Buying or opening a hair salon or barbershop in Spain: costs, payback and licences

An existing hair salon or barbershop in Spain sells via traspaso for about €22,000 on average: half of 60 listings in 2026 ranged from €12,000 to €36,500, around €50,000 in Barcelona.

Salons serving foreign clients on the coast ask about €80,000; opening from scratch costs €15,000–50,000. The real asset is the stylists and their clients.

Looking at a hair salon or barber shop for sale in Spain?

Below: what a hair salon, barbershop and beauty salon cost as a traspaso, what you are actually buying along with the chairs, what opening from scratch costs, which permits are needed and where a salon ends and medicine begins, what a salon earns with stylists paid under the collective agreement, the risks of “chair rental”, how a salon is taxed and what to check before buying. The page includes a payback calculator with an illustrative salon.

What an existing beauty salon or barbershop costs

We reviewed 60 traspaso listings for hair salons, barbershops, beauty salons and beauty treatment rooms on Wallapop (October 2026).

The median is €22,000, the average about €25,000, half the properties fall between €12,000 and €36,500, and only five ask more than €50,000. These are asking prices: they come down in a deal.

Price depends heavily on the format.

A 2–3 chair barbershop in the sample costs about €10,000 on average, an ordinary hair salon €16,500, and a beauty salon with treatment rooms for aesthetics and nails €45,000.

A typical property is 75 m² at a rent of about €750 a month, or €10–11 per m²; a traspaso costs on average 30 months’ rent.

Examples from the sample: a 3-chair, 90 m² barbershop — €12,000 with rent of €510; a 10-station unisex salon in Valencia’s Zaidía district — €39,500 with rent of €750; an 8-station salon with four treatment rooms in Calella, trading since 2006 — €49,000; a salon on Barcelona’s Gran Via, trading for 37 years with stated revenue of about €250,000 a year — €75,000 with rent of €1,350.

Salons on the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca whose clients are mostly foreigners are a separate market.

On thinkSPAIN they range from €28,000 in Mijas to €135,000 in L’Alfàs del Pi, with a median of about €80,000 across five listings and rents of €1,000–1,900 a month plus VAT.

Here you pay for regular foreign clients and staff who speak their language.

What a salon traspaso sells

Legally, a traspaso is the assignment of the premises lease together with the equipment and furniture. The seller’s company and the premises are not included.

Chairs, basins and mirrors are cheap, so the price of a salon reflects other things:

• The client base. Clients follow the stylist, not the sign over the door. If a stylist who holds half the bookings leaves for the salon across the street after the deal, half the revenue goes too. Ask how many clients come back and who they book with — the booking system has the data.
• The stylists. Employees transfer to the buyer with all their rights and seniority — more on this in the checklist below. That is a plus, because the stylists stay, and an obligation: dismissing an experienced stylist with long service means paying compensation.
• An owner who cuts hair. In a small salon the seller is often the main stylist. When they leave, you are buying premises with equipment and will have to build a clientele from scratch. Such a salon is worth little more than its fit-out.
• Permitted activities. Hairdressing, aesthetics, nails, tanning and micropigmentation are different activities, and not all of them can run on one declaration. Check what is registered with the town hall.

What it costs to open a salon or barbershop from scratch

According to Booksy, opening a barbershop in Spain costs €15,000–50,000 depending on size, area and equipment. The main items:

• Refit — from €5,000 for a simple refresh of small premises to €15,000 or more if ventilation, plumbing for basins and toilets are needed.
• Equipment — a professional chair costs €500–2,000; a set of chairs, basins, mirrors and a reception desk runs to several thousand euros.
• Project and town-hall declaration — €200–1,000 in fees, plus a technician’s work if a project is required.
• Stock and launch — opening products, a booking system, marketing.
• Reserve — several months of rent and wages: a new salon builds its clientele gradually. How to size it is covered in Cash gap.

Hence the main argument for a traspaso: the median €22,000 is comparable to opening from scratch, but the premises come with clients and stylists.

The argument against: salons whose stylists have already left are sold by traspaso too, so find out who is selling and why.

Which permits a beauty salon needs

Opening a hair salon in Spain is simpler than opening a café or restaurant.

Hair and beauty salons (IAE group 972) are in the annex to Spain’s retail liberalisation law (Ley 12/2012): for premises up to 750 m² no licence may be required, and it is replaced by a declaration (declaración responsable) or prior notification (comunicación previa). Town halls and regions set the requirements for premises and hygiene.

• Valencia. Under Valencia city council’s guidance, a hair salon needs a ceiling of at least 2.5 m, 2 m² per worker plus 2 m² per chair, separate toilets by sex if it serves both men and women, a comb disinfection unit, single-use blades and, for nails, an autoclave with a log of checks. Manicure, pedicure, barbering and waxing must be listed in the activity application.
• Madrid. You open on a declaration under the OLDRUAM ordinance, and hygiene in hair and beauty salons is governed by the city’s 2014 public health ordinance: combs, brushes and anything that touches the scalp are disinfected after every client.

Aesthetics is more complicated.

Aesthetic medicine is a healthcare centre where a doctor is responsible for non-surgical cosmetic treatments (RD 1277/2003, U.48); such a centre needs a health authorisation from the region.

Injections, fillers and anything that goes deeper than the surface layer of the skin are off limits to a beauty salon.

Under Valencia city council’s guidance, laser hair removal in a beauty centre is allowed only under a doctor’s supervision, while IPL hair removal may be done by non-medical staff with basic training; micropigmentation is governed by a separate regional decree (Decreto 83/2002).

In Madrid, premises offering micropigmentation and tattoos are entered in a regional register, and staff must complete hygiene and health training (Decreto 35/2005).

If the salon you are buying has a laser or does permanent make-up, check these permits separately.

On qualifications: the state does not require a diploma to open a hair salon or barbershop — we found no national rule obliging the owner to hold a professional qualification.

A stylist’s diploma does, however, set their group and minimum pay under the collective agreement.

What a beauty salon earns

According to Booksy, a small neighbourhood barbershop sells €3,000–4,500 of services a month, a mid-sized city one up to €12,000, and a premium one from €30,000.

Two sellers in the sample stated their revenue: a Barcelona salon about €250,000 a year at a price of €75,000, and a Pontevedra salon about €100,000 at €35,000. Both sell for roughly a third of annual revenue.

The main cost is the stylists.

All hair salons, barbershops and beauty salons are covered by the national collective agreement (BOE, 22.10.2024; in force to the end of 2026): in 2026 the minimum wage is €1,250 a month for group I, €1,325 for II, €1,350 for III and €1,375 for IV, 14 times a year.

Group III covers a stylist with an intermediate vocational diploma (Grado Medio or a level-2 certificate) or with accredited experience.

Such a stylist costs €18,900 a year gross and, with employer contributions adding about 32%, about €24,950 a year, or €2,080 a month.

That is the floor: good stylists in big cities earn more and often work on commission.

Chair rental: what the salon owner risks

A common model is alquiler de sillón: the stylist registers as self-employed (autónomo) and pays the salon for a chair, and the salon does not employ them.

The legitimate version is a genuine space rental: the stylist pays a fixed sum against an invoice with VAT, finds their own clients, sets their own prices and hours, takes payment into their own till and uses their own products.

If instead the stylist works the salon’s hours, with the salon’s clients and price list, and hands over a percentage of takings, that is an employment contract whatever it is called.

The law presumes an employment contract between anyone who provides a service within the organisation and under the direction of another in return for pay, and the person receiving that service (arts. 1.1 and 8.1 of the Workers’ Statute).

On inspection, such a “rental” is reclassified, back contributions are assessed and a fine is imposed.

For a buyer, this means: if the salon relies on “chair renters”, find out how those relationships work — the risk transfers with the business.

Salon payback calculator

The calculator holds an illustrative city salon-barbershop with three chairs and about 70 m²: a €30,000 traspaso (a salon with working stylists and revenue costs more than the median) plus €8,000 to refresh it.

Revenue is €11,000 a month excluding VAT (about 25 services a day at €20 excluding VAT), products 10%, staff €4,160 a month (two group III stylists; the owner is the third stylist, without a salary), rent €900 a month, other costs (power, water, booking system, insurance, accountant, laundry, marketing) €900 a month.

Pre-tax profit is €47,280 a year, about €38,300 after tax, and the €38,000 investment pays back in about a year.

Two caveats. First, a one-year payback is not the return on the business but the wage of an owner who works a chair.

If the owner does not cut hair and a third stylist is hired instead, pre-tax profit falls to €22,330, after-tax to €18,090, and payback stretches to about 2.1 years.

Buying a small salon is largely buying yourself a job. Second, profit depends on how busy the chairs are.

If revenue falls by 10%, pre-tax profit drops to €35,400; by 15%, to €29,460; break-even is about €6,600 of revenue a month.

How to read this figure and what to compare it with is covered in Payback period.

Take revenue from bank statements, till reports, the booking system and VAT returns (modelo 303), not from the seller’s word.

For how sellers justify a price, see How to value a business for sale. For comparison, another small service business with almost no staff: a self-service laundromat.

Taxes: VAT and modules

• VAT. Hair and beauty salon services are taxed at the standard 21% rate (art. 90 Ley 37/1992); there has been no reduced rate for them since 2012. For a salon whose clients are private individuals, this means that of a €24 haircut the salon keeps about €19.80.
• Modules. In 2026 the objective assessment regime (módulos) is open to hair salons (heading 972.1) and beauty salons (972.2) with up to 6 employees. For a hair salon the annual base is €9,649.47 per working owner, €3,161.90 per employee, €94.48 per m² of premises and €81.88 per 100 kWh of electricity. Example: owner, two stylists, 60 m² and 8,000 kWh a year — about €28,200 of base before depreciation and reducing coefficients. That is less than the profit of our illustrative salon, so for a small hair salon modules are often cheaper than actual accounts.
• Module limit. Modules are available with previous-year revenue up to €250,000 — that is the tax agency’s position, although parliament has not ratified the decrees extending these limits; only an owner who is an individual (autónomo) can use them, not an SL.
• SL. A salon owned by an SL pays corporate tax: in 2026, with turnover under €1m, 19% on the first €50,000 of profit and 21% above. How to take profit out is covered in Salary or dividends from a Spanish SL.

What to check before buying a salon

1. The lease. A business tenant may assign the lease without the landlord’s consent, but the landlord may raise the rent by 20% and must be notified within a month (art. 32 LAU). The lease may prohibit assignment or change these terms (art. 4.3 LAU). The remaining lease term is the main thing you buy along with the premises.
2. The declaration and activities. Who holds the activity at the town hall and what is registered: hairdressing, aesthetics, nails, tanning. For lasers and micropigmentation — are there separate permits and staff training?
3. The clients. An export from the booking system for 12–24 months: how many clients return, which stylist they book with, how many book with the seller personally.
4. The stylists. Who is employed, who is self-employed and on what terms; will the key stylists stay? If the salon uses chair rental — the agreements, invoices, and who sets hours and prices.
5. The numbers. Monthly revenue for 2–3 years from bank statements, the till and VAT returns; product purchases from supplier invoices.
6. Debts and staff. The buyer of a trading business is liable for the seller’s tax debts (art. 42.1.c LGT) unless they obtain a tax-debt certificate before the deal, issued within 3 months (art. 175.2 LGT); for Social Security debts (art. 168.2 LGSS); employees transfer with all their rights, and seller and buyer are jointly liable for wage debts for 3 years (art. 44 ET). Ask for a staff list with contracts, seniority and rotas.
7. VAT on the deal. Selling a whole business able to operate on its own is outside VAT (art. 7.1 Ley 37/1992); a mere assignment of rights and assets usually carries 21% VAT — structure the deal with a tax lawyer.

How an existing business is checked before you pay a deposit is described on our traspaso audit page; if you are buying the company that owns the salon or a chain of salons, you need full due diligence.

If you are moving to Spain for this business

A non-resident can buy a salon, but a non-EU citizen can live in Spain and run it personally only with a residence permit — usually a self-employment permit, for one year at first.

The golden visa has been abolished, and the startup visa does not suit an ordinary business of this kind.

How the self-employment permit works and how it differs from an employment permit is covered by Relotus in «Cuenta propia in Spain».

The sensible order is to confirm the permit first and only then pay a deposit.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to buy a beauty salon in Spain?

In a sample of 60 listings from 2026, a hair or beauty salon traspaso costs €22,000 on average, with half between €12,000 and €36,500. A 2–3 chair barbershop is about €10,000, a beauty salon with treatment rooms about €45,000, and about €50,000 in Barcelona. Salons serving foreigners on the coast ask about €80,000.

How much does it cost to open a barbershop in Spain?

Market benchmarks put it at €15,000–50,000 depending on size, area and equipment. The main items are the refit, chairs and basins, the town-hall declaration, opening stock and a reserve covering several months of rent and wages.

Do you need a licence to open a hair salon in Spain?

For premises up to 750 m² no licence is needed: a hair salon opens on a declaration to the town hall. But the premises must meet the town hall’s health requirements, and lasers, micropigmentation and aesthetic medicine need separate permits.

Do you need a qualification to open a hair salon in Spain?

The state does not require the owner of a hair salon or barbershop to hold a diploma. A stylist’s diploma affects their group and minimum pay under the collective agreement, and medical procedures may only be done by a doctor in a healthcare centre.

How much does a beauty salon make in Spain?

In the illustrative example, a three-chair salon with €132,000 of revenue a year makes about €38,300 after tax if the owner works as a stylist. If a stylist is hired in their place, about €18,100 remains.

Is chair rental legal in a Spanish salon?

Yes, if it is a genuine space rental: a fixed fee against an invoice, and the stylist has their own clients, prices, hours and till. If the stylist works the salon’s hours and price list and hands over a percentage, the labour inspectorate treats it as employment and assesses back contributions.

What VAT does a hair salon charge in Spain?

21%, the standard rate: there has been no reduced rate for hair and beauty salons since 2012. An individual owner of a small salon can be taxed under the module system if they have no more than six employees.

Key points about buying a beauty salon in Spain

• A hair or beauty salon traspaso costs €22,000 on average, about 30 months’ rent; Barcelona and salons serving foreigners on the coast are the most expensive.
• Along with the chairs you buy clients and stylists — and clients follow their stylist.
• A hair salon opens on a declaration, while lasers, micropigmentation and aesthetic medicine need separate permits.
• Chair rental is lawful only as a genuine rental; otherwise it is employment with contribution debts.
• The one-year payback in the example rests on the owner’s own work; with a hired stylist instead, it is about two years.

Sources

• Ley 12/2012, annex (group 972) — BOE; RD 1277/2003, U.48 — BOE.
• Valencia city council: health requirements for hair salons — valencia.es, for beauty centres — valencia.es; Comunidad de Madrid, register of micropigmentation and tattoo premises — sede.comunidad.madrid.
• National collective agreement for hair salons, beauty institutes and gyms — BOE; Workers’ Statute, arts. 1, 8 and 44 — BOE; Orden PJC/297/2026 (contributions) — BOE.
• Ley 37/1992 (VAT) — BOE; Orden HAC/1425/2025 (modules for 2026) — BOE.
• LAU, arts. 4 and 32 — BOE; LGT, arts. 42 and 175 — BOE.
• Cost and revenue benchmarks — Booksy.
• Salon traspaso and sale listings — Wallapop, thinkSPAIN, October 2026.