How to Start a Hair Salon in Virginia

The regulator: the Board for Barbers and Cosmetology

Hair salons in Virginia are licensed by the Board for Barbers and Cosmetology, a board inside the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR). The Board's authority comes from Chapter 7 of Title 54.1 of the Code of Virginia, and its working rules for hair are in 18VAC41-20, the barbering and cosmetology regulations. The same board also licenses barbershops, nail salons, waxing salons, esthetics spas and tattoo parlors, which matters for a full service salon: adding a service line usually means adding a credential from the same board, not finding a new agency.

Two features of the Virginia system shape everything in this guide. The first is the unified fee schedule that took effect August 1, 2025: every individual license the Board issues costs $120 to apply for and $120 to renew, and every facility license costs $220 to apply for and $220 to renew, whichever trade is involved. The second is timing. Virginia licenses do not renew on a statewide date. Each license expires two years from the last day of the month in which it was issued, so a salon that opens with four stylists can end up tracking five different renewal dates. The Board's renewal rules also carry no continuing education condition for these licenses, which makes renewals a fee and a date, not a coursework obligation.

Virginia hair salon licenses at a glance

The cosmetologist license, step by step

The training route is a licensed cosmetology school program of at least 1,000 clock hours. The December 1, 2025 amendments to 18VAC41-20-210 cut the program from 1,500 hours, so any school or directory still quoting 1,500 hours is quoting the repealed rule. The curriculum the regulation prescribes covers orientation and professional requirements, shampooing and rinsing, scalp and hair care, haircutting, hairstyling, hair coloring and lightening, chemical texture services, skin care within the limits described below, nail care, and a 35 hour block on lashes and brows that includes false lash and lash extension application, tinting and perming. Registered apprenticeships in cosmetology also exist and run through Virginia Works, the state workforce agency; apprenticeship standards are set through that system rather than in the Board's regulation, and a registered apprentice's proof of registration must be displayed in the shop where the apprentice works.

After training comes the examination. Every applicant for initial licensure must pass both a written and a practical examination approved by the Board. The Board does not publish a single exam price in its regulation; the fee is set by the vendor under contract with the Board, and 18VAC41-20-60 caps the charge at $225 per candidate. An applicant who has been found eligible for the examination can work before passing under a temporary license: it costs nothing, runs 90 days, and requires the holder to work under the direct supervision of a currently licensed practitioner. For a salon hiring a new graduate, that temporary license is the bridge between the school start date and the exam date, and it is worth asking for by name.

The license application itself goes to DPOR with a $120 fee. The same $120 figure covers application by endorsement for a cosmetologist licensed in another state, renewal every two years, and the components of reinstatement: reinstatement costs $240 in total, built from the $120 renewal fee and a $120 reinstatement fee. All Board fees are nonrefundable and none are prorated, so an application filed with the wrong license type selected costs a second fee to correct. One scope point deserves attention before the menu is printed. The 2025 statutory update narrowed what cosmetology covers on the skin side: cosmetology includes hair removal treatments and basic cleansing facial treatments only, meaning a cleanse, a tone, and a mask or moisturizer applied with manual practices. Chemical exfoliation, microdermabrasion and lymphatic drainage belong to the master esthetician, and a salon that wants them needs the esthetics route described in the Virginia esthetics guide, not a cosmetology license.

The cosmetology salon license

Section 54.1-704.1 of the Code of Virginia makes it unlawful to operate a cosmetology salon without a valid Board license, and 18VAC41-20-120 sets the terms. The salon license application costs $220. The license is issued to a firm, meaning the legal business that operates the salon, and it is not transferable: it bears the name and address of the business, and it cannot be sold, assigned or carried to a new location. If the name or address changes, the Board must be told in writing within 30 days. If the legal entity holding the license is dissolved or altered so that a new entity exists, the original license becomes void and the new entity applies again. Choice of entity is therefore a licensing decision in Virginia, not just a tax decision: form the entity you intend to keep before the salon license issues.

Inside the shop, the regulation runs on responsible management. The person or firm answerable for the salon must ensure that every current license, the practitioners' and the salon's, is displayed in plain view of the public, and that nobody in the shop performs a service beyond the scope of the license they hold. Allowing an unlicensed person to practice in the shop is a ground for discipline against the salon's responsible management, which is how a chair renter's shortcut becomes the owner's problem. Board inspectors get access to the premises under the standards of practice, and mobile salons sit under the same facility rules: a mobile operation is licensed with the address where it is permanently garaged, must be stationary while providing services, and may not operate where a local ordinance prohibits it.

Ownership itself does not require a practitioner license. The Board's guidance is that a person may own a salon without holding a cosmetology license, provided the owner performs no services; the license obligation falls on the premises and on everyone who works on clients. The same FAQ answers the home salon question: cosmetology services may be provided in a home when the practitioner holds both a cosmetologist license and a cosmetology salon license for that address and complies with all other federal, state and local laws. One more boundary matters for menu planning. A cosmetology salon may offer esthetician level services, but master esthetics services require an esthetics spa license for the premises, so a salon planning a serious skin menu should read the esthetics guide before signing a lease sized for treatment rooms.

Forming the LLC and keeping it alive

Virginia business filings do not go to a secretary of state. They go to the Clerk's Office of the State Corporation Commission (SCC), online through the Clerk's Information System, known as CIS. An LLC is formed by filing Articles of Organization, Form LLC1011, and the filing fee set by section 13.1-1005 of the Code of Virginia is $100. The articles name the LLC, its principal office and its registered agent, a Virginia resident or an authorized entity with a physical Virginia address who receives official notices for the company.

Keeping the LLC alive is simpler than in most states, and easier to forget for exactly that reason. Virginia LLCs file no annual report. What they owe is an annual registration fee of $50, due by the last day of the month in which the LLC was organized, every year. The SCC assesses the fee and mails the notice to the registered agent about two months ahead. Pay late and a $25 penalty attaches; leave the fee unpaid past the last day of the third month after the due date and the LLC is automatically canceled, which matters beyond the corporate record: because the salon license is issued to the firm, a canceled entity can put the premises license itself in question, since a license held by a dissolved entity is void. Put the anniversary month on the same calendar as the license renewals.

Your salon name: the assumed name certificate

If the salon trades under any name other than the exact legal name of the LLC or the owner's own name, Virginia requires a Certificate of Assumed or Fictitious Name under section 59.1-70 of the Code of Virginia. The filing office changed on January 1, 2020, and older advice still sends owners to the wrong counter: certificates are now filed centrally with the Clerk of the State Corporation Commission, for individuals and entities alike. The old route, filing with the circuit court clerk of each locality where the business operates, no longer applies. The fee is $10. The SCC certificate does not replace the salon license, and it does not reserve the name against anyone else; it is the public record connecting the trade name on the door to the legal business behind it. File it in the same week the entity is formed so the name on the salon license application, the lease and the bank account all match.

EIN and tax accounts

The federal Employer Identification Number comes from the IRS, free, and an LLC with employees or a business bank account needs one before the first hire and the first payroll account. On the state side, the accounts that matter to a Virginia salon are a Virginia Tax business account, which carries the sales tax registration covered in the next section, and a Virginia Employment Commission employer account once the salon has employees, which carries the unemployment insurance reporting covered under hiring. Register for each when the trigger arrives rather than all at formation: the sales tax account when retail sales begin, and the employer account when the first employee is hired. Keep the SCC entity record, the EIN letter and the state account numbers together, because the salon license application, the assumed name certificate and the tax registrations all ask for the same legal name, and a mismatch between them is the most common cause of a delayed opening in this sequence.

Sales tax: services untaxed, retail taxed

Virginia's retail sales and use tax falls on the sale of tangible personal property, accommodations and a short list of taxable services. Beauty services are not on that list. Charges for services are generally exempt from the tax; the tax reaches a service charge only when it is connected with the sale of tangible personal property. For a hair salon the split is clean: cuts, color, styling, chemical texture work and every other service on the menu are untaxed, and the shampoo, styling products and retail color a client takes home are taxed at the register. A salon that sells retail must register with Virginia Tax as a dealer, collect the tax on those sales, and file returns electronically by the 20th of the month following the filing period.

The rate depends on where the salon sits, because the combined rate is the 4.3 percent state tax plus a mandatory 1 percent local tax plus, in some regions, additional local layers. The combined rate is 5.3 percent in most of Virginia, 6 percent in Central Virginia, Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, 6.3 percent in Charlotte County, Danville, Gloucester County, Halifax County, Henry County, Northampton County, Patrick County and Pittsylvania County, and 7 percent in James City County, Williamsburg and York County. Check the rate for the salon's exact locality on the Virginia Tax rate table before the point of sale system is configured, because two salons twenty miles apart can owe different rates on the same bottle of shampoo.

Booth rent and chair rental in a Virginia salon

Virginia issues no booth renter license and no chair rental permit, so the rental model is built out of the facility rules instead. Section 54.1-704.1 draws the operative line: a licensed practitioner who has no ownership interest in the facility where they work does not need a facility license of their own. A cosmetologist renting a chair inside an already licensed salon therefore practices under the salon's premises license, with their own $120 practitioner license displayed at the chair. The trade for that simplicity sits with the owner: the salon's responsible management answers to the Board for everyone working in the premises, including renters, which covers license display, scope of practice and sanitation. A rental agreement that does not require the renter to keep their license current and displayed is leaving the owner's license exposed.

The line moves when the renter stops being a guest in someone else's salon. A stylist who takes their own premises, controls their own door and hours, and holds the space out as their own business is operating a salon, and that premises needs its own cosmetology salon license at $220, issued to the renter's firm at that address. That is the whole Virginia suite question in miniature, and the salon suite guide works it through in full. The tax side follows the same split: a genuine renter is a separate business, with their own EIN, their own Virginia Tax registration for their own retail sales, and their own assumed name certificate if they trade under a salon name of their own, while the host salon's license covers only the premises and the owner's own operation.

Hiring stylists: classification, minimum wage and unemployment

The classification question comes first, because it decides which of the following obligations exist. A stylist the salon schedules, prices and directs is an employee whatever the paperwork calls them; a chair renter who sets their own prices, keeps their own book and pays rent is a separate business, as the booth rent section describes. Misclassification does not stay a private arrangement: it surfaces in unemployment claims, wage claims and tax audits, and the salon's responsible management is answerable to the Board for unlicensed or out of scope work in the shop regardless of what the workers are called.

For employees, Virginia's wage floor for 2026 is $12.77 per hour, set by the Department of Labor and Industry under the Virginia Minimum Wage Act and adjusted each year with the Consumer Price Index. Tipped employees may be paid a cash wage of no less than $2.13 per hour, but cash wages plus tips must reach $12.77, and the employer makes up any shortfall. On the unemployment side, a salon becomes liable with the Virginia Employment Commission on the same general triggers as federal unemployment liability, in practice a quarterly payroll of $1,500 or more or an employee working in 20 weeks of a calendar year, and registers online through the Commission's iFile and iReg systems. New employers pay a base tax rate of 2.5 percent, plus pool and fund charges, on the first $8,000 of each employee's wages per year, until the salon earns its own calculated rate; computed base rates run from 0.1 percent to 6.2 percent. Quarterly tax and wage reports go to the Commission from the first quarter with payroll.

The local layer: zoning and the business license

The state licenses assume the locality has already said yes. A salon address must sit in a zoning district that allows the use, the premises must satisfy occupancy and building requirements, and most Virginia cities and counties require a local business license for the salon itself, with the local Business, Professional and Occupational License tax computed under the locality's own schedule. Those schedules are set locality by locality, so this guide publishes no local figures; the number to get is the one from the commissioner of the revenue or licensing office in the city or county where the salon will sit. Sequence matters because the salon license is issued for one named firm at one named address: confirm zoning and local licensing for the exact address first, then form the entity, then file the salon license application against that address. A home salon adds the local layer on top of the Board's two license condition, since the Board's approval does not override a locality that prohibits the use in a residence.

Insurance and risk

No Virginia rule in the Board's regulations conditions the salon license on carrying insurance, so the coverages here are risk decisions rather than licensing steps. The standard salon package is general liability for the premises, professional liability for the services each practitioner performs, and property coverage for equipment, furniture and retail stock, with the lease usually naming its own required limits and an additional insured requirement in favor of the landlord. Chair renters should carry their own professional liability and name their own business as the insured, because the host salon's policy covers the host's operation, and the Board's responsible management rules mean an incident at a renter's chair still lands on the salon's doorstep first. Workers compensation becomes part of the picture as the employee count grows, and the salon's insurer or payroll provider can confirm the current Virginia threshold for the business.

The Virginia renewal calendar

Official sources

• Board for Barbers and Cosmetology, DPOR
• Board fee schedule, 18VAC41-20-140
• Shop and salon license rules, 18VAC41-20-120
• Code of Virginia section 54.1-704.1, facility licenses
• Code of Virginia section 59.1-70, assumed names
• SCC annual registration fees
• Virginia Tax, retail sales and use tax
• Virginia Employment Commission, employer information

This guide is general information about starting a hair salon in Virginia, not legal, tax or licensing advice for a specific business. Fees, forms and rules change, and local ordinances add their own layer. Confirm your exact obligations with the Virginia Board for Barbers and Cosmetology, the State Corporation Commission and your locality before signing a lease or enrolling in a program.