Salon Rate Card: How to Design a Price List Clients Read and Buy From

A rate card does two jobs. At the front desk it answers "how much?" before anyone has to ask, and on WhatsApp it is often the first thing a new client sees of your salon. Most rate cards do the first job badly and the second not at all: forty services in one column, names only a stylist understands, and a GST footnote nobody reads.

This guide covers how to lay out a rate card clients actually read, how to show stylist levels, hair lengths, GST and combos, and how to keep the printed card, your WhatsApp catalogue and your Google listing in step. Working out what each service should cost is a separate job, covered in how to price salon services.

#What should a salon rate card include?

Every rate card needs the same core: services in a few clear categories, a name and one line on what each includes, its time, its price or price bands, one line on GST, and the date the prices start. Everything else is optional.

Put the time on the card. A client who sees that a hair spa takes an hour, not twenty minutes, understands the price better and plans her visit around it.

Leave out the logos of every brand you stock, "special offer" stickers, and handwritten corrections. A price crossed out in pen makes clients doubt every other price on the card.

#How should you order the categories?

Put categories in the order your clients look for them, which is usually the order of how often they buy them. A client scanning a rate card is looking for one thing, the service she came for, and the price beside it. Make that easy and she reads on.

Don't guess the order. Pull the last three months of bills, count services by category and rank them. In a neighbourhood parlour, threading, waxing and haircuts often lead; in a colour-led salon, colour may.

In a unisex salon, give men and women separate sections or sides of the card, with the same category names on both. A man looking for a haircut shouldn't have to scan past bridal makeup.

The order above is an illustration for one kind of salon. Within each category, list services from the most booked to the least booked, with one exception: an anchor service sits directly above the service it supports (see below).

#How to name services so clients choose them

Name each service by what the client gets, in the words she would use, and add one plain line on what's included. Clients choose between services they understand. A name they don't understand gets skipped, or asked about at the counter while three people wait.

Three rules keep names working:

• Keep the word clients search for at the front. "Keratin", "hair spa" and "pedicure" are what they type into WhatsApp and Google, so lead with them.
• Describe, don't decorate. "Luxurious" and "magical" tell her nothing; "scalp massage and steam" tells her what the extra ₹300 buys.
• Name tiers by what changes. "Classic, Deluxe, Signature" works only if each line says what the step up adds. Our guide to raising your average bill covers tiered menus in more detail.

#How to show prices by stylist level and hair length

Price by stylist level where the stylist changes the result and clients ask for people by name: haircuts, colour, bridal. Price by hair length where product and minutes grow with length: colour, smoothening and hair spa. Don't do both on the same row, or the card turns into a grid nobody can read.

Stylist levels

Use three levels at most, as columns: Stylist, Senior stylist and Creative director, for example. Call the first level "Stylist" rather than "Junior" on the card; clients book a stylist happily and a junior reluctantly. Explain each level in one line under the table.

Fix the level when the appointment is booked and write its price on the appointment, so nobody argues at the counter about the senior who stepped in for ten minutes. For colour by a creative director, add one supplement line ("Creative director: + ₹600 on any colour service") instead of a second grid.

Hair length

Define the bands on the card, in words a client can check in a mirror:

• Short: above the shoulder
• Medium: to the shoulder blades
• Long: to the middle of the back
• Extra long: below the middle of the back

Print "Thick hair: one band up" under the table. Decide the band during the consultation, in front of the mirror, before any product is mixed, and write it on the bill.

In Salos, the services catalogue is organised by category, gender and stylist pricing, with duration, price, member price and reward points against every service.

#"Starting from" prices: when they work and when they backfire

A "from" price works when a good share of clients really pay it and the card says what moves the price up. It backfires when the "from" figure is the price almost nobody pays.

It suits services where the variation is real and hard to band: colour correction, extensions, bridal. It doesn't suit a global colour listed "from ₹2,299" when most of your colour clients have medium or long hair. Check before you print: pull three months of bills for every "from" service and see where they land. If most sit well above the "from" figure, replace it with the bands.

When you do use one, say what moves it: "From ₹2,299 (short hair). Medium ₹2,999, long ₹3,799, extra long ₹4,599."

#How to show GST on a salon rate card

Show GST only if you are registered on the regular scheme, and then say once, at the top of every page, whether prices include it. Salon services have carried 5% GST without input tax credit since 22 September 2025, so the choice is between "All prices include 5% GST" and "Prices + 5% GST".

What your card says depends on your GST status:

A composition salon pays its tax out of its own takings and can't collect it from clients, so that cost has to sit inside the prices on the card. Registration thresholds and how the schemes compare are in our GST guide for salons.

Inclusive or exclusive?

Inclusive prices give clients a final figure, and nobody is surprised at the counter. Exclusive prices keep the card equal to your revenue, but every bill ends in odd paise. Arguments start when the card says one number and the bill says another, so if you price exclusive, put "+ 5% GST" next to the prices, not in a footnote.

Retail products on the card

Products are different. Under the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, the MRP printed on a pack is the maximum retail price inclusive of all taxes, and nobody may sell the pack above it. You can sell below MRP. So list retail products at MRP or at your lower price, and never write "+ GST" next to them.

#Combos and packages on the card

Put combos and packages on their own panel after the single services. For each one, show what's included, the price if booked separately, the combo price, and any validity or session limit.

A combo is several services in one visit and belongs on the main card. A prepaid package is sessions used over months, and it needs terms: validity, sharing, unused sessions. Print the short version and keep the full terms at the desk; salon memberships and packages covers how to price and word them.

The "if booked separately" figure must be the sum of your current card prices, not a number chosen to make the saving look bigger. Keep bridal on its own card, with deposits and trial terms, as set out in bridal makeup packages.

#Use an anchor service to make the middle look reasonable

An anchor is a genuine premium service at the top of a category, so the service most clients should choose looks reasonable beside it. Without one, your mid-priced service is "the expensive one". With one, it is the sensible choice.

Say your hair spa for medium hair is ₹1,299 and you'd like more clients to choose it over a ₹499 wash and blow-dry. Put a bond-repair treatment with spa and a styled finish at ₹2,699 on the line above it. Some clients will book the bond repair, which is fine, and the hair spa now reads as the middle option.

• The anchor must be real. It is a service you perform well and are happy to sell, not a decoy.
• Put it next to the service it supports, on the same page and in the same column. An anchor on another page does nothing.
• One per category, and none where clients come for speed, such as threading.

#Should salon prices end in 9 or be round numbers?

Both work; the trade-off is how the price feels against how easy it is to pay. A price ending in 9, such as ₹1,299, keeps the first digit lower and reads as a considered, value price. A round price, such as ₹1,300, reads as simpler and more confident, and some premium salons round on purpose.

Weigh three practical points:

• How clients pay. With UPI and cards the ending makes no difference. With cash, ₹1,299 means finding ₹1 of change.
• Your position. A creative director's ₹1,500 haircut can look more assured than ₹1,499. A neighbourhood parlour's ₹149 threading looks friendlier than ₹150.
• Consistency. Mixing ₹1,299, ₹1,350 and ₹1,400 on one card looks careless. Pick one style and use it everywhere.

#A sample salon rate card

Here is a sample layout you can adapt. The prices illustrate the layout; they are not benchmarks, so set your own from your costs.

Notice what the layout does. Levels appear only on cuts, lengths only on colour and treatments, the anchor sits above the hair spa, the "if booked separately" figures add up from the card, and the GST line appears once.

#Print, WhatsApp catalogue and Google Business Profile

Keep one price list and publish it in three places, with the same names, the same prices and the same GST basis, updated on the same day. A client who sees ₹1,299 on Google and ₹1,399 at the counter expects to pay ₹1,299.

The printed card

Print an A4 card for reception and a smaller one for each station, so a client can read prices while the stylist suggests an add-on. Use a type size a client can read without her glasses, and reprint rather than patch: a fresh print run costs less than one argument at the counter.

On WhatsApp

Send the card as an image or PDF, or build a catalogue in the WhatsApp Business app. WhatsApp's help centre says each item takes photos, a name and optional details such as a price and description, and that items show to customers only after WhatsApp approves them. A catalogue lets the desk answer "rate for keratin?" with one item instead of the whole card. Date any image you send, because old rate cards live on in clients' galleries for years.

On Google Business Profile

Google lets you list services on your Business Profile, each with a price and a description, under "Edit services". Google's help page says custom service names shouldn't contain prices, and custom services that break its policy are rejected automatically, so the price goes in the price field, not the name. Our guide to getting more Google reviews covers the rest of the profile, from categories to photos.

#When and how to update your rate card

Review the card every six months alongside your prices, and reprint whenever a price, a service or your GST status changes.

Watch for the change you didn't plan. If you register for GST for the first time, or move from composition to the regular scheme, every price on the card changes basis on that date. Decide before that date whether you will absorb the 5% or add it, and reprint so the card is right on day one.

How much to raise, and a price-change message for regulars, are in how to price salon services.

#What the Consumer Protection Act means for your rate card

Three parts of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 apply directly to a rate card. Section 2(47) lists as unfair trade practices: materially misleading people about the price at which a service is ordinarily provided, advertising a bargain price you don't intend to offer for a reasonable period, and creating the impression that something is free when its cost is fully or partly covered by the amount charged.

In practice, for a salon:

• "Was" prices must be real. A "was ₹999, now ₹699" line uses a price you actually charged, not one invented for the offer.
• Combo savings must add up from your current card prices.
• "Free" must be free. If the haircut price went up to pay for the "free" hair wash, call it "includes hair wash" instead.
• Offers need an honest period. Print the dates, and honour the offer for clients who book within them.

If you're unsure whether a promotion is fair, ask a lawyer before you print it; a printed card is evidence.