Chair Rental Agreement – Self-employed Hairdresser (Own Clients)

What is a chair rental agreement – self-employed (individual) hairdresser (own clients) and when should you use it?

In many businesses, particularly those associated with hair and beauty, chair rental agreements are popular.

Under such arrangements, the hairdresser or therapist is a self employed sole trader and pays a fee to a salon in order to use their premises and equipment.

This Self Employed (Individual) Hairdresser’s Contract (Own Clients) is designed for use by self-employed hairdressers in order to use the equipment and premises of a salon.

Under the terms of this agreement, the hairdresser makes fee payments to the salon in return for being permitted to use a salon chair and other equipment.

This template provides alternative means of charging these fees: payment can be in the form of a standard fee or a percentage of the hairdresser’s takings or a combination of both of these elements.

This template contract only allows the hairdresser to provide services to their own clients.

The client pays money directly to the hairdresser for their services.

If you wish to provide, in addition to the hairdresser serving their own clients, that the hairdresser can additionally serve salon clients where the salon refers them to the hairdresser and pays the hairdresser a percentage of the amount received by the salon from its client please see the Self Employed (Individual) Hairdresser’s Contract (Own and Salon’s Clients) template

This Agreement is written in such a way that there is a clear distinction between the hairdresser’s clients and the salon’s clients.

In addition, the hairdresser is prevented from soliciting the salon’s clients.

The template favours the salon in that it does not also include any prohibition on the salon from soliciting the hairdresser’s clients.

This template aims to minimise any risk that the hairdresser might be deemed to be a de-facto employee of the salon rather than a sole trader who is a self-employed contractor.

However, whether they are treated as self-employed by Revenue, the WRC,  or any other body, will depend not only on what is contained in this contract but also on all other circumstances.

Those circumstances will include the way in which the contract is implemented, and the conduct of the hairdresser, the salon and any person engaged by the hairdresser to do any of the work for the hairdresser, and all related arrangements between them.

Nevertheless, a carefully worded agreement ensuring the independence of the hairdresser is a key starting point.

As a self-employed individual (rather than as an employee of the salon), the hairdresser has their own clients, is free to engage a suitably qualified person to do some or all of the work in their place, and is free to determine when and how work is carried out.

This agreement is suitable to use only where the hairdresser is a self-employed individual.

Where the hairdresser instead operates as a company you should use our Independent (Company) Hairdresser’s Contract (Own Clients) template