How to Start a Lash Studio in Indiana

Who regulates lash services in Indiana

For extension work, the honest answer is nobody, and that is a deliberate legislative choice rather than a gap. IC 25-8-1.1-2, added in 2021, provides that the application of eyelash extensions is exempt from regulation under the cosmetology article. The statute defines the exempt act precisely: strands of silk, mink, or another synthetic or natural material, applied one at a time and fixed to the natural eyelashes. Because the exemption removes the service from IC 25-8 altogether, the State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners inside the Professional Licensing Agency has no license to issue for it, no school hours to require and no establishment license to demand for a studio that does extensions and nothing else.

The board still matters to a lash studio, because the services clients ask for next to extensions mostly live inside its jurisdiction. Facials, waxing and makeup belong to the esthetician and cosmetologist scopes, and on July 1, 2026 the esthetician scope grew: HEA 1131 amended IC 25-8-2-9.5 to add eyelash lift and tinting, eyebrow lamination and tinting, and microneedling. Threading, by contrast, is excluded from the cosmetology and esthetician definitions, so a studio's service menu can contain three different legal categories at once: exempt extensions, licensed skin and lash treatments, and excluded threading. Knowing which bucket each service sits in is the whole regulatory game for this business type.

Indiana lash studio at a glance

Extensions, lifts and the license line

Draw the line service by service. Applying eyelash extensions, the exempt act, requires no license, no training hours filed with the state and no board approval, whatever your training provider's certificate says. Private certification courses are a market credential, not a legal one, and Indiana neither requires nor recognizes them. The moment a service involves the licensed scopes, the rules change completely. Eyelash lifts and tinting are esthetician services as of July 1, 2026. Facials, skin care and waxing have always been. Microneedling joined the esthetician scope on the same date, with a statutory depth band of at least 0.3 mm and not more than 2 mm, and an obligation to produce proof of advanced training or certification if the agency asks.

The licensed route runs through the State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners. The esthetician license takes 700 hours of esthetics training in a beauty culture school, requires the applicant to be at least 17 with a 10th grade education, and is granted after the board's written examination through PSI on a $40 application. The cosmetologist license, 1,500 hours and the same $40 application, covers the esthetician scope and everything around it. Both renew every four years for $40, with no continuing education requirement, a $50 late fee inside three years of expiration, an $80 reinstatement beyond three years, and a fresh written examination at five years expired. A studio owner who plans to offer lifts, tints or skin services personally should hold one of these licenses; a studio that hires for those services needs licensees on staff for every shift that offers them.

Marketing deserves the same precision as the menu. An unlicensed extension artist can advertise extensions, because the service is exempt, but advertising licensed services she cannot legally perform invites exactly the board attention the exemption was supposed to avoid. Keep the service list, the booking site and the price menu aligned with the licenses actually held by the people working in the studio.

The lash studio premises question

Indiana has no lash studio license, and for a studio doing extensions only, there is no establishment license to apply for under IC 25-8 at all. The exemption that removes the service from the article removes the premises from the salon chapter with it. That changes the day the menu changes. Licensed services may only be performed by licensees working in a licensed beauty culture salon, so a studio adding lifts, tinting, facials or waxing needs the salon license for its premises: $40 to apply, $40 to renew every four years, under the personal supervision of a licensed beauty culture professional.

The salon application carries its own sequence and its own trap. You select the site, obtain the building permit, certificate of occupancy or other approval required under IC 22-15-3 and IC 36-7-4, install the furnishings and equipment the board's rules require, and file the verified supervision statement. The agency instructs applicants not to apply until the facility is ready to open, because a complete application issues a temporary permit valid for three months; apply too early and the window closes before the licensed menu can start. A studio in the same building as a residence must be separated from the living space by a substantial floor to ceiling partition with its own separate entry, license or no license, that partition rule also shapes the home studio buildout once licensed services are offered.

Studios that never add licensed services still answer to the ordinary local layer described below: zoning, occupancy and signage. What they skip is only the board's establishment license, not the business filings, and not the tax registrations. The exemption is a licensing position, not a business formation holiday.

Forming your business entity

Most Indiana beauty businesses form as an LLC, and Indiana prices the form near the bottom of the national range. The Articles of Organization, State Form 49459, are filed with the Secretary of State through INBiz and cost $95 online or $100 by mail. The online figure is built into the statute and the Secretary of State's fee schedule: a $75 filing fee under IC 23-0.5-9-19 plus a $20 enhanced access fee. The articles name your registered agent and your principal office, and INBiz issues the certificate that your bank, your landlord and the licensing board will each ask to see.

The filing that keeps the entity alive is the Business Entity Report, and Indiana runs it on a two year cycle rather than the annual cycle most states use. The first report comes due two years after formation, by the end of the month in which the entity was formed, and it costs $32 filed online or $50 on paper. INBiz charges no late fee, but a missed report is not free: the Secretary of State can administratively dissolve an entity that stops filing, and reinstatement means filing every overdue report and paying the reinstatement charges. A studio formed in October owes its first report by the end of October two years later, and every two years after that. None of these filings replaces the licenses above. The Secretary of State registers your entity, and the board licenses your people and your premises, and the two systems do not talk to each other.

Business names and the assumed business name

Indiana calls its trade name filing a certificate of assumed business name, and IC 23-15-1-1 splits the filing office by the kind of business you are. A sole proprietor or a general partnership trading under a name other than the owner's real name files the certificate for record with the county recorder of each county where the business has a place of business or an office, and the recorder charges the recording fee set by IC 36-2-7-10 on the county's schedule. An entity that trades under a name different from the name in its formation documents files the certificate with the Secretary of State instead, on State Form 30353 through INBiz: the fee is $20 for an electronic filing or $30 on paper for a corporation, limited liability company, limited partnership or limited liability partnership. The statute sets no renewal or expiration for the certificate. It stays on file until you file a notice that you have stopped using the name.

Two practical points follow. The assumed name filing is a public notice filing, not a license and not a trademark, and it does not reserve the name against anyone else; a name reservation through INBiz, $10 for 120 days, is the tool that holds a name while you organize. And the name on the certificate, the name on the salon license application and the name on your signage should tell one consistent story, because clients, inspectors and your bank all read them side by side.

Federal tax ID and business banking

Apply for an Employer Identification Number on IRS.gov. It is free, it issues online in one session, and any site charging you for an EIN is selling you a form you can file yourself. You need the EIN to open the business bank account, to run payroll once you hire, and to complete the state employer registrations described below, which key on the federal number. A solo lash artist can technically operate on her Social Security number for some federal purposes, but the studio's bank account, booking platform payouts and employer registrations all run more cleanly on an EIN.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and EIN exist, and run every license fee, product order and rent payment through it. The Department of Revenue registrations, the unemployment wage reports and the biennial entity report all assume the business can show its own books, and a clean account is the cheapest compliance tool in this guide.

Sales tax through the Department of Revenue

Indiana sets its sales tax at a flat 7 percent statewide, and no city or county adds a local sales tax on top of it (IC 6-2.5-2-2). The tax itself is a gross retail tax on retail transactions, which the statute defines around sales of tangible personal property and a specific list of enumerated transactions (IC 6-2.5-2-1 and IC 6-2.5-4-1). Lash services are not on that list, so you do not collect sales tax on extension sets, fills, lifts or any other service receipt. Product is different: aftercare kits, cleansers and anything else you sell off the shelf is a retail sale taxed at 7 percent, so itemize services and products separately at checkout and the tax follows the product lines only.

Any business making retail sales needs a Registered Retail Merchant Certificate before its first retail transaction. Registration runs on the Department of Revenue's Business Tax Application, Form BT-1, filed through INBiz, and the filing fee is $25 per business location under IC 6-2.5-8-1. The certificate is valid for two years and renews automatically while the account stays in good standing, and returns and payments run through INTIME, the Department's e-services portal. Register before you open: the same BT-1 also opens the withholding account you will need the day you hire.

Renting a lash room or working in a salon

Many Indiana lash artists start inside someone else's premises, and the legal analysis depends on which services they offer there. For extensions alone, the exemption travels with the service: an extension artist renting a room in a salon, a suite building or a med spa needs no license of any kind for the extension work, and the host's salon license is not what makes her legal, because nothing in IC 25-8 regulates the service in the first place. Her obligations are the ordinary ones: her own business registration, her own assumed business name filing if she trades under one, and her own tax accounts.

For licensed services the structure flips to the standard Indiana pattern. A licensee offering lifts, tinting or skin services must work inside a licensed beauty culture salon. If she leases or subleases part of one, IC 25-8-7-7 provides that the board may not require her to hold her own salon license, so there is no booth renter license to file; the host salon's license covers the premises and her esthetician or cosmetologist license covers her hands. And classification still sits outside the cosmetology code: whether a renting artist is an independent contractor or the host's employee for tax and unemployment purposes turns on the control based tests the IRS and the Department of Workforce Development apply to the real arrangement, so paper the rental like a tenancy and keep the practice consistent with the paper.

Hiring employees in Indiana

Your first hire registers you as an employer in two places. The Department of Revenue takes your withholding registration on the same BT-1 application filed through INBiz, covering state and county income tax withholding, with returns filed through INTIME. The Department of Workforce Development runs the unemployment insurance account, and registration happens online through Uplink Employer Self Service in the first quarter your business qualifies as an employer; electronic filing and payment are mandatory, and wage reports come due every quarter whether or not you had payroll. Unemployment premiums are charged on the first $9,500 of each employee's wages per calendar year. A new employer starts at the typical rate of 2.5 percent, which caps the cost at $237.50 per employee per year, and then moves onto merit rates based on the business's own claims history, which run from 0.50 percent to 7.40 percent for employers in good standing under the Department of Workforce Development's Employer Handbook.

The wage floor is $7.25 an hour, where Indiana's minimum wage has stood since July 24, 2009 under the Indiana Minimum Wage Law, matching the federal floor. Lash artists who regularly receive tips can be paid a cash wage of at least $2.13 an hour if you claim a tip credit, but if tips plus the cash wage fall short of $7.25 in any week, the business makes up the difference dollar for dollar. Overtime runs at one and one half times the regular rate past 40 hours in a work week, and Indiana lets you pay $4.25 an hour to employees under 20 during their first 90 consecutive days on the job.

Local rules for an Indiana lash studio

The local layer for a lash studio is zoning, occupancy and signage, and it applies whether or not the board is involved. A storefront studio needs its use approved for the space, any buildout permitted under IC 22-15-3 and IC 36-7-4, and a certificate of occupancy before clients arrive; a home based studio runs into local home occupation rules first and the board's partition and separate entry requirements the moment licensed services join the menu. County health departments in Indiana permit body art, not lash work, so there is no county health permit for a lash studio, unless the studio also offers permanent makeup, which is body art and belongs to the microblading guide's county framework.

Get the zoning answer in writing before you sign the lease, and if there is any chance the menu will grow into licensed services, choose a space that can carry a beauty culture salon license later. Retrofitting a licensed premises, with its supervision and facility requirements, into a space chosen only for exempt work is the expensive version of a decision that costs nothing at the start.

Insurance for an Indiana lash studio

No Indiana board publishes a required insurance amount for a lash studio, and an extension only studio has no licensing file in which insurance is even requested, so treat insurance as a risk decision and a lease decision rather than a licensing line item. Lash work happens millimeters from the eye, which makes professional liability the least optional policy in this guide in practical terms. In practice, a landlord will name the coverage he expects in the lease, and a business working on clients should carry professional liability for the services themselves, general liability for the premises, and property coverage for equipment and retail stock. If other licensees work inside your premises under your salon license, your policy and theirs should both name the arrangement, because the salon license holder is the name the board and an injured client find first when something goes wrong in any chair, table or room in the building.

Your Indiana renewal calendar

Official sources

• State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners: statutes and rules compilation, IC 25-8 including the extension exemption at 1.1-2 and the esthetician scope at 2-9.5
• State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners: July 1, 2026 esthetician scope expansion announcement, HEA 1131
• State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners: licensing information, hours, fees, salon and renewal instructions
• INBiz: Secretary of State business filings, Articles of Organization and Business Entity Reports
• IC 23-15-1: assumed business names, county recorder and Secretary of State filings and fees
• Indiana Department of Revenue: sales tax, Registered Retail Merchant Certificates and withholding
• Department of Workforce Development: Unemployment Insurance Employer Handbook, rates and wage base
• Indiana Department of Labor: Indiana Minimum Wage Law poster, $7.25 and the $2.13 tip credit wage

Indiana lash studio FAQ