Building a Salon Colour Menu Around One Line

Most salon colour menus are a list of products with prices next to them, which is the one thing a client cannot use. A menu built on a single colour line can be organised around what the client is actually buying — the service, the time and the plan — and that is a far easier sell.

Price the service, not the tube

The product cost of a colour service is around £4 — worked out in the cost-per-service article. Chair time is the expensive part by a very long way.

Which means a menu organised by product is describing the cheapest input. A menu organised by how long the appointment takes and what skill it needs describes what the client is really paying for, and it survives a price rise on tubes without needing rewriting.

Five services cover almost everything

Every one of those maps to a documented protocol in the range, which is the advantage of running a single line: your menu and your technical guidance describe the same thing.

The refresh deserves its own line

Handle length honestly

Long or thick hair takes a tube and a half instead of one, and materially more time. The trade is split on how to price it, and both approaches are defensible:

• A stated length surcharge — transparent, and it means your base price is not inflated for everyone to cover a minority.
• Priced-in — simpler, no awkward conversation, but short-haired clients subsidise long-haired ones.

What does not work is deciding at the till. If there is a surcharge, it goes on the menu, and it gets mentioned at the consultation rather than discovered at payment.

Put the consultation on the menu

Two things belong there that most salons leave off:

• The patch test. The manufacturer's instruction is 48 hours in advance, which makes a new colour client a two-visit booking. Putting it on the menu as a step makes it normal rather than an obstacle explained on the day.
• A colour consultation appointment for anything ambitious. Fifteen minutes, free or nominal, redeemable against the service. It converts the "can you make me platinum" conversation from a rushed negotiation into a plan — and it is where reading the hair rather than the photo actually happens.

Name services the way clients think

Clients do not book a "1:1 application at 20 volume". They book "my roots done".

Technical accuracy belongs on the formula card; the menu wants the client's own language, with the technical version underneath if you want it there. "Regrowth colour — roots covered and your ends refreshed" tells a client both what they get and, usefully, that the ends are included, which is a thing they will not otherwise know to value.

One line makes the menu coherent

The practical argument for building the menu on a single colour range is not cost. It is that every service on it can be explained with the same vocabulary — the same depth scale, the same reflect codes, the same three ratios — so a client who has one service explained to them can follow the next one.

It also means the stylist who covered someone's grey last month and is toning their blonde this month is working inside one system, with one chart, and one set of formula cards that stay meaningful over years. The shade language is in the shade chart guide.

The commercial side — part 4 of 5.
Previously: ← Cutting waste on a £3.49 tube
Next: Explaining colour prices to clients →

Timings and protocols referenced are the manufacturer's published figures. Pricing structure is a commercial judgement for each salon.