Hairdresser price display law in Ireland: the 1976 order your salon must follow

Fifty years ago, the Minister for Industry and Commerce signed a statutory instrument that applies to exactly one trade: yours. The Charges (Hairdressing) Display Order, 1976 tells every hairdresser in the Republic of Ireland where the price list must hang, who must be able to read it, and even how tall the letters have to be. It never expired, it was never replaced, and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission enforces it today with compliance notices and €300 fixed fines. Yet ask ten salon owners about it and most will be hearing the name for the first time.

This guide goes through the order line by line, then through everything that has stacked on top of it since: VAT-inclusive pricing, the Consumer Protection Act 2007 on misleading prices, the Consumer Rights Act 2022 on telling clients the total cost before you start, and what the CCPC can actually do to a salon that gets it wrong. It also covers the part the 1976 drafters could not have imagined: your online booking page is now a second price list, read by more people than the window notice, and it has to tell the same story. If yours does not exist yet, a free online booking page for your hair salon lists every service with its price and duration, with unlimited bookings and 0% commission, which makes keeping it in step with the window a one-minute job.

One boundary before we start: this article is about how prices must be displayed, not what they should be. For the chair-hour maths and positioning, read our guide to setting hair salon prices in Ireland.

A 1976 law written specifically for hairdressers

The Charges (Hairdressing) Display Order, 1976 (S.I. No. 156 of 1976) was made under section 19 of the Prices Act 1958 and came into operation on 9 August 1976. It is short: four articles and an explanatory note. It is also still fully in force, as confirmed by the CCPC's dedicated guidance page for hairdressers, checked in October 2026.

Hairdressing is one of a handful of trades Ireland singled out with its own display order. Pubs have one for drinks, restaurants for food, service stations for fuel. Yours is the oldest of the lot, and its core obligation has not changed in half a century: a hairdresser "shall display a notice setting out the charges for every service rendered by him in his capacity as a hairdresser".

Note the words "every service". Not a highlights reel of your six most popular cuts: every service you offer. A client should be able to establish the price of a toner, a fringe trim or an olaplex add-on from the notice, not discover it at the till.

Where the notice must go, and how legible it must be

Article 4 of the order sets out the mechanics with a precision that puts many modern regulations to shame. In practical terms:

Three details owners regularly miss:

• One notice may not be enough. If a single notice cannot be positioned so that it is readable from the street along your frontage, the order requires you to display as many notices as it takes.
• Letter size is prescribed. Letters and figures must be at least 6 millimetres high and of proportionate width. An elegant chalkboard in 4 mm script is a lovely piece of decor and a breach of the order.
• Every entrance counts. A salon above a shop with a street door and a back entrance from a car park needs the notice at both.

The spirit of the order is as useful as its letter: a prospective client standing outside, or just inside the door, should be able to compare you with the salon down the road without speaking to anyone. That is also, not coincidentally, exactly what a good booking page does at 10 pm.

The prices on the notice must be VAT-inclusive and accurate

The 1976 order says where and how to display charges. Other rules govern what the numbers themselves must look like:

• Tax-inclusive, always. The Prices and Charges (Tax-Inclusive Statements) Order 1973 requires a charge for a service to be stated as a single amount inclusive of any tax payable, and the CCPC's hairdresser guidance repeats it plainly: all price information must be accurate, up to date and include all taxes, such as VAT (checked in October 2026). A consumer menu with "plus VAT" in the small print is not an option in Ireland. Since 1 July 2026 hairdressing services carry the 9% second reduced rate; what that means for your margins and your registration threshold is covered in our guide to VAT for Irish hair salons.
• The displayed price must be the charged price. Under the Consumer Protection Act 2007, charging a different price from the one displayed is a misleading price indication. The CCPC's hairdresser guidance names this specifically.
• The total cost must be known before you start. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2022, a business must give the consumer key information before the contract is agreed, including the total cost of the service or how it will be calculated. In a consumer rights piece published in May 2026, the CCPC walked through the case of a client charged an extra €45 for a blow-dry she had not asked for, and was blunt: unexpected add-on charges that were not explained beforehand could be considered misleading, and the client can challenge the charge, seek a refund, and take the dispute to the Small Claims Procedure for up to €2,000 with a €25 fee.

The practical translation for a colour-heavy salon: anything that is mandatory is part of the price and belongs on the notice. If a gloss, a treatment or a finish is optional, it is a separate listed service the client agrees to before you apply it, not a surprise on the receipt.

What a breach actually costs

A contravention of the 1976 order is a criminal offence under section 22 of the Prices Act 1958. In practice the CCPC has a graduated toolkit, and all of it is real rather than theoretical:

• Compliance notice. A formal direction to fix the breach, typically the first step for a salon with no notice or an out-of-date one.
• Fixed payment notice. The Consumer Protection (Fixed Payment Notice) Regulations 2007 (S.I. No. 689 of 2007) list a contravention of the Charges (Hairdressing) Display Order 1976 by name among the offences that can be settled with a fixed payment of €300, payable within 28 days. Pay and there is no prosecution; ignore it and there is. An authorised officer can issue more than one notice per visit if more than one breach is found.
• A public record. Payments under fixed payment notices go on the Consumer Protection List, which can be published. A €300 fine is survivable; your salon's name on a public enforcement list, picked up by the local paper, costs more.
• Prosecution. For a breach that is not fixed or settled.

This is not dormant law. In July 2026 the CCPC published details of 31 enforcement actions against 18 traders, most of them fixed payment notices for price display failures (checked in October 2026). That round named retailers rather than salons, but the hairdressing order sits in the same enforcement machinery, and the CCPC maintains a dedicated guidance page for hairdressers precisely because it checks the sector.

"From" prices, add-ons and gendered menus: what the rules actually say

Three grey areas generate most of the arguments at salon receptions, so it is worth being precise about what is regulated and what is merely debated.

"From" prices. Neither the 1976 order nor the CCPC's hairdresser guidance addresses "from €150" pricing in terms. What the law does demand is that prices are accurate and not misleading, and that the client knows the total cost or how it will be calculated before agreeing. The defensible pattern for genuinely variable work such as balayage or corrective colour is a "from" price on the notice, a consultation that scopes the actual job, and a firm figure agreed before any colour is mixed. A "from" price that nobody has ever actually paid is a misleading price indication waiting for a complaint.

Mandatory extras. If every colour client pays for a sensitivity-friendly developer surcharge or a finishing blow-dry, that is not an extra, it is the price, and the notice must reflect it. The CCPC's €45 blow-dry example above is exactly this scenario from the client's side of the mirror.

Gents' and ladies' pricing. There is no Irish rule that bans a gendered price list, and the CCPC's hairdresser guidance does not address gender pricing at all (checked in October 2026). The Equal Status Act 2000 contains an explicit exemption, in section 5(2), for differences in treatment on the gender ground in relation to services of an aesthetic or cosmetic nature that require physical contact. Many salons have nonetheless moved to pricing by hair length and chair time because it reflects cost more honestly than gender does, and it ends the argument about what a short-haired woman or a long-haired man should pay. That is a commercial choice, not a legal obligation. Whichever structure you choose, the 1976 order's demand is the same: every service, with its charge, on the notice.

Your booking page is your second price list

The 1976 order predates the internet by two decades, but the logic it enforces, prices visible before the client commits, now plays out mostly online. A salon's prices typically live in four places: the window notice, the booking page, the Google Business Profile, and the till. The legal risk and the review risk both live in the gaps between them.

The failure mode is always the same: prices go up, the window notice is reprinted that week, and the booking page or the Google profile keeps quoting the old menu for a month. A client who books at €60 and is charged €68 has, from her side, met a misleading price, and under the Consumer Rights Act 2022 the figure she agreed to when booking is the figure she had a right to rely on. Make it a single habit: the day a price changes, change it everywhere (how to sequence and announce the increase itself is the subject of our guide to raising prices in an Irish hair salon), and treat the booking page as the master copy because it is the one place clients actively transact on the number. Your Google Business Profile should then link to that page rather than carrying its own hand-typed service list that will quietly go stale.

This is where the right software removes the chore rather than adding one. With ViteUneCoupe, the booking page is generated from your service catalogue: every service shows its VAT-inclusive price and its real duration, editing a price takes a minute, and the page is free with unlimited online bookings and 0% commission, always, alongside staff schedules, a client database and a calendar. To be equally clear about what it does not do: there is no till or payment processing, no deposits, and reminders are by email rather than SMS. The Standard plan at 29 € excl. VAT per month, with no commitment, adds confirmation, reminder and thank-you emails plus ICS calendar sync; an anti no-show bank-card hold is coming soon in the Standard + Anti No-Show plan at 49 € excl. VAT per month. None of that changes your display obligations; it just makes the online half of them maintain itself.

Running a promotion: the 30-day prior price rule

If your salon runs sales, one more pricing rule matters, and it is worth stating its exact scope. Since the Consumer Rights Act 2022 reshaped Irish price indication law, any announcement of a price reduction on goods must show the prior price, defined as the lowest price applied in the 30 days before the reduction. The CCPC's price reductions guidance for businesses sets out the rule and its edge cases, successive reductions and seasonal sales included (checked in October 2026).

For a salon that means two different regimes under one roof:

• Retail products at your counter are goods, squarely inside the rule. "Was €32, now €24" on a shampoo is only lawful if €32 really was the lowest price that shampoo sold at in the previous 30 days.
• Services are not the subject of the CCPC's 30-day guidance, which speaks of goods and products throughout. But a "was/now" claim on a colour package still answers to the general ban on misleading price indications in the Consumer Protection Act 2007: the "was" price must be a price clients genuinely paid, recently. A permanent "January offer" that runs all year is a complaint to the CCPC waiting to be typed. And if a promotion takes the form of a discounted voucher sold at your desk, the voucher rules have their own carve-outs, covered in our guide to gift voucher law for Irish hair salons.

A ten-minute compliance check

Stand outside your own front door and run this list:

• A notice exists and lists the charge for every service you offer, not a selection
• Ground-floor salon: the notice is outside or in the window, readable from the footpath; otherwise it is at or immediately inside every entrance
• Letters and figures are at least 6 mm high; add a second notice if one cannot cover the frontage legibly
• Every price includes VAT, with no "plus VAT" or "service charge extra" footnotes
• The notice, the booking page, the Google Business Profile and the till all show the same numbers today
• "From" prices appear only on genuinely variable services, and every such client gets a firm quote at consultation before work starts
• Any current promotion on retail products shows a prior price that really was the lowest of the previous 30 days
• Someone owns the job of updating all of the above on the day of any price change

If every box ticks, you are ahead of a surprising share of the trade, and the next CCPC authorised officer who walks your street will keep walking.

Frequently asked questions

Do hair salons have to display prices in Ireland?

Yes. The Charges (Hairdressing) Display Order, 1976 requires every hairdresser to display a notice setting out the charges for every service they provide. A ground-floor salon adjoining the street must display it outside or in the window, readable from the public footpath; any other premises must display it at or immediately inside each entrance. The CCPC enforces the order.

How big does the lettering on a salon price list have to be?

The 1976 order prescribes letters and figures at least 6 millimetres high and of proportionate width, positioned so the notice is clearly visible and easily readable. If one notice cannot achieve that, the order requires displaying as many notices as necessary.

What is the fine for not displaying salon prices?

A breach of the 1976 order is an offence under the Prices Act 1958. The CCPC can issue a compliance notice, or a fixed payment notice of €300 payable within 28 days, with prosecution if it is not paid. Payments appear on the Consumer Protection List, which can be published, and more than one notice can be issued per inspection.

Do my displayed salon prices have to include VAT?

Yes. Prices shown to consumers must be stated as a single amount including all taxes, under the Prices and Charges (Tax-Inclusive Statements) Order 1973 and CCPC guidance. Since 1 July 2026 hairdressing services carry the 9% VAT rate, but the number on the wall is always the full amount the client pays.

Can I charge more than the price on my list?

No. Charging a price different from the one displayed is a misleading price indication under the Consumer Protection Act 2007, and under the Consumer Rights Act 2022 the client must know the total cost, or how it will be calculated, before agreeing to the service. Mandatory extras belong on the notice; optional extras need the client's agreement before they are applied.

Are "from" prices legal on a salon price list?

They are not prohibited, and for genuinely variable work like balayage they are the honest format, provided the "from" figure is a price clients really pay and the client receives a firm quote at consultation before work begins. A "from" price that no client ever actually gets charged risks being a misleading price indication.