How to set your prices as a self-employed nail or lash tech

Short answer: work backwards from what you need to earn. Add up your yearly costs, decide what you want to take home before tax, set aside money for tax and quiet weeks, then divide by the hours you can realistically sell. That gives you an hourly figure. Multiply it by the time each treatment takes, add the product it uses, and you have a price that pays you properly. Then check it against your local market, not the other way round.

Why copying local prices goes wrong

Most new techs look at three salons nearby and price slightly below them. It feels safe, but it ignores everything that makes your business different: your rent, your products, how many hours you work, whether you rent a chair or work from home.

A salon with six staff can price a gel manicure at £25 because the room, the reception and the marketing are shared across six people. A solo tech paying for all of that alone, at the same price, is often working for well under minimum wage once everything is counted.

So start with your own numbers.

Step 1: add up a year of costs

Write down everything the business costs you in a year. Typical lines for a nail or lash tech:

• Rent, chair rental or a share of household bills if you work from home
• Products and consumables (gel, tips, lash trays, glue, pads, cotton, disinfectant)
• Equipment you replace (lamps, drills, tweezers, lash beds) spread over their lifetime
• Insurance (public liability and treatment risk)
• Training and courses to keep your skills current
• Booking software, card reader fees and your phone
• Laundry, towels and cleaning
• Marketing: business cards, social media ads

Here is an example for a solo tech working from a rented room. Your figures will differ.

Step 2: decide what you want to earn

Pick a yearly figure you would be happy to earn before tax. Be realistic, but don't apologise for it. In this example, the tech wants £30,000 a year before tax.

Step 3: plan for tax

When you are self-employed in the UK, nobody takes tax off your earnings for you. You pay Income Tax and Class 4 National Insurance on your profit (income minus allowable expenses) through Self Assessment, after the tax year ends. Class 2 National Insurance stopped being compulsory in April 2024.

You can't price without thinking about this, because the money has to come from your prices. Two practical habits:

• Set aside a fixed share of each week's takings in a separate savings account. Many sole traders put aside a quarter to a third; your accountant can tell you the right figure for your income.
• Know the VAT threshold. You must register for VAT when your taxable turnover goes over £90,000 in any rolling 12 months (the threshold since 1 April 2024). Turnover is what clients pay you, before costs. Once registered, you add 20% VAT to most treatments, which either pushes your prices up or eats your margin. If you are getting close, talk to an accountant before you cross it.

Rates and thresholds change, so check the government's current figures for VAT registration and self-employed National Insurance before you rely on them. A good accountant usually pays for themselves.

Step 4: count the hours you can actually sell

This is where most pricing goes wrong. You might be at work 40 hours a week, but you can't sell all 40.

Take out:

• Holidays and bank holidays (say six weeks a year in total)
• Cleaning and setting up between clients
• Admin, ordering, social media and answering messages
• Gaps in the diary, especially early in the week

In this example the tech works 46 weeks a year and, after admin and gaps, sells about 25 hours a week. That is 1,150 bookable hours a year.

Step 5: find your hourly figure

Add costs and target earnings, then divide by bookable hours:

(£12,000 costs + £30,000 earnings) ÷ 1,150 hours = about £36.50 an hour

Everything you charge needs to work out to at least this per hour of your time. Products used on a specific treatment are already in the costs above, but if one treatment uses something expensive (a premium lash type, chrome powders, nail art), add that on top.

Step 6: turn it into treatment prices

Now price each treatment by the time it actually takes, including consultation and clean-up:

Then compare with your area. If your figure is far above what clients nearby pay, look at the inputs before cutting the price: can you sell more hours, reduce a cost, or speed up a treatment without losing quality? If your figure is below local prices, you have room to charge more.

Step 7: present prices so clients understand them

How you show prices affects how they land:

• List the time with the price. "Classic full set, 2 hours, £82" explains itself.
• Avoid a long list of small add-ons. Bundle common extras into a few clear options.
• Give a month's notice of increases, and put the new prices on your booking page from the date they apply.
• Protect the time you priced. A no-show on a two-hour set wipes out a big part of your day; a deposit on long treatments protects it. Our guide to deposits for nails, lashes and brows shows how to set one.

Fees that quietly lower your real price

If you get clients through a marketplace app, a share of each new client's first booking goes to the platform. On a £82 full set, a 30% fee is £24.60 that never reaches you. That doesn't make marketplaces wrong, but it does mean your real price on those bookings is lower than the one on your menu. We worked through the numbers in what marketplace fees really cost you.

How Avana helps you keep the price you set

Avana doesn't set your prices, but it makes sure the price you worked out is the price you receive.

• Your services with time and price, exactly as you set them, on your own booking page.
• Services with variants, such as short, medium and long, each with its own time and price, so clients choose the right one themselves.
• A deposit or full payment per service, paid by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay when the client books.
• No commission on bookings from your own page, so £82 on your menu is £82 for you, apart from normal card processing costs.
• A clear overview of what you earned, so you can check every few months whether your hourly figure still holds.

You can set up your services and prices during the free trial and see your booking page before anyone else does. The features overview has the details, and the pricing page shows what the software itself costs.