How Much Should a Haircut Cost?

How much should a haircut cost? Roughly what the time behind the chair is worth, and not much more than that. A straight clipper cut with no fade is a fair £10 to £15 almost anywhere in London, ours included. A fade, a wash, or a longer appointment with a hot towel shave built in pushes that up, sometimes as far as £50 at the grooming lounges that build a whole session around it. Neither price is wrong. They are paying for different things.

What a £10 haircut actually buys

Our Crew Cut is £10 and takes 20 minutes: one guard over the top and sides, tidied at the neck, no fuss. The Over-60s Haircut is the same price on weekdays, same idea, same 30 minutes because we take a little more care around thinning patches. Neither is a corner cut short. It is a simple job done properly in the time a simple job takes.

Short Back & Sides at £14 sits just above that, and it is the one most men underestimate. It looks plain in the mirror but it is scissor and clipper work together, not a single guard run over the whole head, which is why it costs four pounds more than the Crew Cut for the same 20 minutes on the clock. The full list, with times, is on our services page.

Where the price actually comes from

Every price on our list tracks two things: the technique and the clock. A skin fade or a taper fade is £17 because it takes close to 40 minutes of blending the grades into each other with no visible step, and if we rush that step the fade looks patchy within a week rather than three. A Wash & Cut is £18 because the basin adds real minutes before the scissors even come out. None of it is a made-up number. It is the shop working out what 40 minutes of a chair, a barber and a bottle of clipper oil actually costs to run.

That is also why a beard trim is £2 cheaper when it rides along with any haircut rather than being booked on its own: you are already in the chair, so the shop saves the changeover time and passes some of it back.

Why some haircuts run to £50

You will find grooming lounges in London charging £50 or more for a cut, and it is not because the clippers are sharper. It is a longer appointment, often 45 minutes to an hour, usually built around a consultation, a wash, and sometimes a hot towel shave or a scalp treatment folded into the same visit. You are paying for the whole session, the room it happens in, and the fact that nobody is booked in behind you for the next forty minutes.

That is a real and reasonable thing to charge for. It is just a different product from a haircut. If what you actually want is your hair cut well and out the door in under half an hour, you are paying for time you will not use.

What we charge, and what we do not

We do not have a £50 haircut on the board, and we are not going to pretend that is a gap in the menu. Six chairs running through the day means the shop earns its money on volume and a fast turnaround, not on a long, ceremonial appointment, so keeping the price close to the actual minutes on the clock works better for us and for you. The most anyone pays here for a cut on its own is £18, for a Wash & Cut or a Head Shave, both 30 to 40 minutes.

If you want more than the cut, the Hot Towel Finish is £10 added on afterwards, steamed towels and balm, and it is the bit most men remember longer than the haircut itself. That is closer to how the £50 places build their price, just sold as an honest extra rather than folded into one big number.

So how much should a haircut cost you, over the year

A single number on a price list only tells you half of it. What a haircut costs you over a year depends on how often you need it back in shape, and that depends on the cut, not just the price tag. A Crew Cut grows out softly and still looks deliberate at five or six weeks, so a £10 cut every month and a half is genuinely cheap. A skin fade at £17 closes up within ten days and wants attention again inside three weeks if you want it sharp, so it is a more expensive habit than the per-visit price suggests. Neither is a bad choice. Just know which one you are signing up for, and if you are not sure, our guide to how often men should get a haircut has the timings by cut.

What to actually ask before you pay

Wherever you get your hair cut, ask what the price covers before you sit down. Does it include a wash, or is that separate. Is a beard trim extra, and how much. Is the price for a consultation and a cut, or just the cut. A shop that answers those questions straight is usually one that prices honestly the rest of the time too.

Judge the result, not the number on the price list. A £15 haircut that is blended properly and lasts three weeks is worth more than a £30 one that grows out unevenly after a fortnight, and a £50 session is only worth it if you actually wanted the hour, not just the haircut. Book a chair and we will tell you exactly what your cut costs and why before we start, no surprises when you stand up.