A hairdresser is often the service provider people have known longest. Six years, eight years, every six weeks — it is a relationship with more continuity than most, which is exactly why the holidays raise the question of whether something extra is owed, and how much.
The benchmark: one session
The most widely cited guideline is the cost of one visit. If your usual appointment is $80, the holiday tip is around $80 — given on top of the normal per-visit tip, not instead of it. Some guides frame the same idea as doubling your usual tip for that one appointment, which lands in a similar place for most people.
It is a benchmark, not an invoice. Scale it to how long you have gone there and what you can spend. A stylist who has done your hair for a decade and one you found in March are not the same situation.
When several people work on you
This is where the simple rule stops being simple. A colour appointment might involve a colourist, a stylist who cuts, and an assistant who shampoos and rinses. The holiday amount is generally split among them rather than repeated for each — you are not giving three full session-cost tips.
The usual shape of the split follows who did the work. The person whose skill you are actually there for — typically the stylist or colourist — takes the largest share. Anyone who worked on you in a supporting role receives a smaller flat amount; assistants are commonly tipped $5 to $10 in the ordinary course, and a holiday amount somewhat above that is a reasonable gesture.
If you genuinely cannot tell who did what — common in a busy salon — handing your stylist the envelope and saying it is for the team is a normal thing to do, and they will divide it.
If you are not a regular, you are not expected to
This is the part most guides skip, and it resolves a lot of unnecessary worry. Holiday tipping at a salon is a gesture between people with an ongoing relationship. If you go twice a year, or you have been to this salon three times and seen a different person each visit, no holiday tip is expected. Tipping normally on the visit is complete.
The same applies if you are new. Starting the practice after a year or two of going somewhere is entirely normal, and nobody is keeping a ledger of when you began.
Salon owners
There is an old convention that you do not tip a salon owner, on the theory that they set their own prices. In practice that convention has largely faded, and many owners accept tips like anyone else. If your stylist owns the place and you have been going for years, a holiday gesture is not a faux pas.
Cash, card, or a gift
Cash is the most useful form, for the straightforward reason that card tips may be processed through the salon's system with a delay and, in some arrangements, a deduction. A card in an envelope handed over at your December appointment is the standard.
A gift instead of money is fine if you know the person well enough to choose something they actually want. If you do not know them that well, money is not the impersonal option — it is the honest one.
Sources
Figures reflect ranges published by consumer and personal-finance outlets. Salon tipping conventions vary by region and by salon; where a salon has its own policy on tip distribution, that policy governs.