How Much to Charge for Hair Extensions: Fitting, Hair and Aftercare

Charge for three things: the hair at its loaded cost, the fitting at your chair-hour rate for the time each method takes, and aftercare as priced move-ups. On the invented costs below, installs come to about $525 for tape-ins, $745 for beaded wefts and $750 for keratin bonds, with move-ups at $110-$250. AI can build this model from your figures.

The catch is the inputs. Wherever an assistant finds a gap it fills in a rule of thumb, such as doubling the hair cost, and a guess like that can move a price by $200 or more. Each price below adds a 10% buffer to cost, and every figure is made up, so use your supplier invoices, your own timings and your own margin.

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Price the hair as stock you carry, not as a number on an invoice

A pack of hair costs you more than its invoice says. Colour-matched hair is ordered for one client, carriage is added, a unit arrives a shade off or gets damaged while you blend it, and somebody has to place the order, check it and match it against the client's roots. Treat all of that as the loaded cost of the hair.

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Take a full head of tape-ins that costs $240 wholesale. Add $15 carriage, then a 5% allowance for damage and mismatches on that $255, which is $12.75. Add 30 minutes of ordering and colour matching at a chair-hour rate of $60, which is $30. (Your own rate comes from a salon pricing calculator built from real costs.) Card fees (3% here; check your own processor's rate) come off whatever you charge, so divide by 0.97. The hair line is ($240 + $15 + $12.75 + $30) ÷ 0.97 = $306.96, about 1.28 times the invoice.

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Compare that with the rule of thumb of doubling the invoice, which gives $480. The $173 between the two is margin by choice. It may be a fair choice, since it pays for colour expertise and stock risk, but you should be able to name it. Keep it as its own line in the model instead of burying it in the hair price.

One trap deserves a sentence of its own: margin and markup are different numbers. A 100% markup doubles the cost and gives a 50% margin. A 30% margin on the $306.96 hair line means a price of $306.96 ÷ 0.7 = $438.51, which is a 43% markup. When you tell an assistant to add 30%, say which of the two you mean.

Fitting time: measure five installs before you trust a number

Fitting time moves the price more than hair does, and it is the figure most often guessed. Time five installs of one method, from the moment the client sits down to the final blow-dry, and use the average rather than your best day. This made-up log is for tape-ins against a planned two hours.

The average is 2.24 hours, 0.24 over plan. At $60 an hour with card fees on top, that is $14.85 per install, or $1,069 a year at six installs a month. Nobody notices $15 on one booking; it shows up as a thin month.

Log consultation and check-in time too, and note anything that stretched an install: very fine hair, a long colour match, a client who arrived with older extensions to remove. Those become surcharges rather than averages. Record the colour history on a consultation form, because that is also where matching time hides.

One set of inputs, three prices

Here are three methods put through the same sheet. The hair quantities are assumptions for a full head; if your brand sells by weight, replace them with grams multiplied by the supplier's price per gram, taken from its quantity guide. The fitting times are invented, so use your own log.

Read the bottom rows. Beaded and keratin land within $5 of each other, even though keratin hair is $60 cheaper, because the extra hour of fitting costs $60 plus fees. The cheaper hair is not the cheaper method.

Next comes the check that matters most: set the floor against what your market will pay. If rival salons charge $450 for tape-ins, your floor of $477.06 means every install falls $27.06 short of covering your costs and target pay. At six installs a month that is $162 a month, nearly $1,950 a year. There are four honest responses: cut the fitting time through practice or a second pair of hands, negotiate the hair price, earn the shortfall back through aftercare sales, or drop the method. Matching $450 and hoping is not one of them.

Before you trust that $450, check what it buys. Price pages written for shoppers can quote a "from" figure that leaves out the hair, covers only part of a head, skips the consultation, or ignores move-ups entirely. Write down five questions for every rival price you note: is the hair included, how much of it, is a consultation included, is a check-in included, and are move-ups priced separately? A $450 fitting-only price and a $450 package are different products.

When the assistant doubles the hair and calls it a floor

ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini will build this model in a minute if you hand over every input. Leave out client names and anything personal; the model needs only your costs. The prompt below states the inputs but not the hair markup, which mirrors what happens when you type in a hurry.

I'm a stylist fitting tape-in extensions. Build an install price from these
inputs. Show every formula, one line per cost.

Chair-hour rate: $60
Hair for a full head, wholesale: $240. Carriage per order: $15. Wastage allowance: 5%
Ordering and colour-matching time: 30 minutes
Consultation: 30 minutes. Fitting: 2 hours. Two-week check-in: 15 minutes
Card fees: 3% of the price

Tasks:
1. Floor price for the install (what it costs me, no markup).
2. List price at floor + 10%, rounded to the nearest $5.
3. Fitting-only price when the client brings hair I did not supply.
4. Tell me which numbers you filled in yourself, and why.

A typical first answer looks like this. It is illustrative, and each assistant words it differently.

1. Floor price
   Hair: 240 x 2 = 480.00 (standard 2x markup)
   Carriage: 15.00
   Labour: ordering 0.5 h + consultation 0.5 h + fitting 2 h + check-in 0.25 h
           = 3.25 h x 60 = 195.00
   Subtotal: 690.00
   Card fees: 690.00 / 0.97 = 711.34
   Floor: $711.34

2. List price: 711.34 x 1.10 = 782.47, rounded to $780

3. Fitting only: 2.75 h x 60 = 165.00; 165.00 / 0.97 = $170.10

4. Numbers I filled in
   - Applied a standard 2x markup to wholesale hair (none was given)
   - Treated the 5% wastage as covered by that markup
   - Rounded the list price to the nearest $5

Item 3 is right: 2.75 hours at $60, grossed up for card fees. Item 1 is not. The assistant doubled the hair and then called the result a floor, so $227.25 of choice is hiding inside a figure labelled cost ($234 once card fees are counted, the gap between $711.34 and $477.06). Item 4 gave it away, which is why the prompt asks what was filled in. Three checks catch this kind of slip.

• Read the filled-in numbers before the totals. A rule of thumb the assistant added on its own is the first thing to look for.
• Recompute one line yourself. The hair line is the best candidate: wholesale plus carriage, plus wastage, plus ordering time, divided by 0.97.
• Keep cost and choice on separate lines. Tell it: "Hair price is (wholesale + carriage) × (1 + wastage) plus ordering time at the chair rate. Apply no markup to hair. Apply the 10% buffer once, to the whole floor."

If you would rather work in a spreadsheet, these cells reproduce the table. Ask the assistant to explain each formula, then test it against the $477.06 above.

B1  Chair-hour rate        60
B2  Hair, wholesale        240
B3  Carriage               15
B4  Wastage                0.05
B5  Ordering hours         0.5
B6  Consultation hours     0.5
B7  Fitting hours          2
B8  Check-in hours         0.25
B9  Consumables            0
B10 Card fee rate          0.03
B11 Buffer                 0.10

B12 Hair, loaded           =(B2+B3)*(1+B4)
B13 Labour                 =(B5+B6+B7+B8)*B1
B14 Floor                  =(B12+B13+B9)/(1-B10)
B15 List                   =MROUND(B14*(1+B11),5)

With the sheet working, change one input at a time and see what each does to the tape-in floor of $477.06. This is the part an assistant does well, because every row is a one-line instruction.

Time and your own rate move the price most; wastage barely registers. When prices feel stuck, work on fitting time and the chair-hour rate before haggling over carriage.

Maintenance visits and the six-month picture

The install is the first booking in a series, so price the series. Supplier guides give ranges, and the range depends on the method. One manufacturer's tape-in guide says move-ups every 4 to 8 weeks, depending on how dense and how oily the hair is; the same brand recommends move-ups every six to eight weeks for its hybrid wefts, which are sewn onto a row of beads, and says its keratin bonds can be worn for 12 to 16 weeks before a move-up. Another supplier's guide to beaded flat-track wefts says most clients can have a move-up every 4 to 6 weeks, and that after about 10 weeks the beads may have grown too far from the scalp to move. Use your own brand's rule. The model below takes 6 weeks for tape-ins, 8 for beaded wefts and 12 for keratin bonds.

Add the visits together and a client's first six months look very different from the install price alone. Chair hours here are the consultation, the fitting, the check-in and every move-up.

Revenue per chair hour is the comparison that matters when your diary has a fixed number of hours. In this invented case beaded wefts earn the most per chair hour and tape-ins the least. The keratin client spends the most over six months, $1,250 against $1,005 for tape-ins, yet earns you only $1.42 more per chair hour, because every bond move-up takes three hours. Your timings and hair costs will reorder these rows, which is the reason to run the numbers. Ask your supplier how many times the hair can be refitted, too, because the six-month view assumes the same hair goes back on at every move-up; the keratin guide quoted above says its bonded hair can be used one to three times with new bonds.

Promises change the sums. Offer two free move-ups with a tape-in and you give away 2 × ($90 of chair time + $18 of tape) = $216 of cost, $223 once card fees are counted. Either add about $225 to the install price or charge for the visits. A free move-up that is not priced in is a discount you agreed to on the booking page.

Aftercare that earns its place: kit, check-in and reminders

Aftercare has three parts to price: the products, the check-in and the reminders that bring clients back on time. A kit that costs you $34 (brush, shampoo, conditioner) and sells at $70 earns $36, a 51% margin. There are two ways to sell it.

• Bundle it. Add the $34 to the subtotal and the floor becomes ($462.75 + $34) ÷ 0.97 = $512.11, which lists at $565. Every client leaves with the products you want them to use, which cuts down on arguments about damage caused by the wrong shampoo.
• Sell it separately. The install stays at $525 and the kit is $70. If six in ten clients buy it, the average spend is $567, almost the same as the bundle, and the headline price looks lower.

The two-week check-in is already inside the price as 15 minutes ($15). Say so on the price list: clients value what they can see written down. For the wording of product recommendations, a tutorial on writing salon aftercare recommendations with AI goes further.

Reminders are where move-up revenue is won or lost. Compare two versions of the same message. Before: "Your extensions are due for maintenance." After:

Hi [first name], your tape-ins are due a move-up in the week of [date], six weeks
after fitting. It takes about 90 minutes and costs $120. Reply with two days that
suit you and I'll hold a slot. Booking now means the hair is moved up before the
growth line gets too far from the tape.

[your name]

The second one names the week, the length, the price and the next step. An assistant can draft it from your diary export and send a version per client, as long as you read each message before it goes. For care sheets, paste your brand's own instructions into the assistant and ask for a one-page client sheet in plain English, with a rule: every instruction must come from the pasted text, and anything it adds must be marked. Delete whatever is marked. A sheet that invents a washing rule will be blamed on you when hair is damaged.

Own hair, deposits and removals

Three situations sit outside the standard install, and each needs its own line before a client asks.

• Fitting only, with hair the client bought elsewhere. The floor is the fitting, consultation and check-in with no hair line: $170.10 for tape-ins, $242.27 for beaded wefts and $309.28 for keratin bonds. List these at the floor plus 15%, not 10%, because you are fitting hair you did not choose and cannot replace if it fails: $195, $280 and $355. Some stylists decline outside hair altogether to avoid arguments over who caused a problem. That is a legitimate policy if you write it down.
• Deposits for hair you cannot return. Colour-matched hair is a commitment of cash before the client sits in the chair. Set the deposit at the hair line rounded up to the next $5, so $310 for tape-ins, $440 for beaded wefts and $375 for keratin bonds, and state in writing that it is non-refundable once the hair has been ordered unless your supplier takes it back. Ask a qualified adviser how consumer rules treat custom orders where you trade. The tutorial on cutting no-shows with reminders and deposits covers the reminder side.
• Removals. A removal takes 0.75 hours for tape-ins, 1 hour for beaded wefts and 1.5 hours for keratin bonds. At $60 an hour with fees that is a floor of $46.39, $61.86 and $92.78, listing at $50, $70 and $100. Charge it even when the client had the extensions fitted elsewhere.

Put the table in front of clients and test it on real bookings

Once the sheet is settled, present a table clients can compare at a glance. Keep it short: three methods, five columns, and a line that tells people what the install includes.

Add two lines beneath: the aftercare kit at $70, and a length-and-shade supplement table taken from your supplier's price list. The wording of the whole menu is easier with an assistant; turning a price list into a consistent service menu is covered in the salon menu and price-list tutorial.

Quote the six-month total as well as the install, and divide it by the weeks. Over 26 weeks the made-up tape-in client pays $1,005, which is $38.65 a week; beaded wefts come to $41.35 a week and keratin bonds to $48.08. A client who hesitates at $525 may relax when the same money is shown as a weekly figure, and you have told them about the move-ups before they book rather than after.

Two clients booked for the same method can need different quotes, so confirm five facts at the consultation and map each to a line in the sheet:

• Length and volume wanted. This sets the quantity of hair, and through the supplier's list, the wholesale cost.
• Shade match. A custom blend adds ordering time and raises the wastage risk.
• Existing extensions to remove. Add the removal price and the time before fitting starts.
• Natural hair condition. This is your judgement, and it can change the method or the number of units, so it can change the quote.
• Willingness to keep to the move-up schedule. A client who cannot commit to the visits is a client whose hair you may be blamed for later; say so while the price is still open.

Then test the model against real bookings. After the first ten installs of each method, compare four numbers with the plan: fitting hours, wastage as a share of hair cost, carriage actually paid, and how many clients came back for their first move-up. Give the assistant those figures, without client names, and ask for each variance and the one that moved the floor most. If actual fitting time is 2.4 hours, the floor rises by 0.4 × $60 ÷ 0.97 = $24.74. That is a price change you can justify to the client in one sentence.

When the market sits below your floor, work through the four options from earlier instead of matching it. When it sits above, you have room to keep the 10% buffer and add the supplements, or to include the aftercare kit in the price and call the whole thing a package. Either way the sheet tells you which prices are costs and which are choices, and that is what lets you defend a number to a client who asks why.

Questions stylists ask about extension prices

Do I charge for the consultation?

Either build it into the install price, as this model does with 30 minutes at your chair-hour rate, or charge a fee credited against the booking. If many consultations never convert, the credited fee protects your diary. Whichever you choose, say so on the booking page before the client arrives.

Should I charge more for longer or lighter hair?

Yes, but base it on the supplier's price list, not a feeling. If 24-inch hair costs $60 more per full head wholesale, the supplement is $60 × 1.05 ÷ 0.97, about $65, covering wastage and card fees. Build a length-and-shade supplement table once and add it to the install.

How often should I update the model?

Whenever your supplier's price list changes, and at least once a quarter. Check hair cost, carriage, your chair-hour rate and your logged timings. A $20 rise per full head adds about $22 to the install ($20 × 1.05 ÷ 0.97), small once but easy to miss when it repeats.

Further reads

• Can AI Manage Salon Inventory? Colour Stock and Reorder Points — Track stock and reorder points for hair and colour.
• How Salons Use AI to Rebook Clients and Fill Gaps in the Diary — Rebooking systems that keep move-up slots filled.
• Hair Salon Business Plan: Chairs, Prices and Cash Flow With AI — Chairs, prices and cash flow in one plan.
• Salon Patch Test Form Checklist: Reminders and Records With AI — Records and reminders before adhesives touch a client.
• AI Assistant for Hair Salons: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot? — Which assistant suits a salon's daily jobs.
• Salon Commission or Booth Rent? Model Both on Your Numbers With AI — Model commission against booth rent on your numbers.
• Makeup Artist Price List Template: Build Bridal Rates With AI — A bridal rate card built from your hourly target: per-face prices, on-site fee, travel and early-start add-ons, with AI doing the sums and the layout.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Donna Bella Hair's guides to tape-in extensions, hybrid wefts and Kera-Link maintenance; Coovip Hair's flat track weft move-up guide (all checked 28 October 2026). All prices, times and quantities are illustrative.