Should your hair salon open on public holidays?

Every long weekend puts the same question on the salon WhatsApp group: are we opening on the Monday? Half the owners in the thread swear a public holiday is their best trading day of the quarter; the other half swear they lose money every time they try. The irritating truth is that both halves are right, because the answer depends on three things that differ salon by salon: what the day costs you in penalty wages, how full your book actually gets, and which days are even public holidays where your salon stands.

This guide works through the open-or-close decision the way an accountant would, not the way the group chat does. The award rule and the current rates, your employees' rights (you request, you do not require), a labelled break-even example in Australian dollars, the state-by-state calendar traps including part-day holidays and the Melbourne Cup, whether you can surcharge, and finally the unglamorous bit that actually prevents chaos: what to do in your booking diary either way. If clients book you through an online booking page for your hair salon, the diary settings are half the battle, because whatever you decide only works if the booking page and your Google profile tell clients the same story.

One scope note before the numbers: this is general information checked against official sources in October 2026, not legal advice. Awards are varied, rates change every July, and an enterprise agreement can override the lot, so verify anything you rely on at fairwork.gov.au.

What a public holiday hour costs under the Hair and Beauty Award

Most employed hairdressers in Australia are covered by the Hair and Beauty Industry Award 2020 (MA000005). For hours actually worked on a public holiday, the award sets a penalty rate of 250% of the minimum hourly rate, and it applies to full-time, part-time and casual employees alike: the casual public holiday rate is also 250%, not 250% plus the casual loading on top (Hair and Beauty Industry Award MA000005, clause 23, checked in October 2026).

In dollars, using the award minimums effective from 1 July 2026: a Level 3 employee, the classification of a qualified hairdresser, has a minimum hourly rate of A$29.45, which becomes A$73.63 per hour on a public holiday. Your actual staff may be paid above award, in which case the percentage applies to their award classification minimum but your real cost is higher again. Current dollar figures per classification live in the Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guides, updated whenever minimum rates change, so check the live guide rather than a blog, this one included. The full picture of classifications and base rates is in our guide to hairdresser wages in Australia.

Two more cost lines that owners forget:

Superannuation applies to public holiday wages for hours worked, so the 12% super guarantee sits on top of the penalty rate.
Minimum engagement rules still apply. You cannot call a casual in for a single 45-minute blow-wave at 250%; the award's minimum consecutive-hours rules for shifts make a short public holiday stint a multi-hour commitment.

And one cost line that works the other way: closing is not free either. Under the National Employment Standards, full-time and part-time employees who would ordinarily have worked that day are paid their base rate for those hours even though the salon is shut (Fair Work Ombudsman, not working on public holidays, checked in October 2026). Casuals are simply not paid. So the real comparison is never "wages versus zero"; it is "250% with revenue versus 100% with none" for your permanent staff.

You request, your staff can refuse: the rights side of the decision

Before the spreadsheet, the law. An employer cannot simply roster employees onto a public holiday the way it rosters a Tuesday. Under the Fair Work Act, you may request that an employee work a public holiday, the request must be reasonable, and the employee may refuse if the refusal is reasonable or the request is not (Fair Work Ombudsman, public holidays, checked in October 2026). Reasonableness looks at things like the nature of the role, the employee's personal and family circumstances, whether they are full-time, part-time or casual, the notice you gave, and the penalty pay on offer.

The practical consequences for a salon:

Ask early, in writing, and genuinely ask. A roster published with the public holiday pre-filled is a requirement dressed as a request. Put the question weeks ahead, let people answer, and build the day from volunteers first. Penalty rates do a lot of recruiting on their own: plenty of stylists are delighted to work four hours at 250%.
Substitution is available by agreement. The award allows an employer and employee to agree in writing to substitute another day for a public holiday. A stylist who works Easter Monday and takes the following Monday off instead can suit everyone, but it must be a real, recorded agreement, not an announcement.
A public holiday inside annual leave stays a public holiday. It does not burn a day of the employee's leave balance. The interactions between leave and holidays are covered in our guide to salon staff leave entitlements in Australia.
The roster around the holiday still follows the normal rules: written notice, part-timers' agreed patterns, break requirements. The full set is in our guide to staff rostering for Australian hair salons.

The break-even maths: what the day must earn before it earns anything

Here is the calculation the group chat never does. Every figure below is a deliberately made-up example with the assumptions labelled; the method is the point, so re-run it with your own numbers.

Assumptions. Two full-time Level 3 stylists at the award minimum of A$29.45 per hour. A six-hour public holiday trading day, 10 am to 4 pm. Product and consumables cost about 10% of takings. Service prices quoted excluding GST to keep the comparison clean.

Step 1: the wage bill. Two stylists, six hours each, at 250%: 12 hours x A$73.63 = A$883.56. Add 12% super (A$106.03) and the day's direct labour cost is about A$990, before workers compensation premium and any above-award pay. The same two stylists on an ordinary weekday cost about A$396 including super, so the public holiday premium alone is roughly A$594.

Step 2: the revenue the chairs must produce. Those two stylists give you 12 bookable chair hours. Say your mix of cuts, colour and styling averages A$110 per chair hour when a column is genuinely full. Fully booked, the day takes A$1,320. Take off 10% for product and the day contributes about A$1,188 toward wages, leaving roughly A$198 after the A$990 labour cost, before a cent of rent, power or insurance, which admittedly you pay whether you open or not.

Step 3: the sensitivity test, which is where most owners lose. Book the day at 75% instead of 100%: nine chair hours, A$990 in takings, about A$891 of contribution, against A$990 of wages. You worked a public holiday to lose about A$100 on direct costs alone. At 50% booked the loss is several hundred dollars and the question answers itself.

The rule of thumb that falls out: on a public holiday, a chair must earn roughly two and a half times what it needs to earn on a Tuesday just to stand still. So the decision is really a demand question. If your diary history shows the day before a long weekend booking out two weeks ahead and clients begging for the Monday, open, and open with your fastest, highest-average-ticket services. If last year's holiday Monday limped along at 60% with walk-in trims, close, pay the NES base-rate day for your permanents, and let everyone have the barbecue.

Three levers improve the maths without touching the law:

The owner's chair is penalty-free. If you cut hair yourself, a public holiday staffed by you plus one volunteer at 250% looks very different from a full roster at 250%.
Curate the menu for the day. Six hours of full foils at a strong hourly ticket beats six hours of fringe trims. Some salons open public holidays for colour and occasion styling only.
Protect the day from no-shows. A no-show at 250% staffing hurts two and a half times as much as the same empty chair on a Tuesday, so confirmations and reminders matter more that day than any other.

Which days are actually public holidays where your salon stands

There is no single Australian list. The national days are shared, but states and territories declare their own, and getting this wrong puts a 250% day in your roster unannounced. Always check your own state or territory's official list; the Fair Work Ombudsman's public holidays page links each one.

The traps worth naming:

Labour Day alone falls in four different months depending on the state: March in Western Australia and Victoria, May in Queensland, October in New South Wales, to take 2026 as the example. A salon chain with a Perth and a Sydney location runs two different holiday calendars.
Victoria's Melbourne Cup example. Melbourne Cup Day, the first Tuesday in November (3 November in 2026), is a public holiday across Victoria unless a non-metropolitan council has arranged a substitute local holiday, such as a local show or race day, in its place (Victorian Government public holidays, checked in October 2026). A Melbourne salon pays 250% that Tuesday; a Geelong or Mildura salon may trade it as an ordinary day and owe the penalty on a completely different date. A Sydney salon owes nothing at all: it is not a NSW holiday. Never copy another salon's calendar from another state, or even another shire.
Part-day public holidays exist. South Australia and the Northern Territory declare part-day public holidays on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, from 7 pm to midnight (SafeWork SA and NT Government public holidays, checked in October 2026). An Adelaide salon running late festive appointments on 24 December is paying public holiday rates for the evening hours; the same appointments in Brisbane are ordinary time.
Some holidays are regional, not statewide, like show-day holidays that apply to one city or district only.
December is its own puzzle, with substitute days when Christmas falls on a weekend and state trading-hours quirks; we cover that season end to end in our guide to Christmas and holiday bookings for Australian salons, so this article will not repeat it.

The habit that prevents every one of these traps: each quarter, open your state's official public holiday page, put the dates in the salon calendar, and decide open-or-closed for each one while it is still weeks away.

Can you charge a public holiday surcharge?

Yes, and since October 2026 this is worth saying carefully, because "surcharge" now means two different things in Australia.

Card payment surcharges are banned. Since 1 October 2026, businesses can no longer add a surcharge for paying by eftpos, Mastercard, Visa or American Express (ACCC guidance on card surcharges, checked in October 2026). What that means for your till and your menu is covered in our guide to the card surcharge ban for Australian hair salons.

A public holiday service surcharge is a different animal and remains legal. It is a price for the service on that day, applied however the client pays, so it sits outside the card rules; the ACCC says plainly that businesses may still charge fees that are not based on how the consumer pays. The conditions are about honesty and display:

Disclose it before the client books or pays, not at the till. On your booking page, in the confirmation, and on the menu: "a surcharge of 15% applies on public holidays" in plain sight. Hospitality has a specific menu rule requiring exactly that kind of wording displayed as prominently as the prices; a salon is not a cafe, but the same standard is the safe one, because under the Australian Consumer Law a price that can be calculated in advance should be visible up front. How to present prices generally, and how to raise them without losing regulars, is in our guide to hair salon prices in Australia.
Do not disguise it. A "holiday staffing fee" that only appears on card payments is a banned card surcharge in a costume, and misleading pricing is exactly what the ACCC and state agencies still enforce.
Size it to the real cost gap, and expect clients to do the maths. A 10 to 20% surcharge on a day that costs you 250% in wages is defensible and widely accepted in hospitality; it rarely covers the whole gap, which is another reason the break-even calculation above matters.

One honest product note: ViteUneCoupe, whose blog this is, does not process payments or apply surcharges at booking, so a public holiday surcharge lives in your displayed terms and is settled at the till. State it on your booking page description and in your service descriptions for the day so no client can say she was not told.

The diary mechanics: make the booking page and Google agree with your decision

Whichever way the spreadsheet lands, the decision only exists once your online diary and your Google listing reflect it. The classic failure is deciding to close in a team meeting in March and discovering in April that the booking page sold Easter Monday solid.

If you close:

Block the full day in your booking calendar the moment the decision is made, months ahead if you like. A blocked day can never be booked, which beats cancelling and re-homing appointments later. On ViteUneCoupe's free plan, with unlimited bookings and 0% commission permanently, each stylist has their own schedule, so you block the day for everyone at once or keep one volunteer bookable, your choice.
Set special hours on your Google Business Profile marking the day closed. Google actively prompts clients with "holiday hours may differ"; a profile that says nothing invites a drive to a dark shopfront. The how-to lives in our guide to Google Business Profile for Australian hair salons.
Tell the clients already booked around it. Anyone whose regular cycle lands on the holiday should be rebooked at their previous visit, not discovered in a panic the day before.

If you open:

Open the day deliberately in the diary, with the curated service list and the hours you actually intend to staff, and with honest durations, because an overrun at 250% is the most expensive overrun of the year.
Mirror the agreed roster into each stylist's booking schedule so clients can only book the people who volunteered. Nothing sours a substitution agreement faster than online bookings landing on someone who said no.
Publish the special hours everywhere: Google special hours set to the real opening times, the surcharge stated on the booking page, a line in your confirmation emails.
Confirm and remind everything. At 250% staffing cost, the reminder email is the cheapest insurance in the building. On ViteUneCoupe's Standard plan (from 29 € excluding tax per month, no lock-in, billed in euros since it is European software, so the AUD amount on your statement moves with the exchange rate), confirmation, reminder and thank-you emails go out automatically for every booking. One honest limit: these are email reminders only, ViteUneCoupe does not send SMS.

Frequently asked questions

What does a hair salon have to pay staff on a public holiday in Australia?

Under the Hair and Beauty Industry Award as published in October 2026, hours worked on a public holiday are paid at 250% of the minimum hourly rate, for full-time, part-time and casual employees alike. At the Level 3 qualified hairdresser minimum of A$29.45 per hour (rates from 1 July 2026), that is A$73.63 per hour, plus superannuation. Check the current Fair Work pay guide before budgeting, since rates change every July.

Can I make my staff work on a public holiday?

No. You may make a reasonable request, and an employee may refuse it on reasonable grounds; the Fair Work Act lists factors like the employee's circumstances, notice given and the pay on offer. Build the day from volunteers, ask well ahead in writing, and use written substitution agreements where a different day off suits both sides.

Do I have to pay staff if the salon closes on a public holiday?

Full-time and part-time employees who would ordinarily have worked that day are paid their base rate for those ordinary hours even though the salon is shut; that is a National Employment Standards entitlement. Casual employees are not paid for a closed public holiday.

Is a public holiday surcharge still legal after the card surcharge ban?

Yes. The October 2026 ban covers surcharges based on how the client pays. A public holiday surcharge is part of the price of the service on that day, applied to every client regardless of payment method, so it is allowed, provided it is clearly disclosed before booking and never dressed up as a payment fee.

Are public holidays the same in every Australian state?

No. Beyond the shared national days, each state and territory declares its own list: Labour Day falls in different months, Victoria has Melbourne Cup Day with non-metropolitan councils able to substitute a local day, and South Australia and the Northern Territory have part-day holidays on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve evenings. Always roster from your own state's official list.

How full does a public holiday need to be before opening pays?

Run the maths with your own numbers: wages at 250% plus super versus bookable chair hours times your realistic average hourly ticket, less product costs. In our worked example, two award-minimum stylists for six hours cost about A$990 and needed an essentially full book at A$110 per chair hour just to clear direct costs. As a rule of thumb, if the day is not heading for 90%-plus booked at normal or surcharged prices, closing usually loses you less.

Should your hair salon open on public holidays? The Australian maths