A full head of highlights on short fine hair and the same treatment on long thick hair are not the same job. One is two hours and one is four, one uses half the product and one uses all of it, and a single number on a price list has to be wrong for one of them.
So salons do one of two things. They publish the low number and spend their days explaining why it is more, or they publish nothing and lose the people who will not ring to ask.
There is a third option, and it is the one that works.
Should a salon publish a range or a single price?
"Highlights, from 85 to 140, depending on length and thickness" answers the question somebody actually has. It tells them whether you are in their bracket, which is all they wanted to know at eleven at night on their phone.
It also protects you at the till, because the variation was stated before the appointment rather than discovered during it.
The part most salons leave out is the second half. A range with no explanation looks arbitrary and invites a negotiation. A range with "depending on length and thickness" attached is a professional judgement nobody argues with.
Which treatments need a range and which do not
Not everything varies. A dry cut is a dry cut.
- Fixed price: cuts, blow dries, fringe trims, most beauty treatments with a set length. Publish one number.
- Range: anything involving colour, extensions, or product quantity that depends on the head in front of you.
- "From", with a consultation: colour corrections, balayage on previously coloured hair, anything where the honest answer is that you need to see it.
The mix matters. A price list that is entirely "from" figures reads as evasive. One that is mostly fixed with a handful of ranges reads as careful.
A consultation is not a get-out
"Price on consultation" for everything is the silence problem wearing a hat. It still fails to answer the question, and it adds a step.
Where a consultation genuinely is needed, say what it costs, how long it takes, and whether it comes off the treatment. Many salons do it free and redeemable, which turns a price question into a booking. Patch tests and consultations covers how to get them into the diary.
Why put the time next to the money?
The second question after price is how long it takes, and salons answer it far less often than they answer the first.
A client deciding between Saturday morning and after work needs to know whether this is a forty-minute job or a four-hour one. Publishing the length also prevents the appointment that starts with somebody saying they have to leave in an hour.
Where it lives
A page, not a PDF and not an image. A PDF is unreadable on a phone, an image cannot be found by a search, and both get out of date because nobody wants to regenerate them.
Put the date you last reviewed it at the bottom. That line does more for trust than the numbers, because it says somebody is still looking after this.
When prices go up
They will. The salons that handle it best change the website first, let it sit for a couple of weeks, and tell regulars at their next appointment rather than by email.
What does damage is a client discovering a rise at the till. The website is the cheapest place in the business to have that conversation.
FAQ
Will publishing prices bring in people who only care about price?
Some, and they were going to ring and ask anyway. The larger effect runs the other way: a published range filters out the enquiries that were never going to book, which gives the front desk back the time those calls took.
How wide can a range be before it stops being useful?
If the top is more than roughly double the bottom, it has stopped telling anybody anything. Split the treatment into two entries instead, usually by length, which is the variable clients can assess about themselves.
Should the price list show what is included?
Yes, and it is the cheapest upgrade available to it. Whether a cut includes a wash and finish, whether colour includes a toner, is the thing that makes two salons' numbers comparable, and the one that is clear usually wins.
What about a loyalty or package price?
Keep it off the main list and introduce it in the salon. A public list crowded with conditional prices becomes hard to read, and the people who would use a package are mostly existing clients who are not reading the website.