I am sure you’ll agree that your salon business’s productivity is crucial to its success.
Running a profitable salon is challenging unless you right-size the time you or your staff spend with your clients.
But how many clients does a hair stylist have a day?
I decided to find out.
The average number of clients a hair stylist has a day is 12. Most stylists have between 6 and 20 clients daily, but the right number depends on several factors. Let’s look at those and what you can do about them.
Salon Staff Productivity
I recommend that your staff be booked 80% of their time. If you go above that, it will become difficult for clients to find booking time. Lower than that, it is challenging to be profitable.
Below is the appointment report that I pulled from Mangomint. Here, I can see the productivity level of each staff member.
When is 6-10 Clients Per Day Right?
Even as few as 6 clients per day can be the right number to see. However, to make your salon profitable, you will need to be able to charge a premium price at each visit.
For example, a luxury salon might offer a precision haircut, a custom color treatment, and a restorative conditioning treatment as part of a single appointment package, along with an in-depth consultation. Such a comprehensive service could take 2-3 hours and cost $200-300.
In this scenario, a stylist might spend:
- 30 minutes on the consultation and prep
- 1 hour on the precision cut
- 1 hour on custom color (factoring in application and processing time)
- 30 minutes on the conditioning treatment and styling
At 3 hours per client, a stylist could only fit in 2-3 such appointments in a typical 8-hour workday. Even at just 6 clients per day, if each client spends $250 on average, that stylist would generate $1500 in daily revenue.
Other “high-price services that take longer” could include:
- Keratin treatments (1.5 – 2 hours, $200-400)
- Hair extensions (2-4 hours, $200-800)
- Formal updos (1 hour, $100-150)
- Balayage highlights (2-3 hours, $150-300)
Salons specializing in these premium, labor-intensive services can often thrive, seeing a lower volume of clients, as the higher prices per service can offset the reduced number of appointments.
The key is that the salon’s pricing needs to be high enough to generate sufficient revenue and profit from just 6-10 clients daily. A salon whose average service is priced at $50 would struggle to be profitable at such low volumes.
Focusing on fewer clients per day can also allow stylists to provide a more luxurious, attentive experience. They can take their time understanding the client’s needs, customize the service, and deliver an exceptional result without feeling rushed. For many upscale salons, cultivating this pampered client experience is central to their brand and justifies their premium prices.
When Should You Consider Increasing Your Visits Up to 20 Per Day?
Today, people have less and less time to take care of themselves. This is why we see a rise in new express services, where salon clients complete their services quickly.
Some new express salon concepts are built around performing multiple services simultaneously to save clients time.
For example, a blow-dry bar might offer 30-minute express blowouts for $35. A stylist could feasibly do 10-12 services in a 6-hour shift, generating $350-420 in revenue. Even if the salon keeps only 50% of that revenue after paying the stylist and covering overhead, they’re still earning $175-210 per stylist per shift.
Similarly, a value-oriented salon might offer a 30-minute “cut only” service for $25 or a 45-minute “cut & color” for $60. At those prices and service times, a stylist could serve 12-16 clients in an 8-hour day. If the average ticket is $40, that’s $480-640 in daily revenue per stylist.
The profitability of this high-volume model depends on:
- Efficient operations to minimize downtime between clients
- Strict adherence to the service time limits to maintain volume
- Upselling additional services or products to increase the average ticket
- Controlling costs, especially labor and product costs
Salons pursuing this model often focus heavily on operational efficiency. They may invest in online booking to keep the appointment pipeline full, use shift scheduling to match staffing to demand and implement streamlined procedures to minimize wasted time and product.
As a related example, a barber in a Reddit thread reported an average of around 15 clients daily, with a maximum of 25 in a fully packed day (only doing haircuts, no beards or shaves).
How to Increase the Number of Salon Clients?
If you want to increase the number of clients in your business, there are two things I’d recommend you focus on.
Your marketing strategy and your software support.
The salon software I use and recommend is Mangomint. It offers the best features to help streamline your business while it also allows you to integrate with your favorite marketing tools.
For marketing, there are many things you can do. In fact, I’ve consolidated my list of the best salon marketing ideas here. I recommend you go through this list and pick one strategy from that list that you can implement in your business today.
Related Questions
How Often do Women Visit Hair Salons?
On average, women visit hair salons every six weeks for a trim and every ten weeks for coloring, consistent with 2017 data showing an average haircut interval of 6.2 weeks.
However, there has been some variation over the years, with the longest waiting period recorded in 2015, when women extended their visits to every 7.3 weeks for haircuts and every 7.7 weeks for hair coloring. The frequency of salon visits reflects personal grooming habits and the importance placed on maintaining one’s hairstyle.
How Long Time Does a Hair Salon Visit Take?
The duration of a hair salon visit depends on the service. A basic haircut or trim typically lasts 1 to 1.5 hours, while intricate color treatments can take several hours.
Specialized treatments like paint-on-foil highlights and lowlights can last up to 2.5 hours. With a haircut and blow-dry, the total time can exceed 3.5 hours. Salon appointments range from 30-minute sessions to visits lasting over four hours, depending on the services required.
