Booth Rent vs Commission Calculator
Rent the chair, or take a cut of each sale?
What one chair leaves you, and them, under rent, commission or a wage.
Booth rent looks like the easy answer: a fixed sum every month whether the chair is busy or empty. Commission looks generous until a stylist gets busy. This calculator puts one chair through all three and shows both sides of each — what you keep, and what the person in the chair takes home — because a deal only one of you can live with is not a deal.
Margin per client = price − materials. Commission overtakes rent for you at (rent ÷ days) ÷ (margin − price × cut) clients a day.
Colour, product, laundry. Not the person's time.
In a month
A month
An hourly wage
$7,776
you keep a month
$3,456 to them
A cut of each sale
$5,400
you keep a month
$5,832 to them
Rent the chair
$900
you keep a month
$10,332 to them
Commission overtakes rent at 1 client a day. Below that the rent is worth more to you, because it arrives whether the chair is busy or not. Above it, a busy chair on commission is worth more.
They do best on rent the chair, at $10,332 a month. You do best on an hourly wage. Where those two differ is the conversation you are about to have.
A service at $90 leaves $78 after materials, and that is what any of the three has to come out of. Rent is the only one that does not move with the day: you book $900 whether the chair is full or empty, and so does the shortfall land on them. Tips are not counted, and neither is tax. Whether renting a chair makes somebody self-employed where you are is a question for your accountant, not for this page.
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How this screen worksHow this works
- Every model is paid out of the same pot: the price of a service minus what its colour and product cost. Time is not in that figure, which is why the three ways of buying time can be compared against it.
- An hourly wage is the same bill whether anybody sat down. Commission moves with the day. Rent does not move at all, which is why the quiet weeks land on the person renting rather than on you.
- The crossover is the number that settles most arguments: below it the rent is worth more to you, above it a busy chair on commission is. It is printed in clients a day, so you can check it against a normal Tuesday.
- Both sides are shown on every model. An owner comparing only their own column picks rent every time, and then cannot understand why nobody takes the chair.
- Tips are not counted, and neither is tax. Whether renting a chair makes somebody self-employed where you are is a question for an accountant, not for a calculator.
Common questions
- Is booth rent better than commission?
- For the owner, rent is better while the chair is quiet, because the sum arrives whether anybody sat in it. Commission is better once the chair is busy, because you keep a share of every extra service. The calculator prints the clients a day where the two cross for your numbers.
- What is a fair booth rent for a salon chair?
- Work backwards from what the chair earns. Put in the clients a day and the average price, and look at what the stylist takes home after the rent. If that number is not a living wage on a normal week, the rent is too high and the chair will not stay filled.
- What commission percentage is normal?
- Between 35% and 50% of the service price is common, but the percentage matters less than what it leaves. If the cut is bigger than the margin after materials, commission can never pay you better than rent, however busy the chair is. The calculator says so when that happens.
- Does renting a chair make someone self-employed?
- Often, but it depends on where you are and on how much control you keep over their hours, prices and clients. Getting it wrong is expensive. Ask an accountant before you change anybody’s arrangement.
- What if the chair does not earn its own rent?
- Then the person renting it takes home nothing and owes you the difference, which nobody accepts twice. The calculator says this in words rather than printing a negative number, because it means the rent needs lowering, not that the deal is a bargain.
Paid plan · $39 a month
A chair sits empty on a Tuesday either way.
Whichever way you pay, an empty chair earns nobody anything. KANJIN Premium emails your regulars when the day is quiet, so the chair fills before the rent is due.
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