What do mobile hairdressers charge ?

Usual prices you should find near you for the most common services

We'll skip here the cautionary statements starting with "It can vary based on" and jump right in.

On average, you should expect to pay the following prices for the most common hair services (these prices have been collected all across the country by our national network of beauticians) :

• Men's Haircut (no shampoo) : $30 to $60
• Men's Haircut (including shampoo) : $45 to $80
• Women's Haircut (no shampoo) : $50 to $75
• Women's Haircut (including shampoo) : $70 to $100
• Women's Blow Dry : $40 to $70
• Women's Blow-out (Including Shampoo) : $60 to $90
• Color service (single color all over - including a light style) : $75 to $150

Like everything else it depends on several factors

Nevertheless (and obviously) the price of hiring a mobile hairdresser can vary a lot, based on factors including : the distance to travel, the area (large metro, countryside, small town), the experience of the hairdresser, or even the notoriety of the beautician or the image / brand they want to establish !

As the first network of mobile hairdressers in the US, we have a wide sample of beauticians enlisted and a direct view on how they build their price list.

The most common criteria they use is usually the local market they are a part of. They check the prices in salons located around them and define their own prices for at-home services based on that, either aligning with these prices or adding a margin reflecting a higher conveniency for the customers. You can easily imagine that like most prices, the prices of beauty services somehow follow the prices of real estate. Therefore, mobile beauty services will be higher in New York city or DC than they are in Houston. For example, we observe an average difference of 20% between the prices of our mobile stylists in NY and Chicago suburbs.

This may come as a surprise, but the second criteria has a lot to do with personal marketing. A lot of mobile hairdressers set their prices based on the positioning they want to impress upon potential clients. Some of the beauticians willing to offer high end services will obviously set high prices following the steps of celebrities glam squads. Others aware of middle class communities surrounding them, may want to appear as an affordable option and align their prices with the salons and barbershops in the same neighborhood.

Then enter more practical criteria, the first one being the travel distance. Mobile hairstylists usually takes customers in a 10 to 25 miles radius. You can easily imagine it takes twice the time for the latter. Hence stylists choosing to drive 20 miles will factor in the cost of the time to commute 20 miles instead of 10, which should amount to $20 to $40 bucks more.

But it should be cheaper !

At DashStylists, we firmly believe at-home hair services should be cheaper than service in salons or barbershops, which is probably contrary to the popular belief.

Let us start with the typical "business model" of an independent hairstylist or independent barber. Usually either they pay a fixed rent for a chair, a booth or a suite, or they pay a percentage of the revenue they generate with the salon they are working in. In exchange of what, besides using the venue, they can use or have access to utilities, beauty products, specific equipments (like high dryers), booking and payment systems, welcoming process for the customers, etc
On average the beauty shop will keep between 60% and 80% of the revenue (and may impose working hours to the stylists). As high as they may seem, these charges are usually legitimate : think about all the overhead expenses the salon owner must face, starting with the real estate, the utilities, the investment in furniture and equipment, the products, the software and banking costs.

By comparison, most of these costs don't exist for an independent stylist offering only at-home services. Some are replaced by costs related to a car and obviously gas, but as you can image these are a lot cheaper.

Take a look at the graph below, illustrating the differences in cost structure of a $80 haircut in a salon and a $80 haircut provided at-home. We can estimate that the at-home service provide a 30% to 40% more added value, which can be either pocketed by the stylist if they choose to keep the price at $80 (equivalent to the salon price in our example) or they can share the "added value" with the customer and reduce their prices.

And this is not only pure theory. This is how it works in most west European countries, like France, Germany, United Kingdom. In these countries, at-home hair services represent a large part of the hair services, for example in France : 25% of hair services happen at home, you can find a mobile hairstylist almost anywhere in the country. And this is a blessing for people unable to walk or drive to the salon. And most of the time mobile beauticians offer lower prices than salon prices, which is most likely a factor in the success of this concept in these countries.

In the US, for now the proportion is most likely under 3%. There are no official numbers, so this is our own estimate, but it's based on statistics from the Bureau of Labor and Hair industry organization, so probably fairly accurate.