How do you tell customers about your hair salon before they’ve even booked their first appointment? It’s simple: find the perfect logo that sums it all up. In fact, a successful stylist logo makes as many statements as the haircut or dye job itself.
Mastering hair salon logo design is all about the right balance of personality and purpose. Be it a quirky hipster spot, an upscale spa or a no-frills barbershop, the logo should support and enhance the overall mission of the salon.
Below, we’ve gathered ideas and inspiration for great hair salon logos. Along with making an impression about the shop and its services, a well-designed logo can be an outstanding business tool. Use it wisely.
What makes a good hair salon logo?
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When designing a logo for the beauty and grooming industry, it’s important to seriously consider who your customer will be. Are your customers looking for a boutique salon experience? Do the customers come to the salon not only looking for a hairstyle, but also looking for relaxing spa services? Is your salon aimed at bold, daring customers who come in looking for purple dye, half-shaved haircuts or even a mohawk? These are the questions to ask yourself before getting a logo design, as it should speak to the type of customers who will be the patrons of the business.
Think about the many places where a salon logo can exist. It illuminates the storefront. It decorates the wall of the shampoo area. It adorns a website, business cards, T-shirts and other promotional ventures. With so many places to make an appearance, it needs to make the right impression.
In addition to speaking to the target customer, a salon logo should be just that: obviously a salon logo. Literal elements like scissors, a comb, a spray bottle or the silhouette of a head can go a surprisingly long way in emphasizing the purpose of the business as a whole.
Amazing logo ideas for hairdressers, hair salons and stylists
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Playful and quirky salon logos
You’re serious about style, but your logo doesn’t have to be. Actually, some of the most effective beauty industry logos are playful by nature. Bold colors and cartoonish figures can enhance the relatability of the salon. After all, it’s a place where the customer is constantly engaging in conversation with the stylist. This should be a place where everyone feels welcome and relaxed, so an element of humor can be surprisingly effective.
Peaceful salon logos
Many hair salons also offer spa services like waxing, facials, manicures and massages. It’s a killer business model, as the opportunity to upsell can be quite profitable. When it comes to creating the logo for a salon and spa, it helps to go with a theme that relates to tranquility. Calming colors and elements of nature (like beautiful birds or graceful flowers) will support the overall mission for the business: zen.
Minimalist salon Logos
With logo design, there are many situations where less is more. And for a salon, the simplest, cleanest logo is often the most impactful. There are many salons which are looking to attract a diverse clientele which includes men, women and children from various walks of life. The beauty of a minimalist logo is that it will clearly and easily speak to absolutely anyone who walks through the door. It is by far the most welcoming option, and it also never goes out of style.
Elegant & luxurious salon logos
When creating a logo for a salon, it can often be helpful to remember the primary reason that a customer comes to the business in the first place: it’s about luxury. Beauty industry professionals make their customers feel confident and pampered. An elegant, luxurious logo helps uphold this mission. Work in sophisticated elements like rich textures or metallic hues. After all, in the business of beauty, being extravagant can actually be a wonderful thing.
The fundamentals of logo design
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If you’re coming into salon logo design without any experience, it can be hair-raising. Here we’ll give you a crash course in logo design.
Logo design is a nuanced specialization of graphic design that encompasses aesthetics, branding & marketing, composition, color theory, typography and artistic skill. We give a larger introduction to the craft in our free online guide How to design a logo, but here we’ll summarize some key points to provide a little background.
Design for your brand. There’s not one “best type of logo”—the most successful logos are the ones that best represent their brand, and in this case, the brand is the hair salon. For example, the aggressive red and garish typography of the Coca Cola logo suit the brand well, but those same design choices would hurt more relaxed brands like a spa or beauty parlor. Similarly, a barbershop geared toward businessmen requires a drastically different logo from a full-service salon for millennial women.
So before anything else, you have to consider what kind of brand you want to be—your “brand identity.” Try defining your salon with a few brand-defining keywords, then ask yourself questions about who you are or who you want to be. Are you an urbane brand or a down-to-earth brand? Are you quirky or more refined? That will guide your design choices, especially the colors, shapes and letters.
Colors, shapes and letters. Each different color and shape represents different emotions—for example, logos with black and metallics seem more sophisticated, and logos with a lot of round shapes seem friendlier. Likewise, that extends to making the right font choice for your brand. Is your salon more suited to classic, formal serifs or a casual sans-serif font? Or should you go with a combination of both? Every design decision reflects on your brand, so build your brand identity from the ground up with strategic choices.
How to get a hair salon logo
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As we explained in a previous guide How to create a logo: Comparing the best ways to get a logo designed, a company has four main options for getting a logo. Let’s cut to it:
- Logo maker (DIY). Make it your own by creating a logo from scratch with the help of a logo maker or other entry-level design software.
- Hire a design agency. You hand off all logo design duties to a design agency and their suite of specialists, but the extra talent comes at an extra cost.
- Work with a freelancer. You can find a freelance designer to design your logo for you.
- Commission a design contest. In a design contest, you explain what you want in a briefing, including visual preferences and business goals. Multiple designers from all over the world then submit samples based on your briefing. From there, you simply pick your favorite.
For starters, DIY and logo makers are only advisable under extreme circumstances, like if you have next to nothing in your budget or if you happen to already have a design background. Your logo is an asset too important to skimp on, and considering how complicated logo design is, if it’s not designed by a professional, it may not be as effective as it could be.
From there, it’s a decision of both cost and preference. If your only concern is price, check out our Logo design cost guide for more detailed distinctions.
The biggest advantage of logo design contests—and the reason they’re so popular—is that a contest leverages the creativity of multiple designers. Through this method, you’ll get to see diverse logos designs to choose from. If you’re still unsure what style and look is right for you, a contest has the benefit of experimentation. After all, you may not know what style best suits you until you see some creative drafts from several designers.
If you already know what theme and look you’re going for, your best bet is going to be working directly with a freelance designer. You can browse designer portfolios to find the perfect match in terms of style and experience, then work with the freelancer to get exactly what you’re looking for.
Are you ready to get a perfectly styled logo for your hair salon?
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Your salon can be more than just a place to stop in for a cut and color every 6-8 weeks. If properly marketed and branded, a salon can be a place where customers really let their hair down—both literally and figuratively. It’s a place where style is born and relationships are built.
This can be a location for socializing, gathering, comfort, and (depending on your policies…) a nice glass of wine, too. Whatever purpose the salon is serving, its logo should be one with the brand from the very start, whether that means being cool and sophisticated or lighthearted and sunny. Take the initiative to think thoroughly about branding, then get your salon a logo that complements its distinct sense of style.
