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. Release of 30 September 2026; retrieved 15 October 2026. "Change vs Previous Row" compares each year with the row above it, not the preceding calendar year.

Trend Analysis

Long-Term Growth (1985-2025):

• Nominal spending increased 652% over 40 years — most of that increase is price inflation, not more services being bought (see Real Spending, below)

COVID Impact (2020):

• Drop to £4.94bn, a 42.3% fall on 2019 — far steeper than commonly cited, reflecting the near-total closure of salons for large parts of 2020

Recovery (2021-2025):

• Nominal spending was still 3.0% below its 2019 level in 2023 (£8.30bn against £8.56bn), and first exceeded it in 2024 (£9.58bn, +11.9%)
• In 2025 nominal spending fell 3.0% to £9.29bn, which is 8.5% above 2019 in cash terms

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. ONS states that the reference year for all CVM estimates is 2024 (so the real and nominal figures are equal in 2024). Release of 30 September 2026; retrieved 15 October 2026.

Real Spending Trends

The headline finding:

• Real (volume) spending on hairdressing and personal grooming has never recovered to its 2019 pre-pandemic level. In 2025, six years on, it was 17.3% below 2019, a wider gap than in 2024 (11.5%).
• This is despite nominal spending being 8.5% above 2019 in 2025 — the entire cash "recovery" is a price effect, not a volume effect.
• 2025 was the first year since the pandemic recovery began in which real spending fell year-on-year (-6.6% vs 2024). The implied price rise over the year is about 3.8%, compared with ONS's hairdressing CPIH annual rate (series L58X) of 4.4% for 2025.

2A. LATEST QUARTERLY TREND (TO Q2 2026)

Quarterly Real (CVM, 2024 prices) Spending

Quarterly Nominal Spending

Source: ONS Consumer Trends, series CCHP (real, not seasonally adjusted) and CCRE (nominal, seasonally adjusted), COICOP 12.1.1. Release of 30 September 2026. Because the real series is not seasonally adjusted and the nominal series is, compare each with its own prior-year quarter; do not divide one by the other to derive a quarterly price change.

What this shows:

• Real: year-on-year real spending fell in every quarter from Q1 2025, reaching -10.6% in Q4 2025, then -8.4% in Q1 2026 and -5.1% in Q2 2026. The decline is narrowing, but the Q2 2026 level (2,154m) is still 10.9% below the Q2 2024 peak (2,417m), and the lowest quarter shown was Q1 2026 (2,132m, 11.8% below the peak). Part of the narrowing is a base effect from weak 2025 quarters.
• Nominal: seasonally adjusted cash spending peaked in Q3 2024 (2,424m) and fell for five consecutive quarters to 2,248m in Q4 2025 (-7.3%), then rose in Q1 2026 (+0.7%) and Q2 2026 (+2.7%). At 2,324m it is still 4.1% below its peak and 1.4% below Q2 2025.
• Reading it together: households are spending fewer cash pounds on the category than in 2024 and buying materially less volume than in 2019 or 2024. The most recent two quarters show nominal spending stabilising and the year-on-year fall in volume narrowing, so this is a stressed sector rather than one in accelerating contraction. It is also not consistent with a sector that is booming.

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); ONS Consumer Trends series CCRE/CCHP, release of 30 September 2026. Real per-capita figures are in 2024 prices.

Growth Patterns

Nominal Per Capita:

• 2018: £125 → 2025: £136 (+8.9%)

Real Per Capita (the more meaningful figure):

• 2018: £162 → 2025: £131 (-18.9%)
• 2019: £162 → 2025: £131 (-18.9%)
• 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 are 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 — Revised October 2026

• 2020: Sharp drop, deeper than previously reported (-42.3% nominal, -44.5% real), reflecting extended salon closures
• 2021-2022: Partial recovery in both measures
• 2023: Nominal spending still 3.0% below 2019; real spending 20.1% below 2019
• 2024: Nominal spending +11.9% on 2019; real spending still 11.5% below
• 2025: Nominal spending falls 3.0% in cash terms (still +8.5% on 2019), while real spending falls 6.6% and the gap to 2019 widens to 17.3%
• 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 in the October 2026 Revision

• All figures from series CCRE and CCHP replaced with the ONS release of 30 September 2026 (retrieved 15 October 2026); CJYN checked against the 16 September 2026 release and unchanged
• 2025 nominal spending revised from £10.26bn to £9.29bn; real-terms comparisons recalculated on ONS's 2024 reference year
• Quarterly section extended to Q2 2026 and rewritten on year-on-year comparisons; "four consecutive quarterly declines" and "accelerating into 2026" withdrawn (see the revision notice at the top of the page)
• Nominal and real quarterly series carry different seasonal treatment (CCRE seasonally adjusted, CCHP not), noted wherever both appear
• Per-capita, regional per-capita and implied-visit figures recalculated from the revised totals

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 (since extended to Q2 2026 and rewritten — see the October 2026 revision above)
• 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
• ONS states that all periods are open to revision and that the Blue Book 2026 compendium is due on 30 October 2026; quote these figures with the release date

13. APPENDIX: FULL ANNUAL DATASET (ONS RELEASE OF 30 SEPTEMBER 2026)

Contact

Report last corrected: 15 October 2026 (previous: 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