Holiday entitlement for hair salon staff: the UK calculation guide

Ask three salon owners how much holiday their Saturday junior is owed and you will get three different answers. Full-time stylists are simple enough, but hair salons run on exactly the working patterns UK holiday law finds hardest: part-timers on two or three fixed days, juniors and assistants on variable hours, commission on top of basic pay, and sometimes a self-employed chair renter in the mix who has no entitlement at all.

This guide does the calculations properly, using the rules in force now, including the 12.07% accrual method and rolled-up holiday pay introduced for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024. Most pages ranking for this question predate those reforms or ignore them. Everything here was checked in October 2026 on GOV.UK and Acas. One scope note before we start: this article covers how much holiday staff get and what to pay; the mechanics of who takes leave when, notice periods and December freezes live in our guide to staff rotas in a hair salon. And if you are planning cover around those absences, free scheduling software for hair salons that takes no commission keeps each stylist's bookable hours and closed days visible to clients in real time.

The baseline: 5.6 weeks for everyone

Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday per leave year, under the Working Time Regulations 1998, as set out on GOV.UK's holiday entitlement page. For someone working a regular 5-day week, that is 28 days. Two details matter more in a salon than in an office:

• Statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days. A stylist working 6 days a week does not get 33.6 days: the statutory minimum stays at 28 (your contract can of course be more generous).
• Bank holidays are not automatically extra. You can count them inside the 5.6 weeks or on top: the contract decides. Since many salons trade on bank holiday weekends anyway, write down explicitly which approach you use, and remember that a stylist who works a bank holiday has no statutory right to extra pay for it, only to their normal paid leave elsewhere in the year.

Entitlement starts accruing from the first day of employment, including during probation, and keeps building while someone is off sick or on maternity or other family-related leave.

Part-time stylists: multiply their days by 5.6

For staff on fixed part-time days, the arithmetic is one line: days worked per week × 5.6.

• 3 days a week: 3 × 5.6 = 16.8 days a year;
• 2 days a week: 2 × 5.6 = 11.2 days;
• 4 days a week: 4 × 5.6 = 22.4 days.

You may round up (16.8 becomes 17 if you prefer whole days) but never down. A day of leave for a 3-day-a-week stylist is a day she would actually have worked: she uses 3 of her 16.8 days to take a full week off, not 5. That is the single most common part-time mistake, in both directions.

One trap flagged in the National Hair & Beauty Federation's holiday entitlement guidance applies to salons that close on, say, Mondays: you cannot make staff burn annual leave on days the salon is normally shut and they were never due to work.

Saturday juniors and variable hours: the 12.07% rule

Many salons have exactly the profile the 2024 reforms were written for: the Saturday-and-school-holidays junior, the assistant who covers "whatever the week needs", the stylist on a zero-hours arrangement. Since leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, the rules distinguish irregular hours workers (paid hours wholly or mostly variable under the contract) and part-year workers (contractually not required to work for at least a week at a time, unpaid, during the year), per the government's guidance on the holiday pay and entitlement reforms.

For these workers, holiday now accrues as you go, at 12.07% of hours actually worked in each pay period, capped at 28 days a year. The figure is not arbitrary: 5.6 weeks of leave divided by the 46.4 working weeks that remain in a year gives 12.07%.

A clearly hypothetical example: your Saturday junior works 42 hours in a given month. 42 × 12.07% = 5.07, which rounds to 5 hours of paid holiday earned that month (you round to the nearest hour, up from 30 minutes). A quiet month with 20 hours worked earns 2 hours of leave. No more guessing an annual figure up front for someone whose hours you cannot predict.

GOV.UK provides an official holiday entitlement calculator that handles full years, starters and leavers mid-year, and accrual for irregular hours. Use it before you promise anyone a number.

Rolled-up holiday pay is now legal for these workers only

The same reforms re-legalised rolled-up holiday pay, but only for irregular hours and part-year workers, and only if you do it properly: add 12.07% on top of total pay for the period, pay it at the same time as the normal pay, and show it as a separate line on the payslip. The junior then takes her actual time off unpaid, because the holiday pay has already been spread across the year. If any of those conditions is missing (not itemised, wrong population, used for your full-time stylists) you are simply underpaying holiday. For staff on regular hours, rolled-up holiday pay remains off the table.

Holiday pay when stylists earn commission

Holiday pay is not always just basic salary. Of the 5.6 weeks, 4 weeks must be paid at the worker's "normal" rate, which includes commission linked to the work they are contractually required to do and overtime paid regularly in the preceding 52 weeks. The remaining 1.6 weeks can be paid at basic rate, though the guidance notes many employers pay the whole 5.6 weeks at the normal rate rather than run two parallel calculations.

So if your stylists earn a percentage on the services or products they sell, a week of their holiday is not a week at bare basic pay. For anyone whose pay varies, you average the last 52 weeks in which they actually earned, skipping unpaid weeks and looking back at most 104 weeks; a newer hire is averaged over however many complete paid weeks exist. How you structure commission in the first place is its own subject, covered in our guide to paying hairdressers in the UK.

A clearly hypothetical illustration: a stylist on £450 of basic pay a week who averaged £95 a week of service commission over her last 52 paid weeks should see holiday weeks (at least 4 of them) paid around £545, not £450. Paying bare basic for all 5.6 weeks is the classic quiet underpayment in commission-heavy salons.

Carry-over, leavers and the December problem

Carry-over is the exception, not the rule. Untaken statutory leave is normally lost at year end, except where the worker could not take it: up to 20 days carry over after long sickness (to be used within 18 months of the end of the leave year it accrued in, and up to 28 days for irregular-hours workers), all of it carries over when someone was on maternity or family-related leave, and leave also carries over if you never gave a reasonable opportunity to take it. "We were too busy all year" is therefore a risk you own, not the stylist.

When someone leaves, you must pay in lieu for accrued, untaken statutory holiday in the final pay, whatever the reason for leaving, as set out in Acas's guidance on final pay. The mirror case needs paperwork: if a departing stylist has taken more holiday than she accrued, you can only deduct the difference from final wages if the contract or a prior written agreement says so.

December deserves a sentence of its own: you are allowed to require leave to be taken, or not taken, at set times with proper notice, which is how salons lawfully protect the pre-Christmas fortnight. The notice mechanics and a fair way to run the freeze are in our staff rota guide above and in our guide to the Christmas rush.

Chair renters have no holiday rights, and that is the point

A self-employed stylist renting a chair in your salon accrues nothing from you: no 5.6 weeks, no holiday pay, no pay in lieu. Her time off is her own business and her own cost. Treat that cleanly in both directions: never promise a renter "holiday" (paying it is strong evidence she is really a worker), and never quietly treat an employee like a renter to avoid the entitlement. The boundary, and what HMRC looks at, is covered in our guide to renting out a chair in a UK hair salon.

Day to day, the practical difference shows up in the diary: employees go on your rota and their leave is yours to approve and plan cover for; a renter simply closes her own availability. In ViteUneCoupe's free plan each team member has their own schedule on the salon's booking page, so marking a stylist's booked holiday closes her slots online immediately and clients can only book the colleagues who are actually in. To be clear about scope, it is a booking diary: it will not calculate entitlement or holiday pay for you, and the numbers above stay with you and your payroll or accountant.

Frequently asked questions

How much holiday does a full-time hair stylist get in the UK?

At least 5.6 weeks of paid leave per year, which is 28 days for someone working 5 days a week. Bank holidays can be counted inside that total or added on top; the employment contract decides. Statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days even for staff working 6 days a week.

How do I calculate holiday for a stylist who works 3 days a week?

Multiply days worked per week by 5.6: a 3-day-a-week stylist gets 16.8 days a year, which you may round up to 17 but never down. Remember each day of leave replaces a day she would actually have worked, so a full week off uses 3 days of her entitlement, not 5.

How does holiday work for a Saturday junior with variable hours?

For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours they actually work in each pay period, rounded to the nearest hour and capped at 28 days a year. You may instead use rolled-up holiday pay: a 12.07% uplift paid with each payslip and itemised separately on it.

Does holiday pay have to include commission?

Yes, partly. At least 4 of the 5.6 weeks must be paid at the worker's normal rate, which includes contractual commission and regularly paid overtime, averaged over the last 52 paid weeks. The remaining 1.6 weeks can be paid at basic rate, though many employers pay the full 5.6 weeks at the normal rate for simplicity.

Do I owe holiday pay to a chair renter?

No. A genuinely self-employed chair renter has no holiday entitlement from the salon; her time off is unpaid and her own decision. Paying a renter holiday is strong evidence of an employment relationship, so keep the two statuses cleanly apart.

What happens to unused holiday when a stylist leaves?

You must pay in lieu for any accrued, untaken statutory holiday in the final pay, whatever the reason for leaving. If she has taken more than she accrued, you can only deduct the excess from final wages if the contract or a written agreement made beforehand allows it.