Consumer Spending Analysis

1. CONSUMER SPENDING TRENDS (NOMINAL)

Annual Consumer Spending on Hairdressing & Personal Grooming (Current Prices)

Source: ONS Consumer Trends, series CCRE, COICOP 12.1.1 (Hairdressing salons and personal grooming establishments), current prices, seasonally adjusted.

Trend Analysis

Long-Term Growth (1985-2025):

• Nominal spending increased 730.6% over 40 years — most of that increase is price inflation, not more services being bought (see Real Spending, below)

COVID Impact (2020):

• Drop to £5.01bn, a 41.9% fall — far steeper than commonly cited, reflecting the near-total closure of salons for large parts of 2020

Recovery (2021-2023):

• Nominal spending returned to its 2019 level by 2023 (£8.62bn, essentially matching 2019's £8.62bn)
• By 2025, nominal spending stood 19.0% above 2019

2. REAL SPENDING (ONS CHAIN-VOLUME MEASURE)

Purchasing Power / Volume Analysis

Source: ONS Consumer Trends, series CCHP, COICOP 12.1.1, chain-volume measure (CVM), not seasonally adjusted. This is ONS's own official real-terms series — not a CPI-deflated estimate.

Real Spending Trends

The headline finding:

• Real (volume) spending on hairdressing and personal grooming has never recovered to its 2019 pre-pandemic level. Even in 2025, six years on, it remains 9.7% below 2019.
• This is despite nominal spending being 19.0% above 2019 by 2025 — the entire "recovery" is a price effect, not a volume effect.
• 2025 was the first year since the pandemic recovery began where real spending fell year-on-year (-0.6% vs 2024), and the quarterly data (below) shows that decline accelerating into 2026.

2A. LATEST QUARTERLY TREND (TO Q1 2026)

Quarterly Real (CVM) Spending

Quarterly Nominal Spending

Source: ONS Consumer Trends, series CCHP (real) and CCRE (nominal), COICOP 12.1.1.

What this shows:

• Real spending has fallen for four consecutive quarters since its 2025 Q2 peak, down 6.5% cumulatively, and is down 6.4% year-on-year in Q1 2026.
• Notably, even nominal (cash-terms) spending has now fallen for three straight quarters since its own Q2 2025 peak — down 4.4% in cash terms, before any inflation adjustment. This is no longer just a story about inflation eroding real spend; households are now spending fewer actual pounds on the category quarter over quarter.
• This directly contradicts any claim that "there's plenty of money out there" for salons specifically — the most current, official data shows the opposite: contraction, in both real and nominal terms, accelerating into 2026.

3. CPI WEIGHT ANALYSIS

Share of Household Spending

Source: ONS Consumer Price Inflation time series, series CJYN, CPI weights, COICOP 12.1.1. Data begins 1988 (earlier years not published in this series).

Stability, With a Dip

• The weight has ranged 0.50-0.80% of total household spending since 1988 — genuinely stable at the extremes, but it fell to its lowest recorded level (0.50%) in 2022, during the sharpest phase of the cost-of-living squeeze, before partially recovering.
• The 2026 weight (0.77%, provisional) is a basket-reweighting figure and should be treated as indicative rather than a confirmed spending share.

Comparison to Other Categories (retained from original, unverified this pass)

• Restaurants/hotels: ~9-12%
• Recreation: ~12-15%
• Clothing: ~5-7%
• Hairdressing & grooming: ~0.5-0.8%

4. PER CAPITA SPENDING

Annual Spending Per Person

Sources: ONS Population Estimates (mid-year, retained from original — not independently re-verified this pass); ONS Consumer Trends series CCRE/CCHP.

Growth Patterns

Nominal Per Capita:

• 2018: £126 → 2025: £151 (+19.8%)

Real Per Capita (the more meaningful figure):

• 2018: £156 → 2025: £139 (-11.2%)
• 2019 peak: £157 → 2025: £139 (-11.5%)
• The average person is buying meaningfully less hairdressing/grooming service today than they were in 2018-19, once price rises are stripped out — even though they're spending more cash on it.

5. VISIT FREQUENCY AND PRICING

Estimated Market Activity

6. COVID IMPACT AND RECOVERY

Annual Impact — Nominal vs Real

Recovery Timeline — Corrected

• 2020: Sharp drop, deeper than previously reported (-41.9% nominal, -44.2% real), reflecting extended salon closures
• 2021-2022: Partial recovery in both measures
• 2023: Nominal spending back to its 2019 level; real spending still 17.6% below 2019
• 2024-2025: Nominal spending pulls further ahead of 2019 (+19.0% by 2025); real spending narrows the gap but never closes it, and turns down again in 2025
• The category has not had a genuine volume recovery from COVID at any point in the six years since 2019 — every year of "recovery" reported in nominal terms has been, in real terms, still below the pre-pandemic baseline.

7. REGIONAL SPENDING PATTERNS

Estimated Regional Distribution (2025, % pattern from original analysis)

8. DEMOGRAPHIC PATTERNS

Estimated Spending by Gender (2025)

Estimated Spending by Age Group (2025)

9. COMPARISON TO OTHER DISCRETIONARY SPENDING

10. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

11. CONSUMER SURVEY DATA

Consumer Priorities (2024)

12. METHODOLOGY & DATA SOURCES

Primary Data Sources

Office for National Statistics (ONS):

• Nominal spending: series CCRE, "12.1.1 Hairdressing salons and personal grooming establishments, current price, seasonally adjusted, £m," from the Consumer Trends dataset.
• Real spending: series CCHP, "12.1.1 Hairdressing salons and personal grooming establishments, chain-volume measure (CVM), not seasonally adjusted, £m," from the Consumer Trends dataset. This is ONS's own official real-terms calculation — not a CPI deflation applied after the fact.
• CPI weight: series CJYN, "CPI Weights 12.1.1: Hairdressing salons & personal grooming establishments," from the Consumer Price Inflation time series (MM23), parts per 1000.
• Classification: COICOP 12.1.1 (corrected from 12.1.3 in the previous version of this page).

COICOP 12.1.1 Includes:

• Hairdressing services (cuts, styling, colouring)
• Barber services
• Beauty treatments (facials, manicures, pedicures)
• Personal grooming services, waxing, threading, tanning
• All services provided in salons/establishments

COICOP 12.1.1 Excludes:

• Hair care products for home use (separate category)
• Professional cosmetics for retail
• Medical treatments

What Changed From the Previous Version (October 2025)

• Classification corrected from COICOP 12.1.3 to 12.1.1
• Nominal spending table replaced with the actual ONS current-price series (CCRE) — the previous table's figures, including the 1985 starting value, did not match ONS's published data
• Real spending table replaced with ONS's own chain-volume measure (CCHP), replacing a CPI-deflated estimate that the previous version itself flagged as "illustrative"
• CPI weight table replaced with the actual ONS weight series (CJYN); previous table's values were approximate
• Added a quarterly section covering Q1 2026, the most recent data available, showing four consecutive quarterly declines in real spending
• Per capita, regional, and comparison tables recalculated against the corrected totals where they depend directly on them
• Regional, demographic, international, projection, and consumer-survey sections, which were already labelled as estimates from secondary sources, are retained as before and flagged as not independently re-verified in this pass

Data Limitations

• Regional and demographic splits remain estimates, not a direct ONS regional/demographic breakdown of this category
• Visit frequency and average price remain calculated/estimated, not directly published by ONS
• The 2026 CPI weight is provisional

13. APPENDIX: FULL ANNUAL DATASET (ONS, CORRECTED)

Contact

Report last corrected: August 2026

Archive: UK Hair & Beauty Sector Data Archive

Primary data source: Office for National Statistics (ONS series CCRE, CCHP, CJYN)

Contact: andrew@salonlogic.co.uk