Beauty insurance | PolicyBee (2024)

Beauty insurance…for when things get ugly

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, protecting your beauty business is more straightforward. All it takes is some professional beauty insurance.

Delivering on the look your clients want can be a high-stakes game. Get things wrong for whatever reason and you could find yourself facing a claim for physical and mental suffering.

Because no matter how high your professional standards, a client’s adverse reaction to a product or treatment can spell trouble for you both. A compensation claim is expensive to deal with, and your business can’t risk a ruined reputation.

Beauty therapy insurance helps whether you work from a salon or visit clients at home. It covers a wide range of treatments and, if something does go wrong, pays your legal costs and any damages you owe.

In the meantime, you’re free to get on with running your business and enjoying the beautiful things in life.

Who needs beauty insurance?

Anyone involved in making people look and feel better about themselves needs beauty insurance. It doesn’t matter which part of the face or body you focus on. There’s always the potential for a slip-up on your part or a bad reaction on your client’s.

Neither does it matter where you’re based. You could be a salon owner, out on the road, or renting space within someone else’s business. If things go wrong, there’s still every chance you’ll come face-to-face with a claim.

What treatments does beauty therapist insurance cover?

There’s a beauty treatment to primp and pamper almost every part of the body from head to toe. Luckily, beauty insurance covers a long list of treatments, including:

Temporary hair removal and bleaching
Hairdressing and barbering
Makeup and spray-on tans
Nail extensions and treatments
Eyelash and eyebrow treatments
Facials
Facial peels
Body wrapping
Ear piercing
Massage
Electrolysis for hair removal and thread vein treatment.

Providing you have at least an NVQ Level 3 in hair and beauty treatments or equivalent, your beauty therapy insurance also covers you for some of the more specialist treatments, including:

Microblading
Dermaplaning
Microdermabrasion
Hyperdermabrasion
Micro-pigmentation
Semi-permanent make up
Mesotherapy via microneedling
Hydrafacial
Electrical facial treatments including CACI
LED light therapy (Dermalux).

What types of mobile beauty therapist insurance do I need?

The beauty of being a mobile beautician is that you can go where the business is. You don’t have to wait for it to come to you.

But if it’s just you flying solo, then the buck stops with you too. That means treatments that go wrong are your sole responsibility. You’ll need treatment and public liability insurance to protect you from claims for compensation.

Visiting clients in their own home brings its own risks. You could easily spill a substance on a carpet and ruin it or damage a surface with your equipment. Treatment and public liability will cover you for these kind of everyday accidents too.

It’s the same story if you rent a space or a chair in someone else’s salon. Unless you’re directly employed by them, you need your own mobile beauty insurance to stay protected.

And don’t forget the specialist equipment you rely on. Lose it, damage it, get it stolen or even chewed to bits by a client’s dog and you’ll have to buy it all over again. Portable equipment insurance pays to repair or replace your kit quickly and keeps you working.

What insurance does a beauty salon need?

The people who visit your salon are the lifeblood of your business. But there’s also a danger of them draining the life from it if things take an unexpected turn. That’s why you need the protection of beauty salon insurance.

If a client is harmed by a treatment that goes wrong, they’ll want pay-back. Allegations of pain, mental anguish, and scarring can add up to some very big numbers. For claims like these, treatment and public liability insurance covers your legal defence and any compensation.

Customers coming through your door is exactly what you want. But if they then trip over an electrical lead and get hurt, smashing their expensive watch in the process, a legal claim can follow. Treatment and public liability insurance pays costs and compensation for claims of damage to third parties and their property.

Making your clients more beautiful takes not only skill but the right equipment. And if your kit’s out of action because it’s been damaged, lost or stolen, so are you. Salon insurance pays to repair or replace it (including tech, fixtures and fittings), so you can get back to work.

If you employ anyone at your salon, even part-time, then you’ll need employers’ liability insurance. And not only to protect your staff in case they suffer illness or injury at work, but because it’s the law. If you’re caught without it, the Health & Safety Executive can fine you – which is never a good look.

Read more about what insurance does a beauty salon need?

How much is beauty insurance?

It depends on which types of cover you want, and how much of each. But it stands to reason, the more beauty insurance you buy, the higher your premium will be.

As a bare minimum, we’d suggest getting treatment and public liability insurance, and salon or portable equipment insurance. That way you’re covered for any mistakes you make, any unexpected accidents, and anything untoward happening to your kit.

For treatment and public liability insurance, try and think of the worst thing that could go wrong, and how much it could cost you. Compensation is one thing, but don’t forget legal costs. They can quickly go sky high.

When it comes to insuring your equipment, you should add up everything you use to run your business, down to the last nail file or brush. You don’t want to be underinsured as it can mean your claim doesn’t pay out fully.

There’s other beauty therapist insurance you can buy, including cyber insurance to protect you if you store your clients’ data electronically.

Why should I buy my beauty insurance from you?

Because just like you’re an expert at making your clients look and feel a million dollars, we’re professional insurance experts. So, we know exactly what you need to protect your business.

We only use top insurers and we make buying a policy super easy. You can get everything you need online in just a couple of minutes, with documents delivered direct to your inbox.

Better still, we’re recognised by the Plain English Campaign for telling it like it is. Insurance jargon is banned and we make everything easy to understand.

However, if you’d like to talk to someone, you can do that too. There’s no big call centre or phone menu here, so you’ll get straight through to a friendly expert who can help.

What else? We don’t charge admin fees, which means there’s nothing extra to pay. And we give you free stuff, like an ‘I’m insured’ badge for your website. Oh, and a cash bonus each time you recommend us.

But it’s customer feedback that really counts. We reckon ours speaks for itself.