Esthetician Insurance: An Easy to Understand Guide

With self-care at the spa and salon more popular than perhaps ever before, estheticians are definitely professionals in demand.

Estheticians provide pampering and beautifying services such as facials, waxing, microdermabrasion, laser skin rejuvenation, and much more.

Estheticians are highly trained professionals, and they’re responsible for keeping their clients safe and happy while at the salon or spa. They have the skills necessary not only to beautify their clients, but also to give them a relaxing respite from the stresses of life.

The kinds of services estheticians provide are becoming more advanced all the time. Decades ago you would only expect to find traditional facial, cosmetics, and nail services at esthetic establishments. Today, however, you often find a host of advanced beauty services. The larger and/or more specialized a salon or spa, the more exciting the options tend to be.

If you’re an esthetician and have these kinds of exciting and in-demand skills, you probably won’t ever lack for eager clients.

So what could go wrong? Well, the answer is quite a bit.

When you’re providing personal services, there is always a real risk that you could accidentally injure your clients. In any kind of physical business establishment, there is always the risk of things going wrong–sometimes seriously (and expensively) wrong.

 

Get a Free Esthetician Insurance Quote!

 

What is Esthetician Insurance and Who Needs It?

Do you do “Do’s”? Maybe mani’s? Possibly you give good face? Or do you own a salon? Then YOU need esthetician insurance.

You get to meet new people every day. You work on their bodies. They pay you for your services. Services can go wrong. You know the saying, “He** hath no fury like a woman scorned”!

If you are an esthetician or you own a salon, you are going to need to be protected. A scorned woman might sue.

You have to already know the potential mistakes that can happen when you are working on someone’s body. Whether the accusation holds water or not is irrelevant. If a lawsuit gets started, it’s going to get expensive, fast!

Esthetics is a rapidly growing industry. The BLS reports that there were 71,800 estheticians in the United States in 2018. There is expected to be an 11% increase in this number by 2028, with the number projected to reach 79,600. The top 10% of esthetician salaries average $59,790. The median esthetician salary is $31,290. 

Did you know that disaster destroys 40% of all small businesses in the first two years of operation? That sounds dramatic, but it’s genuinely no overstatement.

When it comes to being an esthetician, one major disaster would be an accidental injury to a client. This is one area where the protection of esthetician insurance kicks in.

You cannot practice as an esthetician without esthetician insurance. This is true everywhere, almost always without exception. This insurance is a vital part of ensuring that these professionals are protected if an accident happens or anything else goes wrong. An example would be damage inflicted upon a customer’s hair, skin, or even property. 

The right esthetician insurance policy will protect your spa or salon from financial consequences of injuries, accidents, damaged vehicles, and legal fees.

Remember, if someone sues you, you will bear the burden of legal fees whether or not you’ve done anything wrong. It’s not fair, but it’s a basic fact of doing business. Luckily, that is where Esthetician Insurance comes to the rescue. 

Below, we’re going to give you examples and stories of why you need esthetician insurance.

Whether you work in a salon or you own the salon, you need to cover your butt. You need esthetician liability insurance or cosmetology insurance.

Esthetician Insurance Reviews

There are numerous dependable Esthetician Insurance carriers that you can consider. When shopping for your insurance, get several different quotes and choose the option that works best for you and your business.

We find that Hiscox is the best Esthetician Insurance provider.

If you don’t like Hiscox for some reason, other well-known insurance providers are Next Insurance and Insure Bodywork. Both have garnered 5-star reviews from a plethora of esthetician business owners.  They are both user-friendly and come with highly competitive rates.

Best Esthetician Insurance

We have conducted extensive research to find the best providers of Esthetician Insurance on the market. After comparing all relevant factors, we decided that Hiscox provides the best Esthetician Insurance policies.

Estheticians prefer Hiscox because of the features and flexibility of its insurance plans. Hiscox offers flexible payment plans and made-to-measure insurance plans for estheticians. Hiscox’s professional liability insurance will protect you if any clients express dissatisfaction with the treatment you provide.

Of course, Hiscox also provides the general liability insurance you require. You may also hear this kind of insurance referred to as commercial general liability (CGL) insurance. This type of insurance protects you from liabilities arising from injury and property damage.  More on that below…

 

Get a Free Esthetician Insurance Quote!

 

What Kind of Insurance Does an Esthetician Need?

Every esthetician with their own independent business needs their own Esthetician Insurance. As an esthetician, you will need a minimum of two types of insurance.

These are:

1. Professional Liability Esthetician Insurance and,
2. General Liability Esthetician Insurance.

When you purchase your Esthetician Insurance, you should go with a company that provides every kind of insurance you need in one package. Ensure that your insurance package includes at minimum Professional Liability Esthetician Insurance and General Liability Esthetician Insurance

General Liability Insurance for Esthetician

General Liability Esthetician Insurance is the most basic type of esthetician coverage. It covers damages that are caused by other people.

Your General Liability Esthetician Insurance must cover three areas:

• Bodily Injury
• Property Damage
• Personal Injury

Read on to learn why you need this.

1. Bodily Injury:

If any kind of physical injury happens on your business premises, even if it’s utterly unrelated to your services, you may be liable. An example would be if a patron trips and falls. If injuries, especially severe ones, lead to long-lasting life changes, you could face legal action.

Here’s an example:
You have a beauty salon. It’s been open for six months. Everything has been going well. Your employees all get along. One day Marsha strolls in.

She’s an older lady and is pretty frail. Walks with a cane. Super sweet lady, she comes in about every two weeks. Katie is going to do her hair today.

Katie calls her back into the wash area and Marsha gets up to walk back. As she’s walking past the desk, an employee’s purse at that moment gets knocked off the counter right in Marsha’s path.

Marsha trips over it and crashes to the floor. She’s screaming, she’s in serious pain and has to take an ambulance to the hospital. (oh crap.)

She’s broken her hip and both wrists. You better bet she’s coming after you for damages and medical costs. Unless you were born yesterday, you know that the bill is going to run in at least the tens of thousands of dollars!

She might sue for other things as well, like negligence. Yep. You had better be covered with general esthetician liability cosmetology insurance.

2. Property Damage:

If any property belonging to a client gets damaged while they are visiting your business, you may be liable.

Your General Liability Esthetician Insurance will cover you if you end up having to fix or replace the damaged property. An example could be if coffee or water spills on a client’s electronic device.

Here’s another example:
You have a regular client, Marty. She comes in to get her nails done about once a week. You know her pretty well. She likes to share her life with you and your employees. She brought her Macbook Pro in today to show you photos of her nephews and nieces.

As you are scrolling through the photos on her computer, Cassie, one of your hairdressers comes over to have a look.

Upon arrival, Cassie accidentally knocks over a glass of water from the shelf above you. Guess where it lands? But of course! Right on the Mac.

That computer is dead and it’s history! All of Marty’s photos are lost because she didn’t back up or use iCloud.

Marty wants her computer back or a new computer and she’s suing for the loss of precious photos.

You are responsible for the damage. That right there is at least a $2,500 accident. More if she needs to get photos and other data recovered. More if they are un-recoverable and she’s suing for pain and suffering or whatnot.

You had better be covered with general liability esthetician insurance!

3. Personal Injury:

Personal injury is a different category than bodily injury.

Personal injury is often related to reputational damage or damage that somehow adversely affects a person’s life. This may seem a more unlikely scenario, but there are situations where you may end up with a personal injury claim against you as an esthetician.

An example might be if you gossiped about a client with someone else and ended up being sued for slander.

Here’s another example:
You work at a salon in your neighborhood. There’s a “mega bitch” that comes into the salon about every two weeks who nobody likes to work on. Her name is Sandra.

Negative Nelly

She’s the most negative person you have ever endured in the chair. She drains all of your energy when she comes in, as well as everyone else’s that she comes in contact with.

You are her favorite, unfortunately for you. Just knowing it’s her day to come in ruins your mood and puts you on edge. She always bitches about her hair, too. It’s never, ever right, yet she keeps coming back to you.

Complain, complain, complain. She finally just left for the day and you are exhausted and frustrated. At least it’s now your lunch break.

For lunch, you go next door to the smoothie place. Kyle, the owner, is a pretty nice gal. You two get to talking and you start to vent to her about Sandra. It feels really good to really let it out and bitch away about stupid Sandra.

You even embellish some of the stories as you are just so over her.

Guess what you didn’t know? Sandra and Kyle are really good friends. It gets back to Sandra that you were talking smack about her.

She (of course, she’s a b*tch) immediately files a lawsuit against you for slander. (DAMMIT!) Well, you should have kept your mouth shut! You had better be covered with general esthetician liability insurance!

Professional Esthetician Liability Insurance

Your Professional Esthetician Liability Insurance protects you from damages that result from your actions or inactions.

You may hear some people call this type of insurance “errors and omissions” insurance. It covers you if something goes wrong while you are performing a professional service for a client. You don’t need to have made a mistake for this insurance to cover you.

Estheticians often give advice to their clients. Professional Liability Esthetician Insurance will cover you if a client accuses you of giving bad advice that led to pain and suffering or financial loss. Emotional distress and poor treatment may be circumstances in which you will need this kind of coverage.

Basically, this insurance covers you if you screw up while performing your services on someone. Even if you have not made a mistake.

You have to have this if you perform a service, which you do. You might give advice as well, and this will cover accusations of bad advice that may cost a customer money and/or pain and suffering.

Here’s a couple of scenarios that this insurance might cover:

1. Emotional Distress:

A model comes to you for hair relaxing and extensions. You ask her all of the relevant questions that might pertain to her hair. All sounds good. She says she’s had both done before. You start with the relaxer.

After a little time in the chair, your client starts to complain that her scalp is tingling and almost burning. You immediately take her to the sink and rinse it out. It’s getting painful as you shampoo her hair. She leaves in a hurry without getting extensions.

A few days later you get a call from her attorney. She’s got scalp burns and some hair is falling out. She’s suing for distress, pain and suffering, and lost wages because now she cannot work as she’s a model.

Oops. You really F’ed up! You had better be covered with professional liability esthetician insurance!

2. Bad Treatment:

You have a client come in with a skin condition. She claims that it’s ‘x’. She wants a chemical peel. Her condition should not affect the treatment according to your education.

You both agree to do the strongest of the three peels. It will burn a little, you tell her, but not very much. You give her a handheld fan to point at her face to cool it off.

After you have already applied about 3/4 of the treatment, she begins to get agitated saying it really hurts. She says the pain is about an 8 out of 10. (Not good. Not normal.) You apply the neutralizer as quickly as possible but it’s too late.

Long story short, you are looking at a pretty hefty lawsuit because this girl’s face scarred from the treatment. Your fault or not, the lawsuit will cost you.

You had better be covered with professional liability esthetics insurance!

Check this out: One woman even sued her salon for giving her a STROKE! Story HERE.

Product Liability Esthetician Insurance

This is an extra almost overlooked type of commercial insurance for estheticians. 

Allergic reactions to products can be severe. In some cases, they may be life-threatening. If you sell any products on your premises, you must have Product Liability Esthetician Insurance.

 

Get a Free Esthetician Insurance Quote!

 

How Much Does Esthetician Insurance Cost?

The larger your esthetics enterprise and the more complex services you offer, the higher your insurance premium is likely to be.

How much your Esthetician Insurance will cost will depend on a variety of factors. An example of a typical annual cost for Esthetician Insurance premiums is $450. If you have a small business, you may pay less.

After all, spas and salons providing esthetician services tend to vary quite a bit in terms of exactly which services they offer. Some establishments have riskier specialties, such as microblading.

If you offer certain kinds of services that have a higher risk of injury or errors, you will probably have to pay more for your Esthetician Insurance.

The cost of Esthetician Insurance can be high, but it’s necessary for you to run your spa, salon, or other beauty and wellness business.

Premium quotes will depend on the kinds of risks you face in your business. Even though you will have to set aside a significant amount of your budget for insurance, you should be able to find more affordable options than you anticipate.

If you don’t have the protection of Esthetician Insurance, you may end up with costs from legal claims so large that it could put you out of business. Esthetician Insurance is an investment you cannot afford not to make.

If you are ever hit with a lawsuit, your insurance will cover all legal costs and any settlement that you must pay.

Esthetician Liability Insurance- A Must, Unless You Are A Dumb Butt!

Did we say that out loud?

Yep, we sure did. That’s how serious it is to get yourself covered with esthetician insurance.

How to Get Esthetician Insurance

To begin the process of getting Esthetician Insurance, contact well-known providers of this kind of insurance. We discussed several of these earlier, with Hiscox coming in as our top choice.

Ask all the insurance companies you contact for quotes, clearly communicating all of the services you provide, as well as all other details of your business. This information will be vital to providing you with an accurate quote.

It’s easy to call Hiscox to get a quote. Once you’ve done that, you have set the ball rolling to get your spa or salon completely covered from liability.

Make sure you have your Esthetician Insurance all set and in place before you start providing any services to clients. You need to be covered before you risk any liability. If you fail to do this, you take a very real risk of losing the business you have worked so hard to establish.

We scoured the internet for the best insurance providers for your needs.

We found that Hiscox represents the best insurance providers and allows you to quickly compare your coverage options.

 

Get a Free Esthetician Insurance Quote!

Make sure your business has the right coverage. Check out other types of commercial insurance.