also require a separate salon or establishment license, and many require inspections before you can open. Contact your state board directly. Don't rely on what you heard from someone else's experience two years ago, rules change.
7. Get insurance quotes. At minimum you'll want general liability and professional liability. If you have employees, workers' comp is usually required by state law. If you own equipment, look at a business property policy. Insurance for a small salon often falls in the range of roughly $500 to $1,500 per year for general and professional liability combined, but quotes vary by state, services offered, and coverage limits.

Phase 2: Location and Build-Out (2 to 4 Months Before Opening)

This is where the money starts flying out the door fast. Move carefully here.

1. Pick your model first, then your space. Suite rental, commission salon, booth rental, or independent studio, each has wildly different space requirements and costs. Decide before you tour anything.
2. Read the lease like your livelihood depends on it. Because it does. Pay attention to who's responsible for plumbing and electrical upgrades (huge for salons), whether there's a personal guarantee, what happens if you need to break the lease early, and whether the landlord has done salon build-outs before. Get a commercial real estate attorney to review it. A few hundred dollars in legal fees can save you tens of thousands.
3. Confirm zoning and permits before you sign. Just because the previous tenant was a salon doesn't always mean you're cleared. Call your city's planning or zoning office and ask directly.
4. Plan plumbing early. Shampoo bowls require both supply and drain lines, and retrofitting plumbing into a space that wasn't built for it is one of the biggest hidden costs in salon construction. Get a plumber in for an estimate before you commit.
5. Set a build-out budget with a 20% buffer. Construction always costs more and takes longer than the quote. Always. Color salon build-outs commonly run anywhere from around $50 to $200+ per square foot depending heavily on the condition of the space, your city, and how custom you go. A space that's already plumbed for a salon will cost dramatically less than a raw retail box.
6. Get the health department involved. If you're doing any wet services, lash work, waxing, or skincare, your local health department likely has specific requirements for sanitation, ventilation, and sometimes square footage per station. Find out now, not after drywall goes up.

Phase 3: Equipment, Products, and Supplies (1 to 2 Months Before Opening)

Here's where it's tempting to spend wildly. Try not to.

1. Make a master equipment list before you shop. Walk through a typical day in your head, service by service, and write down every single thing you'd touch. This list is what you'll buy from, not whatever's on sale at the supply store.
2. Budget your big-ticket equipment. For a basic hair salon, expect:

• Styling chairs: roughly $200 to $800 each for new, less for used
• Shampoo units (bowl plus chair): typically around $700 to $2,500+ per unit
• Stations or mirrors: highly variable, often $300 to $1,500 each
• Color processor or dryer: a few hundred dollars and up
• Reception desk and seating: varies enormously

For estheticians, a quality facial bed and steamer setup can run $1,500 to $4,000+ combined. Lash beds are usually less. Wax warmers are cheap. Sterilizers and autoclaves are not optional if your state requires them, and they're not cheap either, often several hundred dollars on the low end.

3. Buy used where it makes sense. Styling chairs, dryers, and reception furniture are usually fine secondhand. Things that touch clients directly, shampoo bowls (for sanitation), facial beds, anything electrical, look closer before you save a few hundred bucks.
4. Order backbar and retail thoughtfully. Talk to your distributor about opening orders. Many brands offer salon-opening packages or extended terms for new accounts. Don't overstock retail before you know what your clients actually buy.
5. Stock the boring stuff. Towels (more than you think, double the number you think you need), capes, foils, color bowls and brushes, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, toilet paper, hand soap, trash bags, gloves, barbicide, disinfectant spray. The list of "small" supplies easily runs into the thousands the first time.
6. Set up your washer and dryer situation. Either onsite or with a laundry service. Towel volume is one of the most underestimated parts of running a salon.

Phase 4: The Tech Stack (1 Month Before Opening)

A few systems decided early will save you constant headaches later.

1. Booking and salon management software. This is the operational backbone of the business. You'll use it for online booking, scheduling, client records, payment processing, reporting, and often marketing. There are a lot of options out there at different price points and feature levels. Look for: how the booking experience feels for clients on a phone (not desktop), how it handles deposits and no-show fees, what processing fees look like, whether it supports the way you actually run your business (commission, booth rental, hybrid), and how easy it is to pull tax reports. Do real demos before committing. Switching software later is painful.
2. Payment processing. Sometimes built into your salon software, sometimes separate. Compare rates carefully. A 0.3% difference in processing fees on $300K in annual revenue is real money.
3. Bookkeeping software. QuickBooks and Xero are the most common. Connect it to your business bank account from day one. Pay a bookkeeper to set up your chart of accounts correctly, it's worth the few hundred dollars.
4. A simple website. It doesn't need to be fancy. It needs to load fast on a phone, show your services and prices, and have an obvious "Book Now" button. Squarespace, Showit, and Wix all work fine.
5. Google Business Profile. Free, and arguably the single most important marketing asset for a local salon. Set it up, verify it, add photos, and start asking happy clients for reviews from week one.

Phase 5: Hiring, Pricing, and Pre-Open (Final 30 Days)

1. Decide your team structure. Commission, booth rental, hourly plus commission, or a hybrid. This decision has tax, legal, and culture implications. The IRS has specific tests for employee versus independent contractor classification, and misclassifying staff is one of the most expensive mistakes salon owners make. Talk to a CPA.
2. Build your service menu and price list. Price based on your costs and your market, not what the salon down the street charges. Do the math on your hourly cost (rent, utilities, insurance, supplies, taxes) and work backward.
3. Write your policies. Cancellation policy, no-show policy, refund policy, chemical service consultation policy. Write them down, post them where clients can see them, and put them in your booking flow.
4. Plan your soft open. Don't go from zero to fully booked on day one. Invite friends, family, and existing clients for a few days of "practice" appointments. You'll find what's broken before a stranger does.
5. Marketing runway. Start posting about the opening 6 to 8 weeks out. Tease the space, share the story, build an email list, offer pre-booking. A salon that opens to crickets is one of the saddest things to watch.

What This Whole Thing Actually Costs

People want a single number. There isn't one. A solo esthetics suite in a smaller market can open for under $15,000 if you're careful and using mostly existing equipment. A full-service hair salon with a custom build-out in a major city can easily run $150,000 to $300,000+ before you take a single client. Most independent salons land somewhere in between.

The honest answer: build your own number from your actual plan. Add up your equipment list, get a real build-out estimate, factor in 3 months of operating expenses as a cushion (rent, utilities, insurance, supplies, your own pay), and add 20%. That's your real number.

Salon Startup FAQs

How long does it take to open a salon from scratch? Most owners need 4 to 9 months from "I'm doing this" to opening day, depending on whether you're moving into a turnkey space or doing a full build-out. Build-outs are almost always slower than planned.

Do I need a salon license if I already have a cosmetology license? In most states, yes. The personal license lets you practice. The salon or establishment license lets you operate a business where services are performed. Check with your state board, requirements vary.

Can I open a salon with bad credit? It's harder but not impossible. Equipment financing, SBA microloans, and personal investment are common paths. Some equipment vendors offer in-house financing with more flexible terms than banks. Expect to put more down and accept higher rates.

Should I buy or lease my equipment? Generally, buy the things that hold up for 10+ years (chairs, mirrors, basic furniture). Consider financing or leasing for big-ticket items where the financing terms make sense for your cash flow. Used equipment is fine for most furniture, less ideal for plumbing or anything electrical.

Do I need a business plan if I'm not getting a loan? You don't need a formal one for a bank. You absolutely need to do the math, even if it lives on a single page or a spreadsheet. The number of salons that open without knowing their break-even point is the number that close in year two.

What's the most commonly underestimated startup cost? Build-out and plumbing, by a long shot. Followed closely by the "small" supplies (towels, backbar, cleaning, retail inventory), which add up to thousands faster than people expect.

Do I need a CPA and an attorney, or can I DIY this? You can DIY a lot of it. Where the money you save on professional fees often disappears: entity setup, lease review, and employee versus contractor classification. Spending $1,000 to $2,000 on professional advice upfront has saved more salon owners from disaster than any single piece of equipment.

One Last Thing

A salon startup checklist is useful because it gives you a sequence. What it can't give you is the thing that actually decides whether your salon makes it: the willingness to keep going when something on the list goes sideways. Because something will. The plumber will be a week late. The shampoo bowls will arrive scratched. Your first big booking weekend, the software will glitch.

The owners who make it aren't the ones who built the perfect plan. They're the ones who built a plan good enough to start, and then handled what came next. Use the list. Then trust yourself to figure out the parts that aren't on it.