Price a treatment from your costs up, not from your competitors' menus down. The method has four steps: work out what an open treatment-room hour costs you, add the consumables the treatment uses, apply the margin the business needs, then sanity-check the result against your positioning. Most UK salons skip straight to step four, copy the clinic down the road and import that clinic's mistakes at the same time.
Step 1: your true hourly cost
Add up everything it costs to run the business for a month: rent, rates, wages including your own, utilities, insurance, software, card fees, marketing, training, and a line for equipment depreciation. Then divide by your productive hours, which is the number of hours a paying client is actually in a chair.
Productive hours is where the method bites. A clinic open 50 hours a week with two treatment rooms has 400 available hours a month, but gaps, no-shows, admin and cleaning mean far fewer earn money. At 60% utilisation, 240 hours carry the entire cost base. £12,000 of monthly costs across 240 productive hours is a £50 true hourly cost, and any treatment priced near that number is working for free.
Owners who price against available hours rather than productive hours under-price every treatment on the menu. That single error explains a lot of busy clinics with empty bank accounts.
Step 2: consumables per treatment
Cost each treatment's back-bar honestly: product used, couch roll, gloves, and a share of anything that expires or gets patch-tested away. Professional treatments vary widely here. A facial might carry a few pounds of product; an advanced peel carries more. If you've never costed a treatment, do one this week. It takes fifteen minutes with the product on the trolley in front of you.
Step 3: margin, and the VAT trap
A treatment priced at cost keeps the lights on and pays you nothing for risk, management or growth. Set a margin deliberately rather than accepting whatever the copied price happens to leave.
Then check VAT. The registration threshold is £90,000 of rolling 12-month turnover, and once you cross it, a sixth of every VAT-inclusive price on your menu belongs to HMRC. A salon that crosses the threshold without repricing takes that whole hit out of its own margin. Growing salons need the threshold in the plan, not in the rear-view mirror.
Step 4: sanity-check against positioning
Now, and only now, look at the market. If your cost-based price lands above the local average, that's information about your positioning, not an instruction to cut. A clinic with stronger practitioners, better products and a written homecare plan should sit above the average. If your price lands below the cheapest local competitor, you've probably under-counted costs; go back to step 1.
A worked example
A 60-minute professional facial in the clinic above:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| True hourly cost (step 1) | £50.00 |
| Consumables (step 2) | £8.00 |
| Cost per treatment | £58.00 |
| Margin at 40% of price | £38.67 |
| Pre-VAT price | £96.67 |
| Menu price (VAT-registered, rounded) | £116 |
Change any input and the right price changes with it. That's the point: the menu should move when your costs move, which is also the argument for reviewing prices annually rather than heroically holding them for five years and then jumping 30% in one bruising email.
Laddering the menu
A tiered menu prices the progression, not just the appointment. Glo's peel system illustrates the shape: an introductory enzyme peel sits at the accessible end, mid-strength resurfacing in the middle and advanced professional peels at the top, each level carrying more consumable cost, more expertise and more result. Clients enter where their skin (and confidence) suits and trade up as trust builds. A flat menu leaves that laddering, and the revenue in it, on the table.
The retail shelf completes the ladder. Levels 1 and 2 sit at home through Peel-In-A-Box, extending results between appointments and earning margin that carries no treatment-room hour at all: a point that matters when your hourly cost is £50.
Price it once, properly
Cost an hour, cost each treatment, set the margin on purpose, and let competitors copy you for a change.
Our Salon Pricing & Profit Calculator runs the full method: enter your costs, utilisation and treatment times, and it returns your true hourly cost, per-treatment pricing and margin at your current menu. Free for registered professionals.
Open the Salon Pricing & Profit Calculator
Reviewing your treatment menu alongside your retail range? Apply to Become a Glo Pro Partner.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge for a facial in the UK?
Work it out from your own costs rather than a national average: your true hourly cost (total monthly costs divided by productive hours), plus consumables, plus a deliberate margin, checked against your positioning. Two salons on the same street can justify prices £40 apart because their cost bases and expertise differ.
How often should a salon put prices up?
Review annually against your cost base, and adjust when costs move rather than saving it up. Small regular increases with notice hold client goodwill far better than a large correction after years of frozen prices, and clients on written treatment plans see the value they're paying for.