Pricing hair colour without losing money on long hair
Colour is the most under-priced service in most Indian salons. How to price by length and product use so long hair stops subsidising short.
Most salons price colour as a single figure. "Global colour — ₹2,500." It is simple, it is easy to put on a menu, and it quietly loses money on roughly a third of the clients who order it.
The problem in one sentence
A global colour on shoulder-length hair might use 60g of product and 75 minutes. The same service on waist-length hair can use 150g and two and a half hours. Same price.
Three ways to fix it
1. Price by length
The most common approach. Short / medium / long / extra long, with a step at each. Clear, easy to quote, and clients understand it immediately because every salon they have visited does something similar.
The risk is a difficult conversation at the chair if the client expected the menu price. Solve it by quoting the range on the menu and confirming the exact figure at consultation — before the colour is mixed, never after.
2. Base price plus product
A service fee for the work, plus the product actually used, charged per tube or per bowl. Precise and fair. Harder to quote up front, and some clients dislike a bill that moves.
Works well for technical colour work — balayage, corrections — where usage genuinely varies.
3. Price at the middle and accept the spread
Set one price at the average and let short hair subsidise long. Perfectly viable if you have done the arithmetic and chosen it. It is only a mistake when it happens by accident.
Do the consultation before mixing
Every uncomfortable colour-pricing conversation happens because the number changed after the work started. Every one of them is avoidable.
Look at the hair, state the price, get a nod. Thirty seconds.
Track product cost per service
You cannot price colour properly without knowing what it costs you. That means recording what a service consumes — at least approximately, at least for your main colour lines.
Most salons discover, when they first measure it, that their long-hair colour clients are their least profitable and their most time-consuming. That is worth knowing before you run a promotion aimed at them.
The correction question
Colour corrections should be quoted separately and never squeezed into a standard slot. They take unpredictable time, use unpredictable product, and carry real risk.
Quote them as a consultation first, with the actual work booked afterwards. A correction billed at global-colour rates is the single fastest way to lose an afternoon and money at the same time.