How much does it cost to open a salon in Australia?
Most salon budgets are wrong in the same two places: the fit-out runs over, and there's nothing left for the quiet first three months. Here's the honest list, including the costs owners tell us they wish they'd planned for.
Wemu Team
Product
Ask ten Australian salon owners what it cost them to open and you will get ten very different numbers. A one-room beauty studio in a suburban strip can open for well under twenty thousand dollars, especially if you rent a chair rather than take a lease. A ten-chair hair salon on a main road with a full fit-out can pass two hundred thousand before the first client sits down. The range is enormous because the biggest line, the fit-out, is almost entirely a choice.
What follows is the list of things you actually have to pay for, roughly in the order you will pay them, with the traps that catch first-time owners. Treat the ranges as planning brackets, not quotes: your city, your landlord and your taste move every one of them.
Before the numbers
Two rules make every figure below easier to survive. Budget your fit-out at what you can afford to lose, and keep three months of running costs in the bank on opening day. Salons rarely fail because the fit-out was too plain. They fail because month two was quiet and there was nothing left.
The one-off costs to get the doors open
| What | Indicative range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Lease bond and first rent | $5,000 – $25,000 | Usually 1–3 months rent plus a bank guarantee; prime retail strips demand more |
| Fit-out and building work | $15,000 – $150,000+ | Plumbing for basins is the big one. An ex-salon site can save you tens of thousands |
| Salon furniture and equipment | $8,000 – $60,000 | Chairs, basins, mirrors, trolleys, dryers; beauty adds beds, steamers, machines |
| Opening stock (retail and back-bar) | $3,000 – $20,000 | Colour lines and retail ranges often carry minimum opening orders |
| Signage and branding | $2,000 – $12,000 | Logo, shopfront signage, window graphics, print |
| Website and booking page | $0 – $6,000 | A booking page included in your software costs nothing extra to run |
| Licences, permits, council | $500 – $3,000 | Skin penetration or beauty treatments raise this; council rules vary by state |
| Insurance (first year) | $800 – $4,000 | Public liability, product liability, contents; treatment risk raises premiums |
| Initial marketing and opening | $1,000 – $8,000 | Launch offers, local ads, photography, opening event |
The costs that catch people out
Plumbing and electrical, not decoration
The expensive part of a salon fit-out is rarely the look. It is water and power: basins need plumbing and drainage, dryers and treatment machines need circuits, and a site that has never been a salon may need both from scratch. This is why taking over a former salon, even a tired one, can be the single biggest saving available to you.
Make-good clauses
Most commercial leases require you to return the space to its original condition at the end of the term. If you install basins and walls, you may be liable to remove them years later. Read the make-good clause before you sign, price it, and put it somewhere in your plan. Owners are often blindsided by it at exactly the moment they are least able to pay.
The quiet first quarter
New salons rarely fill from day one, and the clients you carry over from a previous job arrive more slowly than you expect. Rent, wages, power and stock all continue regardless. Three months of running costs held in reserve is the difference between a slow start and a closed door. It also buys you time to work through the things that actually fill a new diary.
What it costs to keep running
Once you are open, the monthly picture matters more than the setup. These are the lines that repeat, and the ones worth watching from your first week rather than your first tax return.
- Rent and outgoings — usually your largest fixed cost, often quoted per square metre per year plus a share of building costs
- Wages and on-costs — pay under the relevant modern award, plus superannuation, workers compensation and leave entitlements
- Stock — back-bar product consumed in services, and retail you resell
- Utilities — salons are heavy users of hot water and power
- Software — booking, POS, payments and payroll tools
- Card processing fees — a percentage of every transaction
- Insurance, accounting, marketing, repairs, laundry, consumables
Wages are a rule, not a choice
Hair and beauty employees in Australia are generally covered by the Hair and Beauty Industry Award 2020. Minimum rates, penalty rates, junior rates and allowances are set by the Fair Work Commission and are typically reviewed each year from 1 July. Always price your roster from the current rates on the Fair Work Ombudsman's pay calculator rather than from what a friend paid last year. Our guide to salon commission structures in Australia covers how to layer incentive on top of that floor.
Where new salons quietly lose money
- 1No-shows and late cancellations in the first year, before you have the confidence to take deposits
- 2Back-bar waste — product used generously because nobody is measuring it against service revenue
- 3Under-priced services set to win early clients and never revisited when costs rise
- 4Retail sitting on the shelf because nobody tracks what actually sells
- 5Overtime and penalty hours that were never rostered, only discovered on payday
None of these are dramatic. That is exactly why they persist: each one is small enough to ignore in any given week, and together they are the difference between a salon that pays its owner properly and one that does not. We pull each one apart in why your salon is busy but not making money.
How software fits the budget
Software is a small line that decides how well you see the big ones. The trap in Australia is per-staff pricing: several popular salon platforms charge per bookable stylist, so your bill grows every time you hire — precisely when cash is tightest. Wemu is A$49 per location per month with unlimited staff, and includes online booking, POS, retail stock, rosters, timesheets, commissions and reporting in the one price.
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