One Balayage Costs Nearly Two Days of a Qualified Hairdresser's Award Pay

Hair colour and balayage, priced in award hours

The Hair and Beauty Industry Award sets the Level 3 rate at $29.45 an hour, or $1,119.10 for a full-time week, from 1 July 2026, according to the Fair Work Commission. The award sets full-time ordinary hours at an average of 38 a week, and we count an award day as 7.6 hours, a fifth of that week. Level 3 is the qualified worker: a hairdresser with a Certificate III in Hairdressing, or a beautician with a Certificate III in Beauty Services. Divide a salon price by that rate and you get the number of award hours one appointment costs.

At Going Rate's typical prices, one balayage appointment ($430) costs about 14.6 award hours, or 1.92 award days. A salon colour appointment ($370) costs about 12.6 hours, a little over a day and a half. Jobs and Skills Australia puts the median hourly pay of hairdressers at $32, measured in May 2025. Priced against that median, the balayage is about 13.4 hours.

The salon price pays for far more than the stylist's time. Rent, colour product, foils, insurance, super, power and GST all come out of it, along with the gaps between clients. Award hours give every service a common unit. They say nothing about what share of the bill reaches the person who did the work.

Nails, lashes, brows and tans in award hours

The shorter services run to a few award hours each, at Going Rate's typical prices. A full set of lash extensions ($190) costs about 6.5 hours. A full set of acrylic nails ($120) costs about four, and a gel nail appointment ($110) about 3.7. A typical salon wax ($100) comes to about 3.4 hours, a brow lamination ($90) about three, and a spray tan ($60) about two.

Jobs and Skills Australia counts 44,300 beauty therapists, 98% of them women, on a median of $31 an hour, and lists manicures, artificial nails and waxing among their tasks. The award pays a beauty therapist with a Diploma, Level 6, at least $32.00 an hour, and at that rate the lash set is about 5.9 hours.

None of these appointments costs much in hours on its own. Each one wears off or grows out, so the hours come round again with every re-book.

How fast each service wears off

Hair grows about 1 cm a month, according to the Better Health Channel. A colour booked eight weeks after the last one has close to 2 cm of new root to cover. Balayage blends the line between old colour and regrowth, so clients can leave longer between visits, though the hair grows at the same rate.

Cancer Council NSW says fake tan colour comes off when the dead skin cells it binds to flake off, about a week after application. It also says a fake tan does not protect skin from UV. AICIS, the national industrial chemicals regulator, says false eyelashes may be replaced every two to three weeks.

CHOICE groups waxing with shaving and threading as short-term hair removal, methods that last a few days to a few weeks. We found no regulator or health-agency figure for how often people re-book acrylic infills, brow lamination, keratin or balayage, so any yearly total for those services rests on an assumed interval.

A year of upkeep, on assumed schedules

If you colour every six and a half weeks, about eight visits a year (our assumption), a salon colour appointment ($370) adds up to about 100 award hours a year at Going Rate's price. That is about 2.6 weeks of a Level 3 hairdresser's full-time award pay. Against Jobs and Skills Australia's median hourly earnings for all occupations, $47 in May 2025, the same year of colour costs about 63 hours of the typical worker's pay.

If you book a balayage appointment ($430) every three months instead (also our assumption), four visits a year cost about 58 award hours, about a week and a half of full-time award pay. A spray tan lasts about a week on Cancer Council NSW's figure, so a weekly tan through a 13-week summer (our assumption) costs about 26.5 award hours, roughly three and a half award days.

Lashes run the highest weekly figure. Replacing a full set of lash extensions ($190) every two to three weeks, AICIS's cycle, costs about 2.2 to 3.2 award hours a week. Treat that as an upper bound. Many clients pay for a cheaper infill between full sets, and Going Rate's price is for the full set.

One-off costs: laser courses, keratin and extensions

Going Rate's price for a full course of laser hair removal ($900) covers the whole course of sessions. It comes to about 30.6 award hours, or about four award days. CHOICE reported in 2019 that most people need three to six treatments. Sydney dermatologist Dr Phillip Artemi told CHOICE that up to 20% of hair keeps growing, finer and slower, and called the result permanent hair reduction. On the eight-visit assumption, a single year of colour costs more than three laser courses at Going Rate's prices.

A set of hair extensions with application ($950) is the largest single item on the list at about 32.3 award hours, more than four award days. Extensions sit on growing hair, which moves about 1 cm a month on the Better Health Channel's figure. A keratin smoothing treatment ($380) costs about 12.9 award hours, close to a colour appointment.

Salon prices are rising with wages

The ABS says hairdressing and personal grooming prices rose 4.6% in the year to August 2026, against 4.0% for the CPI as a whole. Hairdressing inflation has run above headline inflation every month since June 2026, when it was 4.2% against 3.8%. Over the ten years to the June quarter of 2026, the ABS hairdressing index rose 42.8% and the all groups index 35.6%, by Going Rate's calculation from the published index.

The award moved by a similar amount. The Level 3 rate went from $28.12 an hour in 2025-26 to $29.45 from 1 July 2026, a rise of about 4.7% by our calculation from the Fair Work Commission's rates. Jobs and Skills Australia counts 65,400 hairdressers, 76% of them women and 49% working part-time.

IBISWorld estimates hairdressing and beauty services revenue at $12.5bn in 2025-26 and expects it to dip 0.9% that year, which it links to lower spending on premium treatments.

The health cost of frequent appointments

AICIS says the risk of skin sensitisation from cyanoacrylate glue is greatest for eyelash glues, because the glue sits in prolonged contact with the skin around the eye and is reapplied often. In May 2026 the TGA decided against making lash glue professional-only under Schedule 7. Lash glue stays in Schedule 5, and from 1 February 2028 cyanoacrylate contact adhesives must carry a skin-sensitisation warning. Each re-book of a full set of lash extensions ($190) is another exposure.

SafeWork NSW warns that workers may be exposed to formaldehyde throughout keratin straightening, especially when heat is applied. The poisons standard lets cosmetic hair products contain up to 0.05% free formaldehyde as a preservative, or up to 0.2% if labelled as containing formaldehyde, it says. For nails, the June 2026 Poisons Standard lists methyl methacrylate for cosmetic use in Schedule 10, the prohibited list, except where residual monomer in a polymer is 1% or less. Before booking a full set of acrylic nails ($120), ask whether the salon uses MMA-free product.

ARPANSA says cosmetic lasers are regulated only in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia, and IPL only in Tasmania, with no nationally uniform laws. It says clients with Fitzpatrick skin type IV and above face a higher risk of injury from light-based treatments. Before paying for a full course of laser hair removal ($900), ask who operates the device and what training they hold.

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