Data report · May 2026
State of the Australian Hair Industry 2026
An aggregate snapshot drawn from 13,812 hand-verified hair businesses listed on findme.hair as of May 2026. Every listing is cross-checked against Google Business Profile, TrueLocal and Yellow Pages before publishing. Beauty salons, nail bars, lash studios and day spas are excluded — this is hair, deliberately and only.
Published 22 May 2026 · CC BY 4.0 · Cite as: findme.hair (2026). State of the Australian Hair Industry 2026. https://www.findme.hair/press/state-of-australian-hair-industry-2026
Headline figures
Of the 13,812 businesses surveyed, 13% offer mobile or at-home service, 91% of those who declare a booking policy welcome walk-ins, and 30% hold a 5.0-star Google rating. The Australian sector remains structurally fragmented — no single chain commands more than 3% of the national footprint.
By state and territory
NSW leads on absolute count (4,246), but Queensland holds the highest average Google rating (4.75) — a quirk consistent with QLD’s higher proportion of newer, owner-operator salons. The Northern Territory has the smallest market (122 businesses) and the highest barber-to-salon ratio in the country.
| State | Total | Salons | Barbers | Mobile | Avg rating | 5-star |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | 4,246 | 2,749 | 934 | 576 | 4.73 | 1,291 |
| VIC | 3,386 | 2,193 | 792 | 405 | 4.71 | 988 |
| QLD | 3,005 | 1,964 | 722 | 428 | 4.75 | 1,013 |
| WA | 1,651 | 1,043 | 386 | 227 | 4.7 | 477 |
| SA | 910 | 570 | 253 | 105 | 4.7 | 243 |
| TAS | 265 | 178 | 67 | 37 | 4.67 | 51 |
| ACT | 227 | 125 | 83 | 23 | 4.59 | 33 |
| NT | 122 | 67 | 37 | 13 | 4.64 | 28 |
Specialty distribution
Colour-related work dominates the modern Australian salon — over half of all listings advertise colour-specialist capability. The Asian-technique market segment (Japanese and Korean methods combined) represents over 800 businesses nationally, concentrated heavily in Sydney’s Eastwood and Chatswood and Melbourne’s Box Hill. Mobile and at-home stylists now represent 13% of the national footprint, more than double the pre-2020 estimate.
Highest-density suburbs
CBD precincts dominate the top of the list — Adelaide CBD (56), Perth CBD (54) and Sydney CBD (47) — but Penrith (47) and Wagga Wagga (43) crack the top 5 alongside them, demonstrating the genuine regional spread of the Australian hair sector. South Yarra remains Melbourne’s hair-density leader, ahead of Richmond and Brunswick.
| Suburb | State | Businesses |
|---|---|---|
| Adelaide | SA | 56 |
| Perth | WA | 54 |
| Sydney | NSW | 47 |
| Penrith | NSW | 47 |
| Wagga Wagga | NSW | 43 |
| Bendigo | VIC | 42 |
| Wollongong | NSW | 41 |
| South Yarra | VIC | 40 |
| Southport | QLD | 40 |
| Shepparton | VIC | 39 |
| Coffs Harbour | NSW | 39 |
| Surry Hills | NSW | 39 |
| Ballarat Central | VIC | 39 |
| Richmond | VIC | 38 |
| Dubbo | NSW | 38 |
Methodology
- Source: findme.hair active-listings index, retrieved 22 May 2026.
- Sample frame: every business with status = active in the directory database (n = 13,812).
- Verification: each listing cross-checked against Google Business Profile, TrueLocal and Yellow Pages prior to publication. Listings primarily offering nails, beauty, lash, brow, spa or tattoo are excluded.
- Business type derived from venue name, services, and Google category. Ambiguous cases default to unisex.
- Walk-ins / appointment-only inferred from venue website language and Google review content. ~25% of listings declare neither and are not represented in walk-in totals.
- Mobile / at-home flag is set on any business whose primary or secondary service mode is travel-to-client.
- Specialty tags are inferred from venue copy and Google review co-occurrence. A single business may carry multiple specialty tags.
- Ratings: latest Google average available at time of last sync. Some listings have no reviews and are excluded from the rating-average calculation.
Licensing and citation
This dataset and report are released under a CC BY 4.0 license. Journalists, researchers and writers are welcome to reuse the figures with attribution.
Suggested citation: findme.hair (2026). State of the Australian Hair Industry 2026. https://www.findme.hair/press/state-of-australian-hair-industry-2026
For deeper cuts of the data (suburb-by-suburb spreadsheets, year-over-year deltas, custom segments), contact via the contact page.
About findme.hair
findme.hair is Australia’s hand-verified hair salon and barber directory. Every listing is hand-checked, every ranking is by Google rating and review count, and there is no paid placement and no booking commission. See the full press kit · About