Should your hair salon open on public holidays? The Singapore maths
Eleven times a year, the same question comes up over the salon WhatsApp group: are we opening on the holiday? Some owners swear the eve-of-festival stretch is the best trading of the year and the holiday itself is a ghost town. Others keep the lights on every gazetted day because the mall expects it. Both can be right, because the answer is arithmetic: what the day costs you under the Employment Act, what the chairs can realistically take, and which holiday it is, because in Singapore the demand curve around Chinese New Year looks nothing like the one around National Day.
This guide works through the open-or-close decision the way an accountant would. The pay rules (one extra day's basic salary, and the off-in-lieu option that is legal for fewer employees than most owners assume), why closing is nearly free here, the calendar traps (the Monday-in-lieu rule, a holiday landing on a non-working Saturday, part-timer pro-rating), which holidays are genuinely salon gold, and a labelled break-even example in Singapore dollars. We finish with the step that prevents the real damage: making sure the booking diary and the Google profile tell clients the same story, because if clients book you through an online booking page for your hair salon, free and with 0% commission, the diary settings are half the decision.
One scope note before the numbers. This is general information checked against official Singapore sources in October 2026, not legal advice: verify anything you rely on at mom.gov.sg. And this article stays on the open-or-close economics; annual leave, sick leave and the rest of the entitlements picture are a separate subject, so the only leave mechanics here are the public holiday ones.
What the Employment Act says a holiday shift costs
Singapore has 11 gazetted public holidays a year: New Year's Day, two days of Chinese New Year, Good Friday, Hari Raya Puasa, Labour Day, Vesak Day, Hari Raya Haji, National Day, Deepavali and Christmas Day (mom.gov.sg, public holidays, checked in October 2026). The public holiday provisions cover every employee under a contract of service, full-time and part-time alike (mom.gov.sg, who is covered, checked in October 2026).
An employee who works on a public holiday that falls on their working day is entitled to an extra day's salary at the basic rate of pay, on top of the gross rate of pay for the holiday, plus overtime pay for any hours beyond their normal day. For a monthly-salaried stylist the mechanics are simpler than they sound: MOM states plainly that the monthly gross salary already includes payment for the holiday, so the employer need only pay one additional day's pay (mom.gov.sg, public holidays entitlement and pay, checked in October 2026). Employer CPF applies to that extra day like any other wage.
How much is a day? MOM's formula for the basic rate of pay for one day is 12 times the monthly basic salary, divided by 52 times the number of days the employee works per week (mom.gov.sg, monthly and daily salary, checked in October 2026). A stylist on S$2,600 basic working a 6-day week costs S$100 for the extra day; where your team actually sits on the pay scale is covered in our guide to hairdresser wages in Singapore.
The off-in-lieu option is narrower than salon owners think. MOM's wording: if an employee is not covered under Part 4 of the Employment Act, the employer can grant time off in lieu for working on a public holiday (4 hours or less worked earns time off of 4 hours on a working day; more than 4 hours earns a full day off). Part 4 covers workmen earning a basic monthly salary of S$4,500 or less and non-workmen earning S$2,600 or less, and does not cover managers and executives. So for a typical employed stylist inside those thresholds, the extra day's pay is the entitlement and off-in-lieu cannot replace it; the time-off route is for your salon manager or higher-paid staff outside Part 4. Where a stylist's salary and duties sit against the workman definition can be genuinely unclear, so when in doubt, pay the extra day.
One flexibility worth knowing: you and an employee can mutually agree to substitute a public holiday for another working day (same MOM page). A team that would rather work the quiet second day of Chinese New Year and take off a day that suits them better can agree exactly that, in writing.
Closing is nearly free, and that changes the whole calculation
Here is the part that makes the Singapore maths different from most countries. If the salon closes on a public holiday, a monthly-salaried employee simply takes the paid holiday that their salary already includes. There is no extra cash cost for a dark salon: no penalty rate, no banked day, nothing beyond the rent and the revenue you chose not to earn. In New Zealand or Australia an owner weighs expensive opening against expensive closing; in Singapore the owner weighs cheap opening (one extra day's basic pay per stylist) against free closing.
Two consequences follow. First, the break-even occupancy for opening is low: as the worked example below shows, even a half-booked day usually clears the extra wages. Second, precisely because the labour penalty is mild, the decision is really about demand, not cost. The question is rarely "can I afford to staff the day" and almost always "does anyone actually want a haircut on this particular holiday".
And no law answers it for you: Singapore has no restricted trading days, nothing that forces a salon to close on any gazetted holiday (we found no such statute on any official source, checked in October 2026). The near-universal closures on the first day of Chinese New Year are custom and commerce, not legislation. The one external constraint that does exist sits in your lease: some Singapore mall landlords impose a keep-open clause requiring retail tenants to trade during mall operating hours (timcole.com.sg, common commercial lease terms, checked in October 2026), and most large malls publish holiday hours. If you are in a mall, read your lease before reading the rest of this article: a keep-open clause can make the open-or-close question moot, or at least make "non-opening" something to clear with the landlord in advance.
The calendar traps: Monday in lieu, weekend holidays and part-timers
Three mechanics put holiday pay in your payroll on dates the wall calendar does not highlight.
A holiday on a rest day rolls to the next working day. When a gazetted holiday falls on an employee's rest day, the next working day becomes a paid public holiday. MOM bakes this into the gazetted calendar: in 2026, National Day falls on Sunday 9 August and Deepavali on Sunday 8 November, each followed by a Monday in lieu for employees whose rest day is Sunday (mom.gov.sg, public holidays for 2026). For a salon that closes Mondays, that rest-day logic runs the other way too: which day is "in lieu" depends on each employee's own rest day, not on the civil service calendar.
A holiday on a non-working day still costs something. A stylist who works Tuesday to Sunday with Monday off, when a holiday lands on a Monday, is entitled to either one extra day's salary at the gross rate of pay or another day off (same MOM entitlement page). Budget for it: a "holiday we were closed anyway" is not automatically a zero line.
A holiday worked on a rest day is a different, dearer animal. If you open on a Sunday holiday and the stylist's rest day is Sunday, the shift is paid under rest-day work rules plus overtime where applicable, and the next working day becomes the paid holiday. That stacks the costs; check MOM's tables before rostering it.
Part-timers are pro-rated, not excluded. A part-time employee is entitled to paid public holidays pro-rated by hours: MOM's formula compares the part-timer's annual hours to a similar full-timer's, so someone on 22 hours a week against a 44-hour full-timer gets half a full-timer's holiday hours across the 11 days. By agreement stated clearly in the contract, the entitlement can instead be encashed into the hourly gross rate. A part-timer who actually works the holiday gets the day's pay at the basic rate plus the holiday entitlement, and travel allowance if the contract provides it (mom.gov.sg, public holidays for part-time employees, checked in October 2026).
Finally, look two years ahead when the calendar is kind or cruel. In 2027, Chinese New Year falls on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February, with Monday 8 February a holiday for employees whose rest day is the Sunday (mom.gov.sg, public holidays for 2027): for a salon trading Tuesday to Sunday, both CNY days land on trading days, and the roster cost of the long weekend looks completely different from 2026's Tuesday-Wednesday pair.
Which holidays are salon gold in Singapore, and which are dead air
The gazetted list treats all 11 days alike. Your appointment book does not.
The gold is the run-up to Chinese New Year, not the holiday itself. A fresh haircut before the new year is traditional, and many clients avoid cutting or even washing hair in the first days of the year, a taboo tied to "fa" sounding like prosperity (thehoneycombers.com, CNY traditions in Singapore, checked in October 2026). The commercial consequence is a compressed pre-CNY rush followed by famously quiet first days, which is why so many salons close them. The rush is real enough that salons charge for it: in January 2026, a Tengah salon defending a S$2 CNY surcharge applied a month before the holiday called festive surcharges a widely adopted industry practice driven by manpower costs (mothership.sg, checked in October 2026), while lifestyle media now run annual lists of the mid- and high-end salons that skip the surcharge entirely (asiaone.com, checked in October 2026). Two lessons from that news cycle: peak-period pricing exists in this market, and an undisclosed surcharge is a reputation grenade. If you charge one, publish it on the booking page and the price list before anyone books, and remember that a GST-registered salon must display GST-inclusive prices; our guide to hair salon prices in Singapore covers the display rules and the chair-hour maths.
December is documented peak season. Salons themselves say so publicly: Singapore chain Kimage tells clients that late-afternoon and weekend slots fill quickly in December, especially in the week before Christmas and New Year (kimage.com.sg, checked in October 2026). Christmas Day itself is a judgement call: the demand sits mostly in the days before it.
Hari Raya Puasa and Deepavali: trust your own diary, not the internet. The same eve-of-festival logic plausibly applies, grooming before visiting family is hardly unique to one community, but we found no published Singapore data on salon demand around these holidays, so we will not invent any. This is where your own booking history is the only honest source: pull last year's takings for the week before and the day of each holiday, and let your numbers vote.
National Day, Labour Day, Vesak Day, Hari Raya Haji, Good Friday: no pre-festival grooming tradition attaches to them, and no published evidence suggests they outperform an ordinary day. For most salons these are the "open only if the diary history says so" dates, with one nuance: a holiday that creates a long weekend can either fill your chairs with people who finally have time, or empty the neighbourhood as everyone crosses the Causeway. Again, last year's diary knows which salon you are.
The break-even maths: a worked example in S$
Every figure below is a deliberately hypothetical example with labelled assumptions; the method is the point, so re-run it with your own payroll and price list.
Assumptions. Two employed full-time stylists, each on S$2,600 basic a month, 6-day week, so a day's basic pay is S$100 each by MOM's formula. The holiday falls on a normal trading day for both. You would open 11 am to 6 pm, with 6 bookable chair hours each after breaks: 12 chair hours. Average take when a column is full: S$65 per chair hour. The salon is not GST-registered (if yours is, strip 9% out of the takings before comparing). Product and consumables run about 10% of takings.
Step 1: what closing costs. Nothing extra. Both stylists take the paid holiday already inside their monthly salary. The cost of closing is purely the revenue you do not earn.
Step 2: what opening costs. One extra day's basic pay each: 2 × S$100 = S$200, plus employer CPF at 17% for staff aged 55 and below, about S$34. Call it S$234 of extra labour cost, assuming you stick to normal hours and owe no overtime. That is the entire statutory penalty: no 1.5x multiplier, no banked day off.
Step 3: what the chairs can earn. A full book takes 12 × S$65 = S$780. Less 10% product, the day contributes about S$702 against S$234 of extra wages: comfortably ahead, roughly S$468 clear before utilities and before pricing your own presence behind the desk.
Step 4: the sensitivity test. At 50% booked, takings are S$390 and contribution about S$351: still ahead of S$234, but thin once the aircon, lighting and your own holiday are counted. At around one-third booked the day breaks even on wages and no more. So the arithmetic says: in Singapore, opening pays at occupancy levels that would lose money in many other countries.
Which brings back the real question: on Vesak Day, will the book even reach 50%? The cost side of this spreadsheet is gentle; the demand side is brutal on the wrong holiday. The rule of thumb that falls out: open on the holidays where last year's diary shows real demand, close without guilt on the rest, and protect every booked slot you do take. On a day staffed at holiday cost, a no-show hurts more than on any Tuesday; our guide to appointment reminders for Singapore hair salons covers that insurance. And remember the one lever with no statutory cost at all: the owner's own chair earns holiday revenue with no extra day's pay attached.
Make the diary and the Google profile agree with the decision
Whichever way the spreadsheet lands, the decision only exists once your booking calendar and your Google listing both reflect it. The classic failure: the team agrees in January to close for both CNY days, and the booking page quietly sells the Wednesday solid to clients who then stand outside a shuttered shopfront in their new year clothes.
If you close: block the days in the booking calendar the moment the decision is made, and set special hours on your Google Business Profile marking each gazetted date closed, because an unedited profile shows normal hours and Google's generic prompts do not know your salon's own in-lieu logic. The routine is in our guide to Google Business Profile for Singapore hair salons. Then rebook the regulars whose cycle lands on the closed days before the rush, not during it.
If you open: open deliberately. Publish the real holiday hours in both places, keep only the stylists who actually agreed to work bookable online, state any festive surcharge on the booking page before anyone confirms, and curate the menu towards the services that justify holiday staffing. On ViteUneCoupe's free plan, with unlimited online bookings and 0% commission permanently, each stylist has an individual schedule, so blocking the whole salon or keeping one volunteer bookable is a two-minute job. On the Standard plan, from 29 € excluding tax per month with no commitment, confirmation and reminder emails go out automatically; two honest notes for a Singapore owner: reminders are email only, no SMS or WhatsApp on any plan, and ViteUneCoupe is European software billed in euros, so the S$ amount on your card moves with the exchange rate and your bank may add a small foreign-transaction fee. It is a booking tool, not payroll: the Employment Act side of the holiday stays with your payroll software and your accountant.
Frequently asked questions
What do I have to pay a stylist who works on a public holiday in Singapore?
An extra day's salary at the basic rate of pay, on top of the gross rate of pay for the holiday that their monthly salary already includes, plus overtime for hours beyond their normal day. MOM states that for a monthly-salaried employee the employer need only add one day's pay. Checked on mom.gov.sg in October 2026.
Do I have to pay staff anything extra if my salon closes on a public holiday?
For monthly-salaried full-timers, no: the paid holiday is already inside the monthly salary, so a closed day adds no cash cost. Part-timers must still receive their pro-rated public holiday pay (or its encashed equivalent in the hourly rate if the contract says so), and an employee whose non-working day the holiday falls on is owed an extra day's gross salary or another day off.
Can I give time off in lieu instead of the extra day's pay?
Only for employees not covered by Part 4 of the Employment Act, broadly managers, executives, workmen above S$4,500 basic and non-workmen above S$2,600 basic a month. For a typical employed stylist inside those thresholds the extra day's pay is mandatory. Where off-in-lieu is lawful, MOM's rule is 4 hours' time off for a shift of 4 hours or less, a full day off for anything longer.
What happens when a public holiday falls on a Sunday?
If Sunday is the employee's rest day, the next working day becomes a paid public holiday; MOM's gazetted calendar states the Monday in lieu explicitly, as with National Day and Deepavali in 2026. If the holiday falls on a non-working day that is not the rest day, the employee gets an extra day's gross salary or another day off. If the employee actually works the Sunday holiday on their rest day, rest-day pay rules apply on top.
Is a Chinese New Year or public holiday surcharge legal for a Singapore salon?
No law caps or bans festive surcharges, and salons defending them publicly call them common industry practice, but the January 2026 backlash over an undisclosed S$2 CNY surcharge shows the real rule: disclose it on the booking page and price list before the client books. A GST-registered salon must also keep displayed prices GST-inclusive.
Should my salon open during Chinese New Year itself?
The documented demand sits in the weeks before the new year, when a pre-CNY haircut is traditional; many clients avoid haircuts in the first days of the year, and most salons close at least the first day by custom, not by law. Opening day one or two rarely clears even Singapore's mild holiday wage penalty; opening extended hours in the final week before the eve usually beats both.
