UK salon marketing statistics 2026

If you are writing about the hair and beauty trade and need a number you can attribute, this page is for you. Every figure below either comes from a named source with a link, or is worked out from figures that do, with the sum shown.

Two of the numbers here are ours. We could not find them published anywhere, so we worked them out.

How big the trade actually is

There are over 63,800 hair and beauty businesses in the UK, and the number grew by nearly 1,900 (3.1%) in the most recent year counted. Between them they turn over £5.8bn a year, which brought the trade back in line with where it was before Covid.

Those are the National Hair and Beauty Federation’s figures for 2024, published in May 2025 and built on Office for National Statistics and Local Data Company data.

Two things worth knowing before you quote them. They are 2024 figures, because that is the most recent year the NHBF has published. And they live in a PDF, not on a web page, which is probably why so few articles cite them properly.

It is a trade of very small businesses. Nearly 64% turn over less than £99,000 a year. More than 80% employ fewer than five people, and 95% fewer than ten.

What the average salon turns over

About £90,900 a year.

Nobody publishes this, so here is the sum: £5.8bn of turnover divided between 63,800 businesses comes to £90,909. We round it to £90,900.

It is a mean, so a handful of large groups pull it upward and most salons will sit below it. The NHBF’s own finding that nearly 64% turn over less than £99,000 is a good check on it: a mean of £90,909 sits just under that line, which is what you would expect from a trade of mostly very small businesses with a few big ones.

Useful for context: £90,900 a year is about £1,748 a week across the whole business, before wages, rent, stock or tax.

What it costs to advertise a salon

£3.43 a click, and £29 for one enquiry.

That comes from LocaliQ’s 2026 benchmarks for beauty and personal care, drawn from 13,474 search campaigns between April 2025 and March 2026, converted from dollars at the European Central Bank’s rate for 1 October 2025.

An enquiry here means a call started or a form filled in, not somebody in your chair. The campaigns are American, so read it as the going rate for the treatment type rather than a figure measured on UK salons.

What nobody publishes

The trade press writes about salon marketing constantly. Almost none of it carries a UK number, and now you know why: there is not one to carry.

What does get published is the shape of the workforce, and it matters for anyone writing about how these businesses run. 58% of people working in hair and beauty are self-employed. Over 85% are women. The workforce shrank by around 16,500 people (7.5%) in the year counted, and around 6,700 people started hairdressing and barbering apprenticeships in England in 2023/24.

A trade that is majority self-employed, mostly female, mostly in businesses of fewer than five people, and shrinking, is not one where marketing budgets get set in a boardroom. That is worth holding on to when you read a benchmark built from American accounts.

Method

The measured figures (63,800 businesses, £5.8bn turnover, 64% under £99,000, 80% under five staff, 58% self-employed, 85% female, the 16,500 workforce decline, 6,700 apprenticeships) are read directly off the NHBF’s 2024 summary sheet, linked below. We have not adjusted them.

The average turnover figure is ours. £5,800,000,000 divided by 63,800 equals £90,909.09, rounded to £90,900. Both inputs come from the same NHBF sheet, so the division is only as good as those two numbers are, and both are 2024.

The advertising figures are ours in pounds only. The dollar amounts are LocaliQ’s. We multiplied by 0.74241, the European Central Bank’s dollar to pound reference rate for 1 October 2025, chosen because it sits in the middle of the April 2025 to March 2026 period the campaign data covers. Converting at today’s rate instead would give £3.38 and £28.74, so the choice of date moves the answer by a few pence and not more.

What changes next. We run salon advertising accounts, so the advertising figures will be replaced with British ones measured on real salons. This page keeps its address when they are.