Salon Booth Rental Laws in Tennessee (2026)

Booth and suite rental in Tennessee — the whole program

Who may rent a booth or a suite in Tennessee

You practise under a licence from the Tennessee State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners, inside the Department of Commerce and Insurance. Tenn. Code Ann. 62-4-108 makes it unlawful to practise or teach cosmetology, manicuring, aesthetics or natural hair styling in the state without a valid board licence, and 62-4-125(d)(2) confines that practice to a licensed shop or school apart from a short list of places (a nursing home, the client's own residence, short-term residence or place of business, a hospital or infirmary, a funeral establishment, an unpaid cosmetics demonstration in a retail store, a film, television or photographic set, and a licensed mobile shop). Minimum age is 16 for every route (62-4-110). Hours are set in 62-4-110: cosmetologist 1,500 hours, or a valid Tennessee master barber registration plus 300 hours; manicurist 600 hours; aesthetician 750 hours; natural hair stylist 300 hours; eyelash specialist 300 hours of classroom and practical instruction. Every route also requires up to one hour of free training on recognising and responding to domestic violence, delivered by an organisation recognised by the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, taken inside the school hours. Exemptions in 62-4-109 matter to renters: shampooing only, hair wrapping with a posted notice and 16 hours of training, and hair braiding under 62-4-135 (16 hours of health and hygiene training, biennial registration with the department at $30, disposable or hospital-disinfected implements, and a posted notice that you are not board-licensed) all sit outside the licence.

The individual licences that qualify you

• Cosmetologist, 62-4-110(a): 1,500 school hours or master barber registration plus 300 hours; original licence $60, biennial renewal $60 (Rule 0440-01-.13(2)(a), (3)(a)).
• Manicurist, 62-4-110(b): 600 hours; original $60, renewal $60.
• Aesthetician, 62-4-110(d): 750 hours; original $60, renewal $60.
• Natural hair stylist, 62-4-110(e): 300 hours; original $60, renewal $60. A hair braider is not licensed at all: 62-4-135 asks only for 16 hours of training and a $30 biennial registration.
• Eyelash specialist, 62-4-110(f): 300 hours of classroom and practical instruction; original $60, renewal $60.
• Instructor, 62-4-110(c): held licence plus a board-approved 300-hour instructor course; original $80, renewal $70, and 16 hours of actual instruction as continuing education (Rule 0440-01-.15).
• Every practitioner licence expires on its biennial anniversary date (62-4-117(a)); late renewal costs $25 (Rule 0440-01-.13(4)). A licence lapsed three years or more is only reinstated by passing the state law and practical exam (62-4-117(d)), with a carve-out at 62-4-117(h) for licensees of twenty years or more in good standing whose licence has been dead for three to eight years.
• Other fees in Rule 0440-01-.13: reciprocity from another state $100 and it must arrive with the application or the file is incomplete; retiring a licence $50; lost or mutilated licence $25; change of name $10; certification of a licence to another state $50.

Do you need your own establishment licence?

Tennessee does not issue a separate establishment licence to a booth or suite renter.

Tennessee licenses the premises, not the chair, and it has no booth rental licence: no such category appears in the fee rule, 0440-01-.13. Take a station inside a shop that already holds a licence and you file nothing with the Board; you work under that shop's licence, with your own licence displayed at your work station (62-4-113(a)(1)). What decides the question is what you are renting. The Board's own definition is broad: a shop is 'any premises, building, or part of a building (including a residence) in which a person is authorized to engage in the professions of cosmetology, barbering, manicuring, aesthetics, skin care, or natural hair styling', and the statute reaches any place of business where a person engages or offers to engage in cosmetology for compensation (62-4-102(a)(4)). A closed suite you hold under your own lease, with your own door and your own clients, is a part of a building operated as your place of business, so expect the Board to want it licensed as a shop in its own name. That is not a formality: a shop licence carries the full equipment list of Rule 0440-02-.07, a manager licensed in a discipline the shop offers who is present whenever services are rendered (62-4-118(c), Rule 0440-02-.03(2)), and a sign at the entrance visible from the street (62-4-126). The Board's rules never use the words booth, suite or station, so confirm your own layout with the Board before signing a suite lease.

The licence is issued by Tennessee State Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners, Department of Commerce and Insurance, 500 James Robertson Parkway, Nashville; applications through core.tn.gov.

1. Settle the threshold question first: a station inside someone else's licensed shop needs no filing, a separate suite or unit you control needs its own shop licence.
2. Hold a current Tennessee licence in every discipline you will sell, and remember the shop licence type follows the services: full-service cosmetology, manicure, skin care, natural hair styling, eyelash services, or a dual shop where more than one field or both cosmetology and barbering are offered (62-4-102(a)(6), 62-4-118(m)).
3. Get the local business licence from the county clerk or city tax office first: the Board requires it as an attachment to the shop application.
4. File the initial shop application on core.tn.gov at least three weeks before you want to open, paying $150, and attach the local business licence, an Eligibility for Entitlements Verification form for each owner and proof of identity for each owner (both waived if the entity is an LLC or corporation registered with the Secretary of State).
5. Name a manager on the application: 62-4-118(b) requires it, and 62-4-118(d) lets the manager supervise disciplines other than their own while practising only in their own.
6. Have the room ready and pass the pre-opening inspection. 62-4-118(f) forbids opening a new shop or a relocation until it passes, the inspector calls within ten days of the application, and Rule 0440-01-.13(12) kills the application after ninety days without an approved inspection, costing a fresh application and fee.
7. Pending the licence itself you may open only if you display the passing inspection report and a copy of the cashier's cheque or money order for the fee (62-4-118(h)).
8. If you buy an existing shop, you have thirty days from the change of ownership to file the application and pay both the licence and inspection fees (62-4-118(g)).

Fee: $150 to open, and the split matters when you budget a suite: Rule 0440-01-.13(5) sets a $100 licence fee for a new shop, a relocation or a change of ownership, plus a $50 inspection fee for each of those events. A new dual shop is $150 under 0440-01-.13(5)(g). Change of name only is $10; a change of ownership caused by the death of an immediate family member is free with a death certificate or obituary.

Renewal: $75 for a shop, $100 for a dual shop (Rule 0440-01-.13(5)(c), (h)). Licences expire on the last day of the month of their biennial anniversary date (62-4-118(j)) and renew on the prescribed form with the fee (62-4-118(k)). Late renewal costs $50, and $50 per year for a dual shop (0440-01-.13(5)(d), (i)).

What the booth and suite rules actually say

Renting is allowed and common, and nothing in the Tennessee Cosmetology Act regulates the rental agreement itself. What the Act does is spread liability across four people at once: the Board can write violations against the shop, the owner, the manager on duty and the individual licensee, as its own shop guidance states, and 62-4-119 makes the owner and the manager responsible for ensuring that only licensed people work there, that they perform only what their licences authorise, and that the shop and its operation conform to the Act and the rules. Rule 0440-02-.03(1) then adds the sentence a renter should read twice: the manager is responsible for keeping the establishment sanitary, but that rule 'shall not relieve any licensee of responsibility for the sanitary condition of any space or equipment used in an establishment'. Your station, your implements, your disinfectant are yours to answer for whatever the lease says. Two structural rules shape suite arrangements. A manager or designated manager must be on the premises any day services are rendered, with two thirty-minute absences allowed if reachable by phone and able to return within twenty minutes (Rule 0440-02-.03(2)); a suite licensed in your own name means you are that manager, and you cannot be absent for a whole day. And a shop must have a separate entrance from any other business except in a mall, strip centre or other commercial property the Board approves (Rule 0440-02-.07(8)), which is what makes suite buildings workable. Licences are neither transferable nor assignable (62-4-128), so a shop licence never passes with the lease.

What your own space must have

• Full equipment list per shop type in Rule 0440-02-.07. A cosmetology shop needs at least one shampoo bowl with hot and cold running water and a chair in the work area, one enclosed and labelled clean-towel store, one covered and labelled soiled-towel container, one covered and labelled trash container, one dry sanitary compartment, one wet disinfectant, one standard work station per operator, one ultraviolet sanitizer, one first aid kit, and at least one working restroom.
• A manicure shop adds a manicure table with stool or chair per manicurist, a patron chair, a sink with hot and cold water in the work area (not the bathroom), a finger bowl and a covered cotton container per table, a foot bath if pedicures are offered, and a posted sign telling customers they may refuse drills. A skin care shop adds a hands-free magnifying lamp, a reclining facial chair or table, an electric hot towel cabin, a facial steamer and a commercial wax heater (0440-02-.07(2)-(3)).
• A shop offering limited services may ask the executive director in writing to waive specific equipment, on the Board's form, and must reapply and be re-inspected if the services offered change (Rule 0440-02-.18).
• Rooms must be adequately lighted and ventilated; floors swept or mopped daily; hair cuttings, nail dust and tips removed promptly after each customer (0440-02-.06).
• Tanning beds, massage therapy and tattooing cannot sit inside a cosmetology, skin care, manicure or manicure/skin care shop unless in a separate room with hard walls (0440-02-.06(3)).
• Residential shops need a separate entrance that does not pass through any part of the private residence, and separate restroom facilities away from the living quarters (0440-02-.07(6)); 62-4-125(b)(2) requires separate entrances from adjoining living quarters, and 62-4-125(d)(1) makes it unlawful to let anyone sleep in or use residentially a room used as a shop.
• Restrooms: each shop needs adequate facilities except where it sits in a commercial building that already provides them (62-4-125(b)(1)); the Board may approve a shop without its own restroom in a mall, strip centre or other commercial property where shared public restrooms are standard (0440-02-.07(9)).
• Sanitation and disinfection under 0440-02-.13: wash hands with soap and water and place a clean cape on the patron before starting, and immerse all tools completely in an EPA-registered bactericidal, virucidal and fungicidal disinfectant mixed per the manufacturer's directions.
• An identification tag showing your file number must be worn by any licensee actively practising in a shop (0440-02-.08(1)).
• Aesthetics limits in 0440-02-.16: only the non-living uppermost epidermis may be removed, alphahydroxy acid exfoliation is capped at 30% concentration and pH 3.0 or above, mixing skin removal products is prohibited except where the manufacturer requires it, and no high frequency current may be used to coagulate tissue or remove hair, moles, warts or skin appendages. No product banned by the FDA for cosmetic use, liquid methylmethacrylate named expressly, may be on the premises (0440-02-.17).

What you must display

• The shop licence, prominently displayed in a clear and conspicuous place at all times (Rule 0440-02-.04(1)); operating without conspicuously displaying it is unlawful under 62-4-118(a).
• Your own licence at your work station (62-4-113(a)(1), Rule 0440-02-.04(2)). While a licence is pending you may work only if you display the board notice that you passed the exam and a copy of the money order or receipt for the fee, and failing to display that is a Class C misdemeanor (62-4-113(b)-(c)).
• The current inspection form, posted conspicuously and signed by the owner or manager and the inspector (Rule 0440-02-.05(2)).
• The manager's name, posted, with the licence number available to any employee or customer (Rule 0440-02-.03(2)(b)); 62-4-118(c) lets the Board prescribe the form and location.
• An identification tag with your file number, worn while working (Rule 0440-02-.08(1)).
• A sign at the entrance, large enough to be clearly visible from the street, showing the premises is a shop, including a shop in a private residence (62-4-126).
• In a manicure shop, a prominent sign stating the customer has the right not to have drills used on their nails (Rule 0440-02-.07(3)(n)).
• A hair braider working under the 62-4-135 exemption posts a notice at the place of operation that they are not licensed by the Board, and produces the training certificate on request.

Inspection

Tennessee inspects before you open, which is the trap for anyone signing a lease on a schedule. Under 62-4-118(f) a new or relocated shop must pass an initial inspection after a complete application and payment of both the licence and the inspection fee, and the inspection happens within ten days of the request; the Board's guidance says the inspector telephones you directly and that the Board office does not schedule inspections. Nothing opens before that approval. The application and fee die after ninety days without an approved inspection (Rule 0440-01-.13(12)). Afterwards, 62-4-127(a) lets the Board or its representatives inspect any place of business operated by a licensee at reasonable hours, and 62-4-118(i) directs the Board to set the frequency of later inspections by rule. Results are reduced to a grade or rating on the Board's form, which must be furnished to the establishment, posted conspicuously at all times, and signed personally by the shop owner or shop manager and the inspector (Rule 0440-02-.05(2)).

Tax — on your rent and on your services

Rent. Tennessee taxes the sale of tangible personal property at retail at 7% (67-6-202(a)) and taxes only the services enumerated in 67-6-205(c), a list built around lodging, parking, telecommunications, repair of tangible personal property, laundry and dry cleaning and similar items. Renting floor space in a building is neither, so booth or suite rent carries no Tennessee sales tax. Read the lease before relying on that: if the payment bundles in the use of equipment, a lease of tangible personal property is treated differently from rent of real property, and that portion should be put to the Department of Revenue. Services. Haircuts, colour, nails, facials and lash work are not on the 67-6-205(c) list either, so they are not subject to sales tax. Retail is: shampoo, tools and take-home product sold to a client are sales of tangible personal property, taxable at 7% plus the local option rate for your county or city, and you must register with the Department of Revenue and collect. Business tax, the one that surprises renters. Tennessee levies a state and local privilege tax on gross receipts, and a booth renter is a business in their own right with their own receipts, not a line on the salon's return. Salon services sit in Classification 3, which covers each person 'making sales of services or engaging in the business of furnishing or rendering services' apart from sixteen listed exceptions, none of which is cosmetology (67-4-708(3)(C)). The Classification 3 rate is three-sixteenths of one percent of retail sales, 0.1875% (67-4-709(3)(A)). Public Chapter 377 of 2023 rewrote the thresholds: under 67-4-712(d) a person with less than $100,000 of sales in a county, or in a municipality, is exempt from the tax and from the standard licence for those sales, but 67-4-723(b) still requires a $15 minimal activity licence, per location, from the county and the city where sales run over $3,000 and under $100,000. At $100,000 or more you need the standard $15 business licence from the county clerk and the city (67-4-723(a)), you register with the Department of Revenue, and the return is due on the fifteenth day of the fourth month after your fiscal year ends, so 15 April on a calendar year. Landlord side. Operators of nonresidential buildings are one of the sixteen exceptions carved out of Classification 3 (67-4-708(3)(C)(xii)), so pure rental receipts are not service receipts; but classification is by dominant business activity per location (67-4-702(a)(5), 67-4-708), so a salon owner whose dominant activity is services should ask the Department how to report rent collected on the side rather than assume it drops out. Tennessee has no state tax on wages, but your rental profit is self-employment income for federal purposes and the self-employment tax is yours alone.

Renter or employee: the classification test

There is no cosmetology-specific booth rental statute, so status is tested under general Tennessee law, and the two tests that bite are not the same. For unemployment insurance, 50-7-207(b)(2)(B) writes the twenty-factor test of IRS Revenue Ruling 87-41 straight into the statute, factor by factor, from instructions and set hours through tools, investment, profit or loss and the right to discharge. Three of those are decided by how a rental is written: 'payment made by the job or on straight commission generally indicates the worker is an independent contractor'; the maintenance of an office rented at fair value from an unrelated party is expressly given as the example of a significant investment pointing to contractor status; and an independent contractor 'is free to work when and for whom the independent contractor chooses'. For workers' compensation, 50-6-102 uses a shorter list: the right to control the conduct of the work, the right of termination, the method of payment, the freedom to select and hire helpers, the furnishing of tools and equipment, self-scheduling of working hours, and the freedom to offer services to other entities. Build the arrangement to satisfy both. A written lease of a defined space at a fixed rent paid whether or not you are busy, your own key and hours, your own prices, clients, products and tools, your own liability insurance, and no house rules on shifts, uniforms or assigned walk-ins. The warning signs are a percentage of takings instead of rent, the owner setting prices or a schedule, the owner holding the client records or the appointment book, and the owner supplying all product. Note the tension with the Board's own rules: 62-4-119 and 0440-02-.03 hand the owner and manager legal responsibility for what happens in the shop, so an owner may insist on control the tax tests read as supervision. Sanitation and licence compliance are safe ground for the owner to insist on; pricing, hours and client ownership are not. If the relationship is really employment, the salon owes unemployment contributions, payroll tax and workers' compensation exposure; if it is really rental, the renter has been paying both halves of self-employment tax. Separately, 67-4-712(b)(1) excludes a person acting as an employee rather than an independent contractor from the business tax, so how the arrangement is characterised also decides who files that return.

What your city or county may add

The Board licence is not a business licence, and Tennessee is unusual in making the local licence a precondition of the state one: the shop application requires the county or city business licence as an attachment. That licence is the business tax licence, issued by the county clerk and, separately, by the city where the shop sits inside an incorporated municipality, at $15 per location for either the standard licence (67-4-723(a)(1)) or the minimal activity licence for receipts between $3,000 and $100,000 (67-4-723(b)(1)). A booth or suite renter is a separate taxpayer at that address and takes their own licence; the salon's licence does not cover you. The standard licence renews without a fee once the Department confirms you filed and paid your return (67-4-723(a)(2)) and expires thirty days after the return due date (67-4-723(a)(3)). Section 67-4-723(c) requires each licensee to exhibit the licence, and the Department states plainly that you may not operate until the licence is obtained and posted at the location. On top of that expect zoning and occupancy sign-off and sign permits from the city, which are not administered by the Board or the Department of Revenue. In Nashville the county clerk of Davidson County and the Metro codes department are the offices to call; in Memphis the Shelby County clerk and the City of Memphis. Confirm the current local requirements with the clerk of the county and the city where the address sits, and confirm whether the address is inside the city limits before you assume you owe only the county licence.

What operating unlicensed costs

A violation of the Cosmetology Act or of any rule promulgated under it is a Class B misdemeanor (62-4-129(a)), which carries up to six months' confinement or a fine of up to $500, or both (40-35-111(e)(2)). That reaches practising without a licence, working outside a licensed shop in breach of 62-4-125(d)(2), and operating a shop without conspicuously displaying a valid licence under 62-4-118(a). Failing to display the pending-licence documents at your work station is a Class C misdemeanor, up to thirty days or $50 (62-4-113(c), 40-35-111(e)(3)). The Board can also go to court: 62-4-129(b) lets it petition any circuit or chancery court to enjoin a person from continuing to violate the Act, licensed or not. Administratively, 62-4-127(b) lets the Board suspend, revoke or refuse to issue or renew a licence for fraud in procuring a licence, unprofessional, immoral or dishonorable conduct, unlawful invasion of another profession's field of practice, a violation of the Act or its rules, failure to comply with a lawful board order, or a felony conviction within three years or a misdemeanor of moral turpitude within one year, both subject to the Fresh Start Act. Money penalties run alongside: Rule 0440-01-.14 lets the Board assess civil penalties of $0 to $1,000 for a 62-4-127(b) violation, each individual act and each day of continued violation counting as a separate violation, weighed against willingness, repetition, magnitude of harm and any compensation to victims. The Board's shop guidance confirms it writes violations to the shop, the owner, the manager on duty and the individual licensee.

Program sources: https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/rules/0440/0440-01.20251224.pdf · https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/rules/0440/0440-02.20251224.pdf · https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/rules/0440/0440.htm · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-102/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-108/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-109/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-110/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-112/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-113/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-117/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-118/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-119/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-124/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-125/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-126/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-127/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-128/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-129/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-62/chapter-4/part-1/section-62-4-135/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-4/part-7/section-67-4-702/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-4/part-7/section-67-4-708/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-4/part-7/section-67-4-709/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-4/part-7/section-67-4-711/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-4/part-7/section-67-4-712/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-4/part-7/section-67-4-715/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-4/part-7/section-67-4-723/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-6/part-2/section-67-6-202/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-67/chapter-6/part-2/section-67-6-205/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-50/chapter-7/part-2/section-50-7-207/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-50/chapter-6/part-1/section-50-6-102/ · https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-40/chapter-35/part-1/section-40-35-111/ · https://www.tn.gov/commerce/regboards/cosmo/license/shop-school/cosmetology-shop.html · https://www.tn.gov/commerce/regboards/cosmo/license/shop-school/info.html · https://www.tn.gov/revenue/taxes/business-tax/classifications.html · https://www.tn.gov/revenue/taxes/business-tax/registration-and-licensing.html · https://revenue.support.tn.gov/hc/en-us/articles/360057605991-BUS-7-Determining-a-Taxpayer-s-Business-Tax-Classification · https://revenue.support.tn.gov/hc/en-us/articles/360057608531-BUS-22-Business-Tax-Due-Dates