Nail Salon Video Statistics

Key takeaways

1. Nail technician educators and nail-art creators posted 32.8% of YouTube's 512 most-viewed 'nail art', 'gel nails' and 'nail salon' videos and drew 33.3% of their views; nail salons and nail businesses posted 4.5% and drew 5.5% (our read, Nov 2026). (Mark Studios) See details
2. Nail businesses that name a U.S. place drew 4.7% of those views, but one New York City nail artist's channel holds 71.6% of all nail-business views; without it, nail salons and nail businesses drew 1.6%. (Mark Studios) See details
3. Videos of 60 seconds or less were 74.0% of that sample and drew 85.2% of its views. (Mark Studios) See details
4. The YouTube channels of eight nail product brands had 422,440 subscribers between them, but 0 of the 16 brand, trade, booking-app and salon-chain channels we read had a video in the sample; their videos of the past year drew a median of 1,952 views. (Mark Studios) See details
5. Of 74 location pages we read from five nail salon chains, 0.0% showed any video, 87.8% linked Instagram, 100.0% offered online booking (Zenoti on 77.0% of pages) and 82.4% described the polish as non-toxic, clean, N-free or vegan (our read, Nov 2026). (Mark Studios) See details
6. BLS counted 34,300 private U.S. nail salons with employees in 2025, 71.5% more than in 2015, and the Census Bureau 318,382 nail businesses with no employees in 2024. (BLS; U.S. Census Bureau) See details
7. Employers reported 152,770 manicurists and pedicurists in May 2025 at a median wage of $35,760 a year; BLS estimates that 23.1% of the occupation is self-employed. (BLS) See details
8. In 2025, 67.5% of employed U.S. manicurists and pedicurists were Asian (Current Population Survey), and 83.9% of nail salon firms with paid employees were majority Asian-owned in 2022 (our calculation from the Annual Business Survey). (BLS; U.S. Census Bureau) See details
9. Nail care services made up 97.8% of the receipts of nail salons with employees in 2022: manicures 47.9% and pedicures 37.2%. (U.S. Census Bureau) See details
10. Florida had 63,556 active nail specialist registrations on October 31, 2026, 16.7% of them in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties, which also had 10,086 nail businesses with no employees in 2024 against 293 salons with employees in 2025 (our counts). (Mark Studios) See details
11. Florida's nail specialist registration needs 180 hours of training; across the 12 states we compared, the minimum runs from 150 hours in Virginia to 600 in Texas, Arizona and Nevada. (State statutes and board rules) See details
12. Regal Nails, the largest nail franchise we found in public franchise documents, had 513 franchised salons at the end of 2025, 90 of them in Florida; Sola Salons, whose studios rent to nail techs among others, had 744 locations. (Franchise disclosure documents) See details
13. 0 Form 10-K annual reports filed with the SEC in 2025 contained the phrase "nail salon", against a peak of 8 in 2011 and 75 from 2005 to 2025 (our count). (Mark Studios) See details
14. A 2000 outbreak traced to one California salon's whirlpool footbaths infected 110 customers; the 2023 UV nail lamp study killed 20–30% of cultured cells in one 20-minute session but did not study people. (NEJM; Nature Communications) See details
15. The popular '80% of nail techs are Vietnamese' traces to a 1996 UCLA study of Los Angeles County licensees (80 percent), which put Vietnamese ownership of U.S. salons at 30 percent; NAILS Magazine's industry-size figures were modelled, the last at $8.36 billion for 2018. (UCLA; NAILS Magazine) See details

What does YouTube show for nail art, gel nails and nail salon videos, and who makes them?

Mostly nail-art creators, general beauty creators and nail product brands, and very few salons. On November 4, 2026, nail technician educators and nail-art creators posted 32.8% of the most-viewed YouTube videos for "nail art", "gel nails" and "nail salon" and drew 33.3% of their views, while nail salons and nail businesses that offer services to customers posted 4.5% of the videos and drew 5.5% of the views (our count).

The sample is YouTube's own ranking on one day, not a census of nail videos. We asked the YouTube Data API for videos matching each of the three searches, sorted by view count, with no country or language filter, and read 4 pages of 50 results for each: 600 results, which held 512 different videos from 295 channels. We then sorted every channel by hand into seven types from its title, its description and the titles of its videos in the sample (and the video descriptions where the channel description was empty or unclear). A nail salon or nail business is a channel that offers nail services to customers: it invites bookings or new clients, lists services with a place, or is a named salon. A nail educator or nail-art creator shows sets, tutorials or nail-tech life but sells no salon appointments through the channel, even if it sells courses or its own products.

Nail workers' own channels, salons and nail creators together, posted 37.3% of the 512 videos and drew 38.8% of the views; adding product brands, sellers and schools, channels from the nail trade posted 54.7% of the videos and drew 56.5% of the views (our count). Some creators sell products: 9 nail-art creator channels that sell their own product line or name their own nail business drew 8.9% of the views (our count). No one channel dominates the views: the 5 channels with the most views drew 21.2% of all views, and the top 10 drew 32.7% (our count). The channel with the most views was a nail-sticker clip page with no named creator or shop; its 5 videos drew 6.3% of all views and 44.3% of the media and repost views, and without it that type drew 8.5% of the views (our count). The single most-viewed video was a 16-second nail-art short from the creator channel ilysm Nails, with 322.5 million views (our count).

How many nail salons reach YouTube's most-viewed nail videos, and how many are in the U.S.?

Very few, and one channel carries most of their views. 11 of the 295 channels in the November 4, 2026 sample were nail salons or nail businesses that offer services to customers, and 6 of those named a U.S. place (our count). Those U.S. nail businesses posted 17 of the 512 videos (3.3%) and drew 4.7% of the views (our count).

One of them, Krystal Oh, a New York City nail artist whose video descriptions invite viewers to book an appointment and who also runs the channel as a creator, posted 10 of the 512 videos and drew 4.0% of the sample's views. That is 71.6% of all the views nail businesses drew (our count). Without that channel, nail salons and nail businesses drew 1.6% of the views, and the other 5 U.S. nail businesses that name a place, among them a Chicago hair and nail salon and a Houston medical pedicure spa, posted 7 videos with 0.8% of the views (our count).

The evidence for some of these businesses is thin. 7 of the 23 nail-business videos came from channels whose only sign of a business is a "nail tech in" a named city line, a list of services with no place, or a mention of staff (our count). Nail businesses post short clips: 87.0% of their 23 videos ran 60 seconds or less (our count). Their channels are also small next to the rest of the sample: the median nail salon or nail business channel had 41,700 subscribers, against 216,000 for nail educators and nail-art creators and 1,100,000 for general beauty and lifestyle creators (our count).

Does the answer change with the search term?

Yes. Nail salons and nail businesses posted 9.0% of the 200 most-viewed "nail salon" results on November 4, 2026, against 2.1% of the "nail art" list and 1.0% of the "gel nails" list (our count). Each search returned 200 results, but some videos appear twice in one list, so the lists hold 193, 192 and 200 different videos.

Shares of videos in each list, except the last column. "Gel nails" is the product brands' search: they posted 34.4% of its videos. "Nail salon" is the general creators' and children's search: kids', toy and children's channels, with pretend-play salons, cartoons and toy nail studios, posted 11.0% of its videos, against 2.1% of the "nail art" list and 0.5% of the "gel nails" list (our count). One channel again shapes the "nail salon" list: Krystal Oh drew 8.6% of its views, and without it nail salons and nail businesses drew 2.1% of that list's views, against 10.5% with it (our count). The lists overlap little: 67 of the 512 videos appear in two or more of them, and 6 in all three (our count).

How many views do the most-viewed nail videos get?

The median video in the November 4, 2026 sample had 8.1 million views, and 220 of the 512 had 10 million or more (our count). Together the 512 videos had 9.5 billion views (our count). The median video had 18 likes per 1,000 views (our count). View counts are YouTube's lifetime snapshots on the day of the read and include views from ads.

43.8% of the 512 videos came from channels that list the United States as their country, and they drew 46.8% of the views (our count), but a channel's country is whatever its owner set. 94 of the 295 channels had 1 million or more subscribers (our count). 15.0% of the videos, from 28 channels, were labelled ASMR in the video or channel text, and they drew 13.9% of the views; 3.7% were set as made for kids by their uploaders (our count).

No video in the sample carried YouTube's uploader-declared altered or synthetic content flag: 0 of the 512 had it in the API on November 4, 2026, and no channel or video description said a clip was AI-generated (our count).

Are the most-viewed nail videos short?

Almost all of them. 74.0% of the 512 most-viewed nail videos on November 4, 2026 ran 60 seconds or less, and they drew 85.2% of the views (our count). The median length was 42 seconds. The median clip of 60 seconds or less had 9.7 million views, against 5.0 million for longer videos (our count).

Most of the sample is recent: 80.3% of the 512 videos were published in 2024 or later, and 139 in the year before the search (our count).

How big are the YouTube channels of nail brands, trade magazines, booking platforms and salon chains?

Small next to the creators, and none of them reached the most-viewed lists. The YouTube channels of eight nail product brands, OPI, essie, CND, DND, Gelish, Kiss, Olive & June and Aprés Nail, had 422,440 subscribers between them on November 4, 2026, and the 1,606 videos they posted in the year before had a median of 2,024.5 views (our count). 0 of the 16 organisation channels we read had a video among the 512 most-viewed nail videos (our count). The 1,676 videos those 16 channels posted in the year had a median of 1,952 views, against 8.1 million for the median video in the search sample (our count), though the sample's counts are lifetime totals for the most-viewed videos and the channels' are a year of uploads.

The brands post short clips: 93.3% of the eight product brands' videos in the year ran 60 seconds or less, against 24.6% for the booking platforms Booksy and GlossGenius (our count). Olive & June alone posted 648 videos in the year (our count). 6 of the 16 channels posted nothing in the year: essie, NAILS Magazine, Beauty Launchpad (which Nailpro joined in 2025), Frenchies, Bellacures and MiniLuxe (our count). The channels of four U.S. nail salon chains had 131 subscribers between them, and only Regal Nails posted in the year (our count).

We found each channel from a YouTube link on the organisation's own website where there was one, and otherwise by looking up likely handles; we did not use YouTube search. 1 of the 18 organisations checked, the booking platform Fresha, had no channel we could find; Glamnetic's channel (63,600 subscribers) was found, but we ran out of API quota before reading its uploads (our count). Nailpro's last issue was Spring 2025, and nailpro.com now points to Beauty Launchpad, whose channel we read in its place.

Subscriber counts are YouTube's rounded snapshots. The product brands sell polish, gel, press-on nails and tools to salons and consumers, the booking platforms sell scheduling software to salons, and the trade magazines are written for nail professionals.

What can't this YouTube sample show?

It shows what YouTube ranked highest by views for three English searches on one day, with no country filter. It does not show the default relevance-sorted results a viewer gets in the YouTube app; it does not count nail videos in general; and it says nothing about whether any video brought a salon a customer. View counts are lifetime totals, so older videos have had longer to collect them, and they include views from ads. A channel's country is whatever the channel owner set. The channel types are our judgment from public text: many nail-art creators are working nail technicians who simply do not invite bookings on YouTube, and the calls with thin evidence are flagged in the channel file. The full lists are in youtube-videos.csv, youtube-channels.csv and youtube-brand-channels.csv.

What do nail salon chains' location pages show?

Booking, gift cards and "non-toxic" claims, not video. On November 4, 2026, 100.0% of the 74 U.S. location pages of five nail salon chains that we read offered online booking, and 0.0% showed any video (our count). We read every U.S. location page that Frenchies Modern Nail Care, MiniLuxe, Bellacures, Nail Garden and Sundays list in their own sitemaps, in a headless browser, one page at a time. 0.0% of the pages embedded a video player a visitor can start, none played a muted background clip, and 0.0% linked to a YouTube channel.

Video sits on one national homepage instead. 1 of the five brands' homepages showed a video: Nail Garden plays a muted clip at the top of its homepage (our count). On the local pages, social platforms appear only as links. 87.8% of the pages linked to Instagram and 86.5% to Facebook, from every brand but Nail Garden, whose location pages link no social platform. 18.9% linked to TikTok, all of them Bellacures and Sundays pages (our count).

Most chains hand booking to one software vendor. 85.1% of the pages named or embedded a third-party booking system: Zenoti on 77.0% (Frenchies, MiniLuxe and Nail Garden; MiniLuxe's booking address on its own domain points to Zenoti) and Booker on 8.1% (every Sundays page). The remaining 14.9%, every Bellacures page and three Frenchies pages, sent visitors to the brand's own booking page or studio finder. 0 pages named Booksy, Fresha, Vagaro, GlossGenius, Square, Mindbody, Boulevard, MyTime or Meevo (our count). Bellacures loads Mindbody on its pages only to sell gift cards. A page that loads a system shows which software the chain's template uses, not what each salon uses for every service.

Four of the five chains describe their polish as clean on the page. 82.4% of the pages described the polish or products as non-toxic, clean, "N-free" or vegan: 82.4% used "non-toxic", "toxin-free" or "free of harsh chemicals" wording, 40.5% an "N-free" label such as MiniLuxe's "8-Free" or Sundays' "10-free" polish, and 43.2% "vegan" or "cruelty-free" (our count). Nail Garden's pages make none of these claims. These are the chains' own marketing words about their products, not test results. When California's Department of Toxic Substances Control tested nail products in 2011, 10 of the 12 sold as "toxic-free" contained toluene (OSHA, citing California DTSC).

Hygiene wording depends on the brand. 63.5% of the pages described tool or tub hygiene. MiniLuxe's pages describe "hospital-grade autoclave sterilization" and single-use files and buffers, so 31.1% of all pages mentioned an autoclave and 31.1% single-use or disposable tools. Frenchies' pages say there are no jetted massage chairs and that a medical-grade disinfectant sits in the tub, so 32.4% mentioned pipeless or jet-free pedicure chairs (our count). No Bellacures, Nail Garden or Sundays location page mentions sterilization, single-use tools or pedicure tub design.

Shares are of the pages read per brand (our count, November 4, 2026). Bellacures lists an older second copy of its Studio City page, and MiniLuxe lists a copy of its Lakewood page and an empty Lexington page; those three were dropped. The seven Frenchies pages without the "free of harsh chemicals" and tub-hygiene lines use a shorter template for new or opening studios. Walk-in lines come from each page's own wording, such as MiniLuxe's "We accept walk-ins at all studios"; customer reviews that mention walk-ins do not count.

Gift cards and recruiting are on every page, mostly in the menu. 100.0% of the pages linked to or mentioned gift cards and 100.0% linked to careers or jobs or carried hiring wording. 87.8% said walk-ins are welcome or accepted. Membership wording appeared on 41.9%, every one a Frenchies page, which carries a "Membership" menu item. Only 8.1% showed or linked a gallery of nail-work photos: Nail Garden's "Nail Designs" page, linked from every Nail Garden page (our count).

This is a read of five chains' templated pages, not of independent nail salons. Each brand fills its location pages from one template, so most features are all or nothing within a brand, and pooled shares mostly describe five templates rather than choices made by local salon owners. The pages were in 16 U.S. states (our count). 15 of the 20 chains and nail brands first considered could not be included: Varnish Lane's site answered with a bot challenge, freecoat nails' robots.txt disallows AI crawlers including ClaudeBot, Base Coat Nail Salon blocked the robots.txt request, Regal Nails' salon locator lists salons without a page for each, and the others had no U.S. salon pages, did not connect or sit on a domain that is not the brand's site. Each page was read once and every feature is a rule match on the rendered page. A hand-check of 30 randomly drawn pages agreed on 100.0% of flag values after the rule fixes listed in the method notes (our calculation). The read says nothing about the video these brands post on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.

How many nail salons are there, and how big are they?

About 34,000 U.S. nail salons had employees in 2025, and more than 318,000 nail businesses had none in 2024. BLS's census of employers averaged 34,300 private nail salon establishments (NAICS 812113) with workers covered by unemployment insurance in 2025 (BLS QCEW), up from 20,003 in 2015 (BLS QCEW), a rise of 71.5% in ten years (our calculation). The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counted 34,417 nail salon establishments with paid employees in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns), and the 2022 Economic Census counted 33,212 establishments run by 33,066 firms (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census). The three employer counts differ because each uses a different register and year.

Most nail businesses have no payroll at all. The Census Bureau counted 318,382 nonemployer nail salons in 2024 (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics), up from 295,977 in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics) and 262,270 in 2018 (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics), a rise of 21.4% from 2018 to 2024 (our calculation). A nonemployer is a business with no paid employees that files a federal business tax return with at least $1,000 in receipts. It is a tax filer, not a storefront, so a nail technician who rents a booth or a suite and files as a sole proprietor is counted here even when the work happens inside someone else's salon.

How big are nail salons?

Most nail salons with employees are very small: of the 34,417 U.S. nail salons with paid employees in 2023, 22,572, or 65.6%, had fewer than five employees (U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns; our calculation). Private nail salons employed an annual average of 156,148 workers in 2025 (BLS QCEW), against 78,970 in 2015 (BLS QCEW), a rise of 97.7% (our calculation). These counts cover only jobs on a payroll covered by unemployment insurance, so booth renters and technicians paid as contractors are not in them.

No chain dominates. The four largest nail salon firms took 0.4 percent of the receipts of U.S. nail salons with employees in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census). For comparison, BLS counted 77,449 private beauty salon establishments (NAICS 812112) with employees in 2025 (BLS QCEW), a separate industry code that a salon offering both hair and nails may fall under.

How much do nail salons take in?

U.S. nail salons with employees had revenue of $13,082,736 thousand in 2024, according to the Census Bureau's Annual Integrated Economic Survey (U.S. Census Bureau, AIES), 6.8 percent more than in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau, AIES). Their annual payroll was $3,993,437 thousand (U.S. Census Bureau, AIES). The 2022 Economic Census, a separate count, put their receipts at $11,366,371 thousand in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census), up from $6,239,083 thousand in 2017 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 Economic Census), a rise of 82.2% before inflation (our calculation).

Nail businesses with no employees reported a further $13,147,338 thousand in receipts in 2024 (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics), about the same as the revenue of salons with employees that year: nail businesses without employees reported 50.1% of the two figures combined, and averaged $41,294 in receipts each (our calculation). Both figures are Census counts of receipts, but they come from different programs (tax records for nonemployers, a sample survey for employer firms).

What do nail salons sell?

Nail care, almost entirely. Nail care services made up 97.8 percent of the receipts of U.S. nail salons with employees in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census product lines). Manicure services alone made up 47.9 percent (U.S. Census Bureau) and pedicure services 37.2 percent (U.S. Census Bureau). Hair, skin, waxing and retail sales are small side lines.

Booth and chair rent shows up as its own product line. In 2022, 181 nail salons with employees, 0.5 percent of them, reported receipts from renting booths and chairs to other workers, a line worth 0.1 percent of the industry's receipts (U.S. Census Bureau). That line counts the rent salon owners collect, not the technicians who pay it; most booth renters file as nonemployers.

Who owns nail salons?

Mostly Asian owners, among salons with employees. The Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey counted 31,246 U.S. nail salon firms with paid employees in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey), and Asian owners held a majority of 26,226 of them (U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey), or 83.9% (our calculation). Women held a majority of 15,825, men 10,964, and 4,448 were owned equally by men and women (U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey). The survey covers only firms with employees, so it says nothing about the owners of the 318,382 nonemployer nail businesses, and it publishes detailed Asian groups such as Vietnamese only for broad sectors, not for nail salons.

How fast have salon service prices risen?

A little faster than prices overall since 2020. The BLS consumer price index for haircuts and other personal care services averaged 172.782 in 2020 (BLS CPI-U) and 218.402 in 2025 (BLS CPI-U), while the all-items index went from 258.811 (BLS CPI-U) to 321.943 (BLS CPI-U): a rise of 26.4% for personal care services against 24.4% for all items (our calculation). Prices for these services were 3.7 percent higher in September 2026 than a year earlier (BLS CPI-U). The index covers salon and barber services together; BLS publishes no price index for nail services alone.

How many licensed nail technicians and nail salons do state registries list?

Florida had 63,556 active nail specialist registrations on October 31, 2026, by our count of the public licence file of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) for the Board of Cosmetology (our count). The same file listed 50,587 active full specialist registrations and 122,201 active cosmetologist licences (for comparison). Nail specialist and full specialist registrations together came to 114,143. DBPR has no separate nail salon licence type: nail salons hold the same cosmetology salon licence as hair and beauty salons. The file listed 33,220 active cosmetology salon licences and 136 mobile salon licences. 6,421 of the salon licences, or 19.3%, had the word nail in the licensee name or trade name (our count). That keyword count misses nail salons with other names, so it is a floor for nail salons, not a total.

We counted licences, not people: one person can hold a nail specialist and a facial specialist registration, or a cosmetologist licence as well. The file holds active, inactive and voluntarily inactive licences and leaves out delinquent and null-and-void ones. It was cut on October 31, 2026, the day a large group of individual licences expired, and 22.1% of the active nail specialist registrations in it carried that expiry date and had not yet been renewed (our calculation). Some of those will drop out as delinquent.

By the county code on each licence record, 4,127 active nail specialist registrations carried a Palm Beach County code, 6,271 Broward and 214 Martin, together 16.7% of the state total (our count). Miami-Dade had the most, 11,217. Of the salon licences with nail in the name, 441 carried a Palm Beach code, 616 Broward and 53 Martin. The county code is the address DBPR holds for the licence; for an individual that is often a home or mailing address, not the salon.

Recent years dominate the active file. Of the registrations active in October 2026, 1,593 were first issued in 2015 and 9,522 in 2025 (our count). These counts include only registrations that are still active, so older years are undercounted and the rise overstates growth in new nail technicians. The median active nail specialist registration was 5.1 years past its original licensure date.

DBPR's own annual report counted 299,000 active Board of Cosmetology licences in fiscal year 2023-24 (DBPR annual report 2023-24), up from 281,228 in 2021-22 (DBPR annual report 2021-22), 253,065 in 2018-19 (DBPR annual report 2018-19) and 223,901 in 2014-15 (DBPR annual report 2014-15). The report does not split cosmetologists, specialists and salons, and its count includes suspended licences in active status. Counted the same way, the October 2026 file held 327,198 active Board of Cosmetology licences and registrations (our count). DBPR inspectors completed 19,180 cosmetology salon inspections in 2023-24 (DBPR annual report 2023-24), against 17,574 in 2018-19 (DBPR annual report 2018-19). DBPR received 2,607 complaints about Board of Cosmetology licensees in 2023-24 and issued 535 final orders in complaint cases (DBPR annual report 2023-24).

How many nail technicians do Texas, New York, California and Colorado license?

California's Department of Consumer Affairs counted 107,642 active manicurist licences in fiscal year 2024-25 (DCA annual report 2024-25), down from 109,025 in 2023-24 (DCA annual report 2023-24); another 23,237 manicurist licences were delinquent or expired but could still be renewed. Texas had 63,495 current manicurist licences in the licence data of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) updated October 19, 2026, New York had 40,816 active nail specialty operator licences on November 4, 2026, and Colorado had 12,167 active nail technician licences on November 3, 2026 (our counts). States license different things, so the totals are not directly comparable: Florida and California license nail work under a cosmetology board with separate specialist or manicurist credentials, Texas also issues a combined manicurist/esthetician licence, and New York has a nail specialty trainee licence.

California issued 5,752 new manicurist licences in fiscal year 2023-24 (DCA annual report 2023-24) and 6,277 in 2024-25, and renewed 48,713 in 2024-25 (DCA annual report 2024-25). The California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology's quarterly reports show 1,551 manicurist licences issued in July to September 2025 (California BBC quarterly statistics) and 5,273 across fiscal year 2025-26 (our calculation). In July to September 2025, 1,349 people took the manicurist written examination for the first time (California BBC quarterly statistics); across the fiscal year 72.8% of first-time takers passed (our calculation).

In Texas, 12,777 current manicurist licences had a Harris County mailing address (our count). Texas licenses manicurist-only and manicurist/esthetician salons as their own establishment types, but nail services are also sold in full-service salons, so the specialty salon count is also a floor. New York and Colorado issue one business or shop licence for every kind of salon, so their nail counts rest on the word nail in the business name. In every state, an active licence shows the right to work, not that the holder works in a nail salon.

How many manicurists and pedicurists are there, what do they earn, and who are they?

Between about 153,000 and 277,000 in 2025, depending on who counts and how. BLS's employer survey found 152,770 manicurists and pedicurists (SOC 39-5092) on employers' payrolls in May 2025 (BLS OEWS), 150,470 of them in personal care services, the industry group that includes nail salons (BLS OEWS). That count leaves out the self-employed. BLS Employment Projections, which adds them, estimates 201.8 thousand manicurist and pedicurist jobs in 2025 (BLS Employment Projections). The Current Population Survey, a monthly household survey, counted 277 thousand employed people whose main job was manicurist or pedicurist in 2025 (BLS Current Population Survey). A household survey picks up people a payroll count and a jobs model can miss, but its estimates for a small occupation carry large sampling error.

How many nail technicians work for themselves?

Fewer than a quarter by BLS's jobs estimate: 23.1 percent of U.S. manicurists and pedicurists were self-employed in 2025 (BLS Employment Projections). The Census Bureau's count of 318,382 nonemployer nail salons in 2024 is larger than any count of nail technicians because it counts businesses that file a tax return, whether or not the business is the owner's main job.

What do manicurists and pedicurists earn?

The median wage and salary manicurist or pedicurist earned $17.19 an hour in May 2025 (BLS OEWS), or $35,760 a year (BLS OEWS); the mean was $18.54 an hour (BLS OEWS). BLS publishes both an hourly and an annual median for this occupation. These figures cover only technicians on a payroll and include tips only where the employer reports them as wages; the earnings of booth renters and salon owners are not in them. The median for all occupations was $50,980 (BLS OEWS), so manicurists' median annual wage was 29.9% lower (our calculation), and hairdressers, hairstylists and cosmetologists had a median of $35,790 (BLS OEWS).

Average pay at nail salons is lower than at beauty salons. Workers on the payrolls of private nail salons, technicians and other staff together, averaged $27,024 in 2025 (BLS QCEW), up from $17,772 in 2015 (BLS QCEW), a rise of 52.1% before inflation (our calculation). Workers at private beauty salons averaged $35,724 in 2025 (BLS QCEW), so nail salon pay was 24.4% lower (our calculation). QCEW pay is total wages divided by average employment, so part-time jobs pull it down.

Who works as a manicurist or pedicurist?

Mostly women, and mostly Asian: in 2025, 85.2 percent of employed U.S. manicurists and pedicurists were women, 67.5 percent were Asian, 25.1 percent were White, 5.1 percent were Black or African American and 14.5 percent were Hispanic or Latino (BLS Current Population Survey, table 11). Hispanic or Latino people may be of any race, so the shares overlap. The table does not break the Asian share down by national origin, so it has no Vietnamese American share.

What is the job outlook for nail technicians?

Faster than average growth: BLS projects employment of manicurists and pedicurists to grow 9.2 percent from 2025 to 2035 (BLS Employment Projections), against 3.5 percent for all occupations (BLS Employment Projections). It expects about 21.9 thousand openings a year, a figure that includes replacements for technicians who leave the trade or retire (BLS Employment Projections). The Occupational Outlook Handbook rounds the growth to 9 percent, much faster than the average, and lists a postsecondary nondegree award (a state-approved cosmetology or nail technician program) as the typical entry-level education (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).

How many nail salons and nail technicians work in Florida and South Florida?

Florida averaged 1,621 private nail salon establishments with employees in 2025 (BLS QCEW), up from 690 in 2015 (BLS QCEW), a rise of 134.9% (our calculation), against 71.5% for the U.S. Florida had 4.7% of the nation's nail salons with employees in 2025 (our calculation). They employed an annual average of 4,033 workers (BLS QCEW), who earned an average of $32,863 (BLS QCEW). The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counted 1,742 Florida nail salons with paid employees in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns), 1,526 of them, or 87.6%, with fewer than five employees (U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns; our calculation). Florida nail salons with employees took in $647,000 thousand in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census).

Most Florida nail businesses have no payroll. The Census Bureau counted 50,549 nonemployer nail salons in Florida in 2024 (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics), with receipts of $2,151,058 thousand (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics). That is 15.9% of the nation's nonemployer nail salons in 2024, against 4.7% of its salons with employees in 2025 (our calculation). Among Florida nail salon firms with employees, Asian owners held a majority of 1,370 of the 1,784 counted in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey), or 76.8% (our calculation).

BLS's employer survey found 4,470 wage and salary manicurists and pedicurists in Florida in May 2025 (BLS OEWS), with a median annual wage of $37,840 (BLS OEWS), above the national median of $35,760. Like the national figure, that count leaves out self-employed technicians and booth renters.

How many nail salons are in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties?

Broward County averaged 158 nail salon establishments with employees in 2025, Palm Beach County 122 and Martin County 13 (BLS QCEW). County Business Patterns, a separate count, found 175 in Broward, 149 in Palm Beach and 17 in Martin in 2023 (U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns). Far more nail businesses in these counties have no employees: the Census Bureau counted 6,124 nonemployer nail salons in Broward, 3,780 in Palm Beach and 182 in Martin in 2024 (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics). Together that is 10,086 nonemployer nail businesses, 20.0% of Florida's, against 293 salons with employees (our calculation).

Average pay for Martin County is left out because its 25 nail salon jobs are too few for a stable average. For wages by occupation, BLS publishes metro areas, not counties. Employers in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties) had 1,290 wage and salary manicurists and pedicurists in May 2025 (BLS OEWS), with a median annual wage of $37,690 (BLS OEWS). The Port St. Lucie metro area, which includes Martin County, had 100 (BLS OEWS), with a median of $37,600 (BLS OEWS). BLS publishes no separate estimate for the West Palm Beach metropolitan division.

What do nail salon franchisors and the companies that sell to nail salons report?

The largest nail salon franchise that files in Minnesota, Regal Nails Salon & Spa, had 513 franchised salons at the end of 2025, plus one company-owned salon, according to the Item 20 tables of its March 2026 franchise disclosure document (FDD) filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (Regal Nails FDD). That is down from 584 franchised salons at the start of 2023. In 2025 alone, 3 Regal salons opened, 1 franchise was terminated, 20 were not renewed and 6 ceased operations (Regal Nails FDD). Florida had 90 franchised Regal salons at the end of 2025, more than any other state and down from 93 at the start of 2023 (Regal Nails FDD). Regal projects 4 new franchised salons in its next fiscal year and reports 15 signed franchise agreements for salons not yet open (Regal Nails FDD).

The second large franchise, Da Vi Nails, had 387 licensed nail salons at the end of 2024, down from 401 a year earlier, by the count in its April 2025 FDD (Da Vi Nails FDD). Both chains are built around big-box stores. Da Vi Nails describes its franchise as a nail salon usually located in a Walmart center under a sublease arranged by the franchisor (Da Vi Nails FDD). Regal's 2026 FDD says salons inside Wal-Mart stores may at present offer only manicure, pedicure, and waxing services limited to the face, hand and feet, and sell related goods (Regal Nails FDD).

The membership-style nail studios are much smaller. Frenchies Modern Nail Care had 24 studios at the end of 2024, 23 franchised and 1 owned by an affiliate, unchanged over the year (Frenchies FDD). Townhouse Franchising, formed in April 2025 to franchise the Townhouse nail salon brand, reported no franchised salons and 4 salons run by its affiliates at the end of 2025 (Townhouse FDD). Hammer & Nails, a men's grooming chain, is counted on the barbershop page.

How much do franchised nail studios sell?

Only Frenchies, of the nail franchisors filing in Minnesota, publishes sales figures. The 24 Frenchies studios that operated through all of 2024 split into four groups of six by revenue: the top group averaged $762,559 in 2024 (Frenchies FDD Item 19), the second $601,813 (Frenchies FDD Item 19), the third $459,532 (Frenchies FDD Item 19) and the bottom group $361,577, up from $313,356 in 2023 (Frenchies FDD Item 19). These are the franchisor's figures as reported by its studios, most of which have 16 or 17 stations.

Across all franchised Frenchies studios, 2024 revenue totalled $12,657,379.44, of which $2,820,913.25 came from recurring memberships and $296,725.35 from retail products; the rest came from first-time guests and other services (Frenchies FDD Item 19). Regal Nails and Da Vi Nails make no financial performance representation in their FDDs.

What does a nail salon franchise cost to open and run?

The FDDs, issued in 2025 and 2026, give wide ranges. Regal Nails estimates a total initial investment from $172,722 to $721,866, covering the build-out package and the first three months (Regal Nails FDD), and charges a flat Monthly Fee from $500 to $15,000; the high end applies when Regal holds the lease, and the fee then includes rent (Regal Nails FDD). Da Vi Nails puts the initial investment from $61,150 to $141,000 (Da Vi Nails FDD) and charges a monthly royalty of $300 to $700 (Da Vi Nails FDD). Frenchies estimates $452,126 to $507,033 for a single studio (Frenchies FDD) and charges a weekly royalty of the greater of $100 or 6% of gross revenues, plus 2% to its brand fund (Frenchies FDD). Townhouse's financial statements say its royalty will be up to 7% of gross sales, with a marketing fee of up to 2% (Townhouse FDD). These are franchise costs set by the franchisors, not prices for nail services.

Franchisors also take rights to salon content. Regal's franchise agreement gives the franchisor a perpetual, royalty-free license to use the images, videos or other content a franchisee supplies, for marketing, educational or other purposes (Regal Nails franchise agreement).

How many salon suites rent space to nail technicians, and how full are they?

Much booth and suite rental runs through suite franchisors. Sola Salons had 744 U.S. locations at the end of 2025, 677 franchised and 67 company-owned, up from 646 at the start of 2023, according to Item 20 of its 2026 FDD (Sola FDD). Sola says it serves professionals such as stylists, nail techs, estheticians and massage therapists (Sola FDD). Phenix Salon Suites had 418 U.S. locations at the end of 2025, 369 franchised and 49 company-owned (Phenix FDD), and leases suites to hair stylists, massage therapists, manicurists and other salon professionals (Phenix FDD). Neither FDD says how many tenants are nail technicians.

The suites are mostly let. Median occupancy at 653 Sola franchised locations open at least 13 months was 89.7% in December 2025, with an average of 85.1% (Sola FDD Item 19). Average suite occupancy at the 294 Phenix franchised locations that reported was 88% at December 31, 2025, with an average of 35 suites per location (Phenix FDD Item 19). Median gross revenue at Sola franchised locations, mostly studio rent paid by the professionals, was $423,383 in 2025 (Sola FDD Item 19). Sola charges franchisees a royalty of 5.5% of gross revenue with a $500 monthly minimum (Sola FDD); Phenix charges $0.34 a month per square foot leased (Phenix franchise agreement).

What do public beauty companies report about nails?

Nail products made up 10.1% of net sales at Sally Beauty Supply in fiscal 2025 (year to September 30, 2025), against 10.3% in fiscal 2024, by Sally Beauty Holdings' own count in its annual report to the SEC (Sally Beauty 10-K). At its Beauty Systems Group, which supplies licensed salon professionals, nails were 2.3% of sales, down from 2.7% in fiscal 2023 (Sally Beauty 10-K). Sally's Nails category covers polish, gel, acrylics, dips, accessories, supplies and tools (Sally Beauty 10-K). The company ended fiscal 2025 with 3,096 Sally Beauty Supply stores (Sally Beauty 10-K) and 1,326 Beauty Systems Group stores, which it calls a destination exclusively for licensed beauty professionals (Sally Beauty 10-K).

Sally says basket growth in its renovated stores is coming from nails, cosmetics and skin care (Sally Beauty 10-K), and that it uses content creators to educate customers about do-it-yourself hair and nail care, alongside e-mail, texts, app notifications and advertising (Sally Beauty 10-K).

At-home nail care now sits inside a public company. Helen of Troy bought the Olive & June brand on December 16, 2024, for initial cash consideration of $224.7 million plus up to $15.0 million more tied to Olive & June's 2025-2027 performance, according to its fiscal 2026 annual report (Helen of Troy 10-K). Its nail category covers nail polish, press-on nails, manicure and pedicure systems and grooming tools (Helen of Troy 10-K). In the year to February 28, 2026, the acquisition added 10.7 percentage points to sales growth in Helen of Troy's Beauty & Wellness segment, while the segment's organic business fell 15.6% (Helen of Troy 10-K).

The best-known salon nail brands are no longer reported in a U.S. 10-K. Coty's fiscal 2026 annual report says it sold a majority stake in its Professional and Retail Hair business, which included OPI, to KKR affiliates (the Wella Company) and later sold its remaining Wella stake (Coty 10-K). Coty still lists makers of salon professional nail products among its competitors (Coty 10-K). Among the few public companies that employ nail technicians, XWELL had 18 XpresSpa airport spa locations in the United States at the end of 2024, offering massage, nail and skin care (XWELL 10-K); it had 246 full-time employees and says most of its location staff hold licenses such as nail technician, masseuse or aesthetician (XWELL 10-K).

How often do public companies mention nail salons in their annual reports?

Not at all in the latest two years: 0 Form 10-K annual reports filed with the SEC in 2025 used the phrase "nail salon" or "nail salons", and none did in 2024, by our count of exact phrases by filing year in EDGAR full-text search (our count). The count was 4 in 2023, from Coty, Revlon, Kaya Holdings and the small-business lender NewtekOne, whose loan schedule lists nail salon borrowers (our count). It peaked at 8 filings in 2011, and across the 21 filing years 2005-2025 75 10-Ks used one of the two phrases (our count).

Source: our count from EDGAR full-text search, published as a CSV with this page. Unlinked cells come from the same CSV.

The decline follows the companies, not the salons. In 2015 the five filings that named nail salons included Coty and two Revlon entities, then owners of the OPI and CND salon brands (our count); OPI later went to the privately held Wella Company and Revlon stopped filing 10-Ks after its 2022 annual report. "Manicure" or "pedicure" still appeared in 5 10-Ks in 2025, but only Helen of Troy, which bought the at-home nail care brand Olive & June in December 2024, is a nail business; the others, a drugmaker, a consulting firm, an auto-service chain and a mortgage REIT, used the words in passing (our count). "Nail polish" appeared in 1 10-K in 2025, Helen of Troy's (our count). "Nail technician" or "nail technicians" appeared in 2 filings in 2025, from the airport-spa operator XWELL and Lucent, Inc., formerly Tipmefast (our count); the earlier filers include the trade-school operator Lincoln Educational Services in 2006-2008. "Press-on nails" first appeared in 2024, in Sally Beauty Holdings' 10-K, and again in 2025 in Helen of Troy's (our count).

The counts measure wording, not activity. EDGAR full-text search covers filings from 2001 and counts each 10-K once however often it uses a phrase. It misses the nail salon franchisors (Regal Nails, Da Vi Nails, Frenchies), which file no 10-Ks, foreign filers on Forms 20-F and 40-F, and 10-K/A amendments. Year means filing year, so 2025 mostly covers fiscal 2024 reports.

What do booking platforms and social platforms report about nail services and nail content?

YouTube counted more than 5 billion views worldwide of videos related to nail art in 2022 (YouTube Culture & Trends), and Pinterest's own search data show single nail looks rising fast: searches for "polka dot cat eye nails" rose 1,585% between July 2025 and July 2026 (Pinterest). The booking-software companies that sell to nail salons also publish figures from their own customers' transactions and from surveys they commission. Every one of them sells into the market it describes, most do not say how many nail businesses or clients sit behind a figure, and none of their numbers is a count of the whole industry.

Mindbody's figures come from its customers' sales, so they describe salons that buy Mindbody software, not the average nail salon. The same Mindbody report's nail salon growth columns include regional revenue falls of more than 100%, which is impossible, so they most likely track changes in Mindbody's customer sample rather than salon revenue; we left them out. Square based its 2024 figures on "hundreds of thousands" of beauty and personal care sellers from January 2021 to May 2024 and did not separate nail salons from hair, brow and spa businesses. GlossGenius, Zenoti and Fresha do not publish the number of nail businesses behind their figures.

The one nail-specific client survey a seller has published comes from Zenoti, which sells salon software and an AI receptionist. Zenoti surveyed over 1,000 U.S. salon and spa clients in 2025 and broke out "nail salon regulars", without saying how many of the respondents they were (Zenoti). In that survey, 64% of nail salon regulars said calling is always the easiest way to manage an appointment, against 59% of hair and beauty salon regulars and 51% of spa regulars. Over 83% said they had skipped a booking because they could not get through or found online booking too hard (Zenoti). 57% said they would be much more likely to return to a salon that lets them book or change an appointment 24 hours a day (Zenoti), 50% said they would be very comfortable talking to an AI receptionist (Zenoti), and accuracy (56%) ranked as the quality they value most in a receptionist (Zenoti). The article contradicts itself on after-hours calls: it gives 43% of nail clients as often needing to call after hours (Zenoti), then "nearly 66%" for the same question a few paragraphs later (Zenoti).

Booksy's 2026 U.S. trends page says 50% of the Booksy providers it surveyed expect TikTok to drive bookings and discovery in 2026 (Booksy), but it gives no sample size, survey dates or question wording, and its providers include hairstylists and barbers as well as nail technicians. Boulevard's case study of one two-location nail studio in Oakland reports 57% fewer late cancellations after the studio began requiring card details and a cancellation policy at booking (Boulevard); it is one customer's result, published by the seller, with no before-and-after dates.

Pinterest publishes growth rates, not search volumes, so its figures show which nail looks are rising rather than how many people search for them. Its 2026 beauty report, comparing July 2025 with July 2026, lists "caramel nude nails" up 943% (Pinterest) and "coffee nails ideas" up 922% (Pinterest). Pinterest Predicts 2026, which compares English-language searches from September 2024 to August 2025 with the year before, lists "lace nails" up 215% (Pinterest), "gothic coffin nails" up 180% (Pinterest), "dragonfly nails" up 145% (Pinterest) and "nails with different colors on each hand" up 125% (Pinterest). Its 2025 summer report, based on January to March 2025 searches, listed "baby blue cat eye nails" up 909% (Pinterest) and "summer aura nails" up 277% (Pinterest).

Researchers who study nail videos as health information find that nail technicians rarely appear in them. In a 2022 analysis of 102 top YouTube videos on nail fungus, 2.0% featured a nail technician, against 50.0% featuring a podiatrist (Skin Appendage Disorders). A 2023 analysis of the 100 most-viewed TikTok videos on nail fungus found home remedies recommended in 58% of them and FDA-approved treatments in 7% (Skin Appendage Disorders).

Has video been used to train nail salon workers?

Yes, but it has rarely been tested on its own. In 2009 VietAID and the Boston Public Health Commission made two Safe Nail Salons training videos with Vietnamese and English subtitles, which VietAID says have had close to 6,000 hits on YouTube (VietAID); that is a reach figure, not a measure of what workers learned. The closest tested format is an online module: in a 2024 University of Michigan study, the 24 workers who completed its Vietnamese version averaged 58.33% on a chemical-safety test before the module (Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine) and 91.67% after it (Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine). The study had no control group, and the 7 English-version completers started higher, at 81.43%.

Most tested programs for nail salon workers have used in-person, in-language training rather than video. In a California cluster randomized trial with data from 2013 to 2016, Vietnamese salon owners trained their own workers; workers in trained salons had 3.6 times the odds of reporting that they used safer nail polishes (International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health). When the same trial measured workers' air exposure with personal monitors in 77 salons, the training showed no significant reduction in chemical levels (American Journal of Industrial Medicine). A 2023 Drexel University feasibility study gave a 2-hour Vietnamese-language training to 44 owners and workers from 12 Philadelphia-area salons and found a tendency toward fewer symptoms and lower exposures, which the authors say seasonality could explain (Annals of Work Exposures and Health). In a Houston program delivered by Vietnamese lay health workers at 59 nail salons, workers who were helped to book screening reported a recent Pap test more often than those who were not (83.8% against 50.0%) (Women & Health). Twenty salons in Pierce County, Washington, that received mailed infection-control materials and a health department visit cut inspection infractions more than 26 control salons, though both groups improved (Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association).

The evidence base is thin. A 2022 scoping review found only four interventions aimed at nail salon workers' health and wellbeing, one of them a randomized trial (Annals of Work Exposures and Health). A 2025 review of nail salon research published from 2013 to 2024 found forty-two eligible studies, of which only two evaluated an intervention (Reviews on Environmental Health).

How often do Americans get manicures at a nail salon?

Among salon-goers in a May 2025 online survey of more than 4,000 U.S. women who buy beauty products, 43% said they get a salon manicure twice a month to monthly and 36% said the same of pedicures (The Benchmarking Company). The Benchmarking Company is a consumer research and product-testing firm that sells research to beauty brands, nail polish makers included, and it published the study on its own site without field dates, sampling details or a margin of error.

In the same study, 96% of the women said they regularly polish their nails, at a salon or at home (The Benchmarking Company). Only 10% said they have their nails done only in a salon, 43% said they only do their own nails at home, and 47% said they mix salon visits with doing their nails themselves (The Benchmarking Company).

CivicScience, a polling and advertising-data company that sells its survey data to brands, reported in January 2026 that 34% of U.S. adults who wear nail polish go to a nail salon several times a year, up from 21% a year earlier (CivicScience). The article does not give the sample size or field dates. In separate CivicScience polling published in May 2024, 23% of U.S. adults named getting a manicure or pedicure as a beauty activity they use for self-care, behind hair salon visits, skincare and makeup (CivicScience).

Which nail services do salon customers get most?

Gel manicures were the most common salon nail service in The Benchmarking Company's May 2025 study, received by 55% of salon-goers, followed by basic pedicures with polish, gel pedicures and basic manicures (The Benchmarking Company). 30% said they get acrylic nails and 28% a French manicure (The Benchmarking Company). Respondents could pick more than one service.

Across all U.S. adults the share is far smaller and split by sex. In a YouGov survey of 1,098 U.S. adult citizens fielded February 19-27, 2026, 14% said they have gotten or would consider getting nail enhancements such as acrylics (YouGov). That was 25% of women and 2% of men (YouGov). Younger adults led: 19% of adults aged 18 to 29, against 9% of those 65 and older (YouGov). YouGov's item combines people who have had enhancements with people who would consider them, so it is not a usage rate.

What do customers say they pay for a manicure or pedicure?

Among salon-goers in The Benchmarking Company's May 2025 study of U.S. women, 51% said they pay between $25 and $50 each time for a manicure and 53% said the same for a pedicure (The Benchmarking Company). These are self-reported price bands from women who buy beauty products, not salon price lists, and the published text gives no average or median.

How do customers choose and book a nail salon?

Cleanliness came first. Among salon-goers in The Benchmarking Company's May 2025 study, 85% said a clean, sanitary salon is what they look for (The Benchmarking Company). 75% named a precise, well-done result and 70% a great reputation or a strong recommendation (The Benchmarking Company). Fewer cared about walk-ins (40%) or a salon that is on-trend and can deliver the latest nail looks (22%) (The Benchmarking Company).

To make appointments, 44% of the same salon-goers said they call and schedule ahead of time, 23% said they just walk in, and 33% said they do either on occasion (The Benchmarking Company). The published text does not separate online booking from phone booking.

Are more people doing their nails at home instead of going to a salon?

For salons in general, yes, in 2025. In CivicScience polling published in May 2025, 24% of people who would normally go to salons said they had stopped going entirely in favor of doing treatments themselves, and 40% still went but less often (CivicScience). The question covers all salon types; nail salons are not broken out, though CivicScience names press-on nails in place of manicures among the popular at-home treatments. Among people using these do-it-yourself alternatives, 41% named YouTube as where they learn the techniques, 15 points ahead of TikTok and 28 points ahead of Instagram (CivicScience). That figure covers all DIY beauty, not nails alone. CivicScience's own January 2026 reading of nail salon visits among polish wearers (34%) points the other way for nails.

How much do Americans tip at nail salons?

No recent survey by a pollster that publishes its own results measures tipping at nail salons specifically. Pew Research Center's tipping survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, fielded August 7-27, 2023, asked about seven services and nail salons were not among them; its closest item found 78% of adults who get haircuts always or often tip for them (Pew Research Center). Bankrate's annual tipping survey, run online by YouGov, also asks about hair stylists and barbers but not nail technicians: in 2025, 54 percent of adults who use hair stylists or barbers said they always tip them (Bankrate). LendingTree's 2023 tipping survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers did not ask about salon services. Haircut tipping is a comparison line here, not a nail salon figure.

What does the research say about nail salon workers' chemical exposure and health?

A 2025 review of 42 nail salon studies published from 2013 to 2024 found inadequate ventilation in 71% of them, along with VOC levels above OSHA limits and repeated detection of methyl methacrylate (MMA) (Reviews on Environmental Health). Most of the studies are small, and only 17% tested whether a measured exposure went with a health outcome (Reviews on Environmental Health). The figures below come from those studies and from NIOSH, each with its own sample and years.

What is in nail salon air

Air sampling from Boston to Colorado finds a mix of solvents and acrylic monomers at low but measurable levels. Among 10 nail technicians in seven Greater Boston salons, in a study published in 2019, the median air level of MMA was 205 µg/m3, with ethyl methacrylate at 240 µg/m3 and toluene at 100 µg/m3 (Indoor Air). In 17 Michigan salons sampled for a 2018 study, MMA was in the air of 15 of 17 at 100 to 36,000 µg/m3, although the authors note pure MMA has not been permitted in salons since the 1970s (International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health). In 25 salons in New York City, Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, the mean personal MMA level across 100 measurements was 39.45 ppm (2019) (Journal of Community Health). In California, personal monitors worn by 80 Vietnamese workers in 20 salons averaged 0.15 parts per million of toluene over a shift, and area samples found MMA (2011) (American Journal of Public Health).

Ventilation is the clearest lever in these studies. Carbon dioxide, a stand-in for outdoor air supply, was above 800 ppm in 15 of 21 Boston salons sampled from September to December 2011, and salons with less ventilation had higher TVOC and fine-particle levels (Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health). In 10 New York City salons, TVOC was almost tenfold higher when CO2 passed the ASHRAE target of 850 ppm than when the target was met (2018) (Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene). Seventy-five percent of 12 New York City salons in a study published in 2020 did not meet the general minimum outdoor airflow requirement of New York State's 2015 ventilation rule (Annals of Work Exposures and Health).

When salons used the exhaust they had, levels fell. In a 2025 pilot in six New York City salons, those that used both local and general exhaust well after a tailored plan cut TVOC by 16.3% to 73.8%, while salons relying on local exhaust alone saw no significant change (American Journal of Industrial Medicine). One salon with no mechanical ventilation cut TVOC by 82.2% by opening windows and doors (American Journal of Industrial Medicine). In a 2022-2023 online survey of 146 New York and New Jersey salon workers, 79% of New York salons had mechanical ventilation, against 52% in New Jersey, which has no ventilation rule (New Solutions). In Boston, which required dedicated exhaust at every manicure and pedicure station from a 2013 amendment, 185 of 190 salons met the rules by June 2019, according to the city health commission's own staff (American Journal of Public Health). NIOSH's 1997 test of a downdraft nail table vented outdoors cut technicians' ethyl methacrylate exposure to a geometric mean of 0.6 ppm, against 8.7 ppm at an unventilated table (American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal).

Training alone did less. In a randomized trial in 77 salons across California with 200 workers, published in 2018, owner-to-worker training did not significantly lower personal MMA, toluene or TVOC levels; levels were higher for workers doing gel polish and acrylic nails and in busy salons (American Journal of Industrial Medicine). In a pilot of San Francisco's Healthy Nail Salon Recognition Program (6 recognized and 5 control salons, published 2015), toluene changed by -46% in recognized salons against 0% in controls, but MMA rose by 113%, and none of the changes was statistically significant (American Journal of Industrial Medicine).

What nail technicians report

Irritation, headaches and musculoskeletal pain come up in nearly every survey, and the surveys are small and self-reported. Seventy-one Vietnamese-American nail technicians in Boston, surveyed for a 2008 study, commonly named musculoskeletal disorders, skin problems, respiratory irritation and headaches as work-related (Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health). In six Colorado salons, 70% of 20 surveyed workers reported at least one work-related health issue (2019) (Environmental Pollution). In New Jersey in 2016, most of 68 technicians from 40 salons reported work-associated eye, nose, throat and skin symptoms, few used protective equipment and most had not been trained in their primary language (Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine). In the 2022-2023 New York and New Jersey survey, 67.6% of manicurists reported symptoms related to chemical exposure (New Solutions). A UK study of 71 nail technicians with an office-worker comparison group, published in 2011, found higher odds of work-related shoulder problems (odds ratio 15.0) and neck problems (5.0) (Occupational Medicine).

Studies of longer-term effects point the same way but cannot show cause. In Northern California, 155 current or former Vietnamese nail technicians scored 1.2 points lower on average than 145 controls on a cognitive screening test, and more exposure went with lower scores (2022) (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health). In a NIOSH analysis of the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (1997-2011), the 61 mothers who worked as nail technicians during pregnancy had odds ratios of 2.7 to 3.5 for seven groups of congenital heart defects, with wide confidence intervals because the numbers were small (Occupational and Environmental Medicine). A 2009 NIOSH pilot found that more hours of acrylic gel contact went with lower lung function (r = -0.38) (American Journal of Industrial Medicine).

What NIOSH found inside four salons

A NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation published in 2019, requested by a state health department, found ergonomic strain, little chemical training and no local exhaust at the work stations of four salons visited in 2015 and 2016. 21% of employees with at least 2 months at the salon (4 of 19) reported neck, shoulder or upper back pain that improved away from work (NIOSH). Personal formaldehyde exceeded the NIOSH recommended limit of 0.016 ppm in 6 of 24 full-shift measurements, though NIOSH notes such overexposures occur in many ordinary indoor settings and may not come from salon products (NIOSH). Ten of 24 interviewed employees had received training on chemical hazards since they started at the salon (NIOSH). None of the four salons had local exhaust ventilation at acrylic nail or manicure stations (NIOSH).

How many pedicure customers have caught infections from salon foot spas?

The largest documented outbreak affected 110 customers of one northern California nail salon in 2000, who developed boils on the lower legs traced to the salon's whirlpool footbaths (New England Journal of Medicine). The cause was Mycobacterium fortuitum, a rapidly growing bacterium. Cultures from all 10 of the salon's footbaths grew it, and isolates from three footbaths matched those from 14 patients (New England Journal of Medicine). Shaving the legs with a razor before the pedicure raised the risk: 70 percent of patients had done so against 31 percent of controls, an adjusted odds ratio of 4.8 (New England Journal of Medicine). Among 61 patients followed up, the infection lasted a mean of 170 days (Clinical Infectious Diseases).

The bacteria are common in footbaths. When California health officials swabbed 30 whirlpool footbaths in 18 salons across 5 counties, 97% carried mycobacteria (published 2005) (Emerging Infectious Diseases). Later reports were smaller:

The North Carolina rate was about 1 case per 100,000 people a year. Inspectors there saw signs of poor footbath cleaning, such as visible debris or biofilm, in 11 of 13 salons linked to infections, against 4 of 11 control salons (Clinical Infectious Diseases).

What does the research say about UV nail lamps and allergy to gel and acrylic nail products?

UV nail lamps

The 2023 study behind the UV nail lamp headlines exposed cells in dishes, not people: a single 20-minute session under a UV nail dryer killed 20–30% of cultured mouse and human cells, and three consecutive 20-minute sessions killed between 65% and 70% (Nature Communications). The radiation also caused a dose-dependent rise in one type of DNA mutation in those cells (Nature Communications). The study, from the University of California San Diego, did not measure skin, hands or cancer in lamp users. A Polish laboratory test on human skin cells found no significant drop in viability after 4 minutes and a 35% drop after 20 minutes (2023) (Scientific Reports).

Lamp measurements show modest doses. Six UV nail lamps from major U.S. makers fell in Risk Group 1 or 2 (low to moderate) for skin at the intended distance, with permissible daily exposure of 29.8 to 276.25 minutes (2013) (Photochemistry and Photobiology). Of 28 dryers measured in Spanish beauty centers, about 30% emitted more UV-A than Barcelona's summer noon sun, though sunburn-weighted doses per session were low (2018) (Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences). A 2012 risk model estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of women would need to use a UVA nail lamp regularly for one to develop squamous cell carcinoma on the back of the hand as a direct result (British Journal of Dermatology).

The evidence in people is thin. A 2024 systematic review screened 2,331 articles on nail lamps and skin cancer. Nine met its criteria: three case reports, one cross-sectional study and five experiments, and the authors called the evidence weak (European Journal of Dermatology). A 2025 review found squamous cell carcinoma described in 5 patients with lamp use, and 6 of 7 mathematical models calculated minimal to no risk (Photodermatology, Photoimmunology and Photomedicine). Case reports are confounded: a 2019 report described a woman with over 25 actinic keratoses and two squamous cell carcinomas in situ on the backs of her hands after an 18-year history of lamp use every 3 weeks, but she had also used tanning beds weekly for 18 years (Case Reports in Dermatology). A 2020 review found no reported cases of skin cancer on the backs of the hands or nail matrix in patients younger than 40 years with a history of chronic gel manicures (Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology).

Allergy to gel and acrylic nail products

Allergy to the (meth)acrylates in gel and acrylic nails is rising in patch-test clinics in North America and Europe. Of 38,775 patients patch tested by the North American Contact Dermatitis Group from 2001 to 2016, 2.0% had dermatitis linked to a nail care product (Dermatitis). Among those cases tested for it, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) was the top allergen at 56.6%, and HEMA allergy rose significantly over the period (Dermatitis). These are patients referred for suspected skin allergy, not the general population.

In seven European patch-test centres, nail-related HEMA allergy rose from 0.91% of patients tested in 2016 to 1.98% in 2023, despite EU legislation introduced in 2021 to prevent it; the number of centres grew from 2 to 7 over the period (Contact Dermatitis). In 11 European clinics in 2013-2015, nail acrylates caused allergic contact dermatitis in 0.75% of 18,228 patients, 67.3% of all acrylate cases (Contact Dermatitis). Most of the work-related cases began in the first year on the job, and at least 11.7% of them had to leave their jobs (Contact Dermatitis). When 15 UK dermatology centres added HEMA to their standard series in 2016-2017, 102 of 5920 consecutive patients reacted to it (British Journal of Dermatology). At Amsterdam's university hospitals from 2015 to 2023, nail cosmetic allergy accounted for 2.3% of all women patch tested; 73% of the 67 cases were consumers and 27% professional nail stylists (Contact Dermatitis).

What rules govern nail salons: licensing, chemicals, ventilation, foot spas and wages?

Every state sets its own nail rules, and Florida's training floor is among the lowest of the 12 states compared below: a nail specialist registration needs 180 hours of training focused mainly on sanitation and safety under the 2026 Florida Statutes (Fla. Stat. 477.0201). Florida registers nail specialists rather than licensing them, and the specialty covers manicuring, pedicuring and artificial nails. A full specialist registration, which adds facials, takes 400 hours, or whatever longer programme a school needs to keep students eligible for Pell Grants (Fla. Stat. 477.0201). Applicants must be at least 16 years old or hold a high school diploma (Fla. Stat. 477.0201). For comparison, a full Florida cosmetologist licence, which also covers manicures and pedicures, takes at least 1,200 hours (Fla. Stat. 477.019).

The Board of Cosmetology's curriculum rule fixes what fills the 180 hours. A nail student must complete all 180 hours of instruction (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-22.015) and pass a final examination that the school itself sets and grades, with a pass mark of 75% (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-22.015). Of the 90 classroom hours, 76 go to nail theory, practice and related subjects, including nail diseases and HIV/AIDS, with 8 hours of sanitation, 4 of Florida law and 2 of ethics (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-22.016). The other 90 hours are services: 15 hours of manicures, 10 of pedicures, 15 of tips with overlay, 10 of nail art and polishing, and 5 of gel nails (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-22.016).

Once registered, a Florida nail specialist renews every two years with at least 10 hours of continuing education (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-32.001), including at least 1 hour on HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-32.001). A new graduate whose registration is still pending may work under the supervision of a registered specialist in a licensed salon (Fla. Stat. 477.0201).

The salon needs its own licence. No cosmetology or specialty salon may operate without a license from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (Fla. Stat. 477.025). It must have at least 100 square feet of floor space for one operator, plus 50 square feet for each additional cosmetologist or specialist (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-20.002). Outside a licensed salon, Florida allows only nail polish removal, nail filing, nail buffing, and nail cleansing by a licensed person, plus special events and clients too ill to travel (Fla. Stat. 477.0263). The board can fine a person or salon up to $500 for each count or separate offence (Fla. Stat. 477.029). New York's Secretary of State can impose a fine of up to five hundred dollars for causes that include fraud, incompetence and rule violations (N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 410).

How must nail salons clean pedicure foot spas?

Florida requires every pedicure unit that holds water to be scrubbed after each client and then disinfected with an EPA-registered hospital-grade disinfectant for at least 10 minutes (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-20.002). At the end of each day, the disinfectant is circulated through the system and left in the basin for 6 to 10 hours (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-20.002). Once a week the salon adds a solution of one teaspoon of 5.25% bleach per gallon of water (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-20.002), and every cleaning goes into a log book kept in the pedicure area for customers and inspectors to see (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-20.002).

Texas and California use the same structure. Texas requires each whirlpool foot spa to be flushed with soap and warm water for at least 10 minutes at the end of each day (16 TAC 83.108), a bleach or disinfectant soak of 6 to 10 hours every other week (16 TAC 83.108), and a record of each cleaning on a department-approved form (16 TAC 83.108). California's whirlpool footspa rule requires disinfectant to circulate for at least 10 minutes and a cleaning log with the date, time and the cleaner's initials (16 CCR 980.1). California first adopted that rule as an emergency regulation in 2001 (16 CCR 980.1). Texas also lists orangewood sticks, cotton balls, nail wipes and disposable towels as single-use items to be thrown away after each client (16 TAC 83.106).

Which nail chemicals are banned or restricted?

No federal regulation specifically bans methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer in cosmetics, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. After injury complaints in the early 1970s, FDA used court action to pull products containing 100 percent MMA monomer off the market (FDA). States fill the gap: Texas bans Methyl Methacrylate Liquid Monomers in licensed practice, along with credo-style callus shavers (16 TAC 83.112), and makes possession of MMA liquid on licensed premises a violation by itself, a rule in force since 2006 (16 TAC 83.112).

Federal agencies mainly publish guidance. OSHA lists toluene, formaldehyde and dibutyl phthalate and methacrylate compounds among the chemicals in nail polishes, glues and other salon products (OSHA). Its worker guide, revised in 2025 (OSHA 3542), warns that labels are not proof: when California's Department of Toxic Substances Control tested 25 nail products in May 2011, 10 of the 12 sold as "toxic-free" contained toluene (OSHA, citing California DTSC). FDA calls the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 the biggest expansion of its cosmetics authority since the original Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 (FDA).

What ventilation must a nail salon have?

New York sets a hard airflow number: a nail salon's mechanical ventilation must supply and exhaust outdoor air at no less than the 2015 International Mechanical Code rate or 50 cubic feet per minute for each nail station, whichever is greater (19 NYCRR 160.16). Each station needs its own exhaust inlet no more than 12 inches from where the chemicals are applied (19 NYCRR 160.16). The rule bound newly licensed salons from October 3, 2016; salons licensed before then had until October 4, 2022 to comply (19 NYCRR 160.16). Florida's rule asks only that nail extension and sculpting be done in a separate area that is adequately ventilated, without a number (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-20.002).

What protects nail salon workers' wages?

New York is the state that wrote wage protection into salon licensing. Since December 23, 2015, an owner employing the equivalent of two to five full-time nail workers must carry at least $25,000 in bond or insurance for wages legally due them (19 NYCRR 160.9), rising in steps to $125,000 for 26 or more (19 NYCRR 160.9). Every salon offering nail services must post a nail practitioner bill of rights where workers and customers can read it (19 NYCRR 160.10). The same 2015 reforms created a supervised trainee path: a trainee course of 27 hours (19 NYCRR 162.6), after which a trainee can earn the full nail specialty licence after one year of traineeship and a course set by the state (N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 406).

How many training hours does each state require for a nail technician licence?

Across the 12 states below, the school-hour minimum for a nail licence in 2026 runs from 150 clock hours in Virginia to 600 hours in Arizona, Nevada and Texas, according to each state's own statute or board rule. Florida's nail specialist registration needs 180 hours, the second-lowest floor in the table, and New York's nail specialty licence needs 250. The states do not even agree on the name: Florida registers a nail specialist, New York licenses nail specialty, California, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas license manicurists, Nevada licenses nail technologists, and Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, South Carolina and Virginia license nail technicians. The figures are minimums set in law; schools may run longer courses.

Most of these states also test the candidate; Florida does not. Its nail students pass a final exam set and graded by their own school (Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G5-22.015), while Texas requires a written and practical state examination and a minimum age of 17 (16 TAC 83.200). New York also sets the age floor at 17 (N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 406). California admits candidates at 17 with a 10th-grade education and credits each three months of nail work in another state as 100 training hours (Bus. & Prof. Code 7326). Illinois requires its 350 hours to stretch over at least 8 weeks, and candidates there may be 16 (225 ILCS 410/3C-2). Nevada sets an 18-year age floor and also accepts 1,200 hours as a registered apprentice in place of school (NRS 644A.345). Georgia's 525 hours split into 140 hours of theory, finished before a student touches a client, and 385 hours of services (Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 240-17-.02).

Combined licences cost more hours. Texas's manicurist/esthetician course is 800 clock hours (16 TAC 83.202). After licensing, North Carolina requires 8 hours of continuing education a year (G.S. 88B-21), against Florida's 10 hours every two years.

New Jersey, Tennessee and Michigan are not in the table because the official statute or rule pages read for this page did not print their nail hours, and Utah's code pages load only with JavaScript. School websites were not used for any state.

What do the popular nail salon numbers really say?

Four numbers that nail salon marketing repeats trace back to narrower sources than the repeats suggest: a trade magazine's modelled estimate and market-research models with different scopes, insider estimates and one study's cited range for the Vietnamese share, a single vendor's client tests, and an industry-sponsored lamp test. Each claim below gives the claim as repeated, where it came from, what the original measured, and what to use instead.

"The nail industry is worth $8 billion" (or $14 billion, $25.5 billion, $38.8 billion)

The claim as repeated. A business-plan software blog says the nail salon industry "has hit an impressive $8 billion value", with no year or source (Upmetrics). A press-on nail seller's 2026 blog gives $5.3 billion for the U.S. nail care market in 2026 and credits Fortune Business Insights, whose page refuses scripted requests, so we could not check it (Joyee Nails). In 2013 Hawaii Public Radio repeated NAILS Magazine's $7.47 Billion (Hawaii Public Radio).

Where it came from. The $6 billion to $8 billion figures come from NAILS Magazine's annual Big Book, a trade-press estimate. NAILS does not count receipts. It models spending from the number of salons, techs per salon by state, average prices of four common services and an estimate of practising techs. Its 2012-2013 edition said it weights Vietnamese salons' prices separately because of "as much as a 40% difference" in average prices (NAILS Big Book 2012-2013). The series by edition:

NAILS' 2020 annual report has no industry-size chart, so 2018 is the last Big Book figure we found.

What the others count. The larger numbers come from market-research firms that sell the full reports. Each counts something different. Marketdata, reported by MarketResearch.com in 2021, put U.S. nail salons at $6.5 billion in 2020, down 19%. Counting nail technicians who work outside storefront salons gave $14 billion (MarketResearch.com). The same release forecast $22.6 billion by 2025, a forecast and not a measurement (MarketResearch.com). IBISWorld's free page puts its Personal Waxing & Nail Salons industry, which includes waxing, at $25.5bn in 2026 (IBISWorld). Global Market Insights puts the global nail salon market at USD 38.8 billion in 2025 (Global Market Insights), with the U.S. at $14,375 million (Global Market Insights). Product markets are separate again: global nail care products at USD 23.5 billion in 2025 (Global Market Insights) and global nail polish at USD 18.5 billion (Grand View Research).

What to use instead. The Census Bureau's counts, given in the workforce section of this page: $13,082,736 thousand in 2024 revenue for nail salons with paid employees (Annual Integrated Economic Survey, NAICS 812113) and, separately, $13,147,338 thousand in 2024 receipts for nail businesses with no employees. Add the two only with both scopes stated. If a market-research figure is quoted, give the firm, the edition date and whether it is U.S. or global, services or products.

"80% of nail techs are Vietnamese American" (or 48%, 51%, 59-80%)

The claim as repeated. In January 2014 a travel and culture site wrote that, according to NAILS Magazine's 2012-2013 statistics, 48% of nail professionals are Vietnamese American and that "the number skyrockets to 80% in California" (Matador Network). Advocacy and news pages repeat "59-80%" for California and "80%" for Southern California.

Where it came from. The oldest 80% figure we found is for one county's licensees. A 1996 UCLA Asian American Studies Center study said licensed manicurists in Los Angeles County rose from 9,755 to 15,238 between 1984 and 1989, about 80 percent of them Vietnamese American. The same study said some 30 percent of the 22,000 U.S. nail salons were Vietnamese-owned (UCLA Asian American Studies Center). In March 1997 NAILS Magazine wrote that "industry insiders estimate" Vietnamese and other Asian technicians were as much as 80% of California's nail technicians and nearly 25% nationwide. The article said no one had precise figures and credited the Los Angeles Times with first publishing the estimate (NAILS, 1997). Its only count was from the state board: 40% of 565 people newly licensed between August 14 and September 30, 1996 were Vietnamese (NAILS, 1997).

How it changed. NAILS' Big Book later printed a national share each year without a sample size: 48% Vietnamese in 2012-2013 (NAILS Big Book 2012-2013), 51% under "What is your nationality?" in 2014-2015 (NAILS Big Book 2014-2015) and 72% under "What is your ethnicity?" in 2018-2019 (NAILS Big Book 2018-2019). The same 2018-2019 edition estimated prices in Vietnamese-owned salons at, on average, 30% lower than in other salons (NAILS Big Book 2018-2019). The "59-80%" range comes from a 2008 Journal of Community Health paper. The paper cited it as an estimate of the share of California nail salons "run by Vietnamese women", not of technicians, and did not measure it. Its own survey was a convenience sample of 201 Vietnamese workers at 74 Alameda County salons (Journal of Community Health). Repeaters turned a share of salons into a share of workers.

What the research measured. Federman, Harrington and Krynski (ILR Review, 2006) used California licensing data. They found the 35,700 new Vietnamese manicurists who entered from 1987 to 2002 slightly outnumbered all of California's manicurists in 1987 (35,500). For every five Vietnamese entrants, two non-Vietnamese were displaced, mostly because fewer non-Vietnamese entered (ILR Review abstract). The UCLA Labor Center and the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, a university center and an advocacy group, tabulated Census microdata. Their 2018 national key findings describe a workforce that is 81% women and 79% foreign-born, mostly Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Nepali, Tibetan and Latinx, with no single Vietnamese share (UCLA Labor Center). Their March 2024 California report found that among nail salon workers born abroad, 82% were born in Vietnam (American Community Survey, 2017-2021) (UCLA Labor Center). That is a share of foreign-born workers by birthplace, not of all workers by ethnicity.

The origin story. Tellings agree on 20 women. A July 2011 blog post summarising a 2008 Los Angeles Times story described "how 20 women who fled their war-torn country happened to meet a Hollywood starlet" at Hope Village near Sacramento in 1975 (8Asians). NAILS Magazine wrote in December 2015 that five women reunited with Tippi Hedren in 2014 were "part of a group of 20" (NAILS, 2015). The 1996 UCLA study and the 1997 NAILS article on Vietnamese salons do not mention Hedren. The earliest telling we located is the 2008 Los Angeles Times story, which we could not read because the site blocks AI agents. We did not search newspaper archives from before 2008, so earlier tellings may exist.

What to use instead. The Current Population Survey's share of Asian workers among manicurists and pedicurists (SOC 39-5092), 67.5 percent in 2025, given with its year, and for owners the Annual Business Survey, in which 83.9% of nail salon firms with paid employees were majority Asian-owned in 2022. Neither breaks out Vietnamese Americans. For California, the UCLA Labor Center's 2024 birthplace figure, worded as a share of foreign-born workers.

"Video lifts conversions 80%"

The claim as repeated. A video production company's October 2025 page for hair and nail salons says "research indicates that marketing videos can increase landing page conversions by up to 80%", without naming the research (Beverly Boy Productions).

Where it came from. The trail starts with EyeView, which made and tested videos for its clients. A blog post of December 4, 2008 said visitors to eToro's site who viewed EyeView's video were 20% more likely to download the product. That compared viewers with non-viewers, who chose for themselves whether to watch (EyeView, 2009 capture). The first 80% figure we found is in a post of February 10, 2009: viewers of EyeView's videos for UMOO were 80% more likely to become depositing users, the same kind of comparison (EyeView). In November 2009 a TutorVista manager said the first test on one landing page "boosted conversion by over 80 percent" (EyeView). EyeView's case study gave that one A/B test, with the video autoplaying for first-time visitors, as an 86 percent increase (EyeView).

How it changed. EyeView's 2010 white paper said that "in some cases" the boost was over 80% (EyeView white paper). It reported the eToro split test, earlier told as 20%, as almost 32 percent (EyeView white paper). By August 2010 Unbounce, a landing-page software seller, wrote that "a study by eyeviewdigital.com shows that using video on landing pages can increase conversion by 80%" (Unbounce, 2010 capture). That dropped "in some cases" and the single-client scope. The salon page above dropped the source as well.

What to use instead. Unbounce's own August 2021 look at about 35,000 customer landing pages in each of three periods from late 2020 to early 2021 (Unbounce) found that video had a minimal or negative effect on landing page conversion, whatever the page's goal (Unbounce). Its ten industries did not include salons. A nail salon that wants a number should test its own booking page.

"A gel manicure's UV lamp is like a few extra minutes in the sun"

The claim as repeated. A nail supply seller's April 2026 guide says "most dermatologists agree" the UV exposure from a bi-weekly manicure equals an extra 10-15 minutes outdoors, with no source (DTK Nail Supply). Other salon and nail-school pages say "about two minutes".

Where it came from. The two-minute figure comes from the nail industry. At a May 2012 RadTech conference, Doug Schoon, co-chair of the Professional Beauty Association's nail manufacturers safety committee, presented an industry-commissioned lab test. A 10-minute exposure to one lamp gave "UVA output equivalent to spending an extra 2 minutes or less" of sunlight each day between services. He concluded that a twice-monthly UV nail service "compares to adding about two minutes natural sunlight exposure each day" (RadTech 2012). That was a manufacturers' lab test, not a peer-reviewed study. We found no source for the 10-15 minute version.

What to use instead. The peer-reviewed UV nail lamp measurements in the health section of this page, each with its lamp type, exposure time and the skin effect it measured.

Every popular claim our research pages trace, 716 in all, is on one page: popular video statistics, fact-checked.

How we built this page

We started from the questions people search for about nail salon video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 564 figures from 94 publishers.

On November 4, 2026, each sourced figure on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: BLS occupation wage estimates (through the BLS data API), QCEW, Employment Projections, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the Current Population Survey and the CPI; Census County Business Patterns, Nonemployer Statistics, the 2017 and 2022 Economic Census, the Annual Integrated Economic Survey and the Annual Business Survey (through the Census data API); the 10-K filings of Sally Beauty Holdings, Coty, XWELL and Helen of Troy; the franchise disclosure documents of Regal Nails, Frenchies, Da Vi Nails, Townhouse, Sola Salons and Phenix Salon Suites in Minnesota’s public CARDS database; the nail and cosmetology statutes and board rules of Florida, Texas, New York, California and eight other states, and OSHA and FDA pages; Florida DBPR and California Department of Consumer Affairs annual reports; peer-reviewed studies (PubMed abstracts re-read through NCBI’s E-utilities, because pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov refuses automated requests) and a NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation; the reports and posts of Pinterest, YouTube, Zenoti, Mindbody, Square, GlossGenius, Fresha, Booksy and Boulevard; surveys by YouGov, CivicScience, Pew Research Center, Bankrate and The Benchmarking Company; and the pages behind each popular claim. Where a site refuses automated requests we read an Internet Archive copy. Our licence counts come from Florida DBPR’s licence file and the Texas, New York and Colorado open-data registries, our location-page figures from pages we read one at a time, our 10-K phrase counts from EDGAR full-text search, and our YouTube figures from the YouTube Data API. We left out TikTok, Vagaro, Statista, the Los Angeles Times and Allied Market Research (robots.txt blocks AI agents), Fortune Business Insights, Harris Poll and Varnish Lane (bot challenges), two UV nail lamp research letters in JAMA Dermatology and the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (no abstract, and their publishers block AI agents), EPA’s 2004 nail salon worker guide (its file refused our requests), GlossGenius’s price benchmark (its figures sit only in page scripts), Mindbody’s nail salon growth rates (they include impossible values), and OpenStreetMap counts (the Overpass server was down).

We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.

Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:

This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.

Limitations

• Our YouTube read follows YouTube's ranking. The 512 videos are what YouTube's search returned for 'nail art', 'gel nails' and 'nail salon' (the top 200 of each, sorted by views, with no country filter) on November 4, 2026. It is not a census of nail video, view counts are lifetime snapshots that include views from ads, and we classified 295 channels by hand from their public text; one New York City nail artist draws 71.6% of the nail-business views, so we give that class with and without her channel.
• Location pages are templated and few. Five chains publish a page per salon that we could read (74 pages); within a brand most features are set by its template, so the shares describe five brands, mostly upscale or clean-polish chains, not the independent salons that make up most of the industry. Regal Nails, the largest franchise, has no page per salon.
• Different registers count different things. BLS QCEW, County Business Patterns and the Economic Census count nail salons with employees from different registers and years; Nonemployer Statistics counts tax filers with no payroll, so a booth renter who files as a sole proprietor is a business there. BLS's payroll survey leaves out the self-employed, Employment Projections adds them, and the household survey counts people by their main job with sampling error. Some nail services are sold by beauty salons (NAICS 812112), which these nail salon counts leave out.
• Licence files count licences, not working technicians. One person can hold several registrations, an active licence shows the right to work rather than a job, the county is the licensee's address on file, and Florida's file was cut on a renewal deadline when 22.1% of nail specialist registrations had not yet been renewed. States license different things, so their totals are not directly comparable.
• Most survey and platform figures come from sellers. The Benchmarking Company sells research to beauty brands and published no field dates or sampling details for its study of U.S. women; CivicScience gives no sample sizes for most items; Zenoti, Mindbody, Square, GlossGenius, Fresha, Booksy and Boulevard sell software to salons and describe their own customers, mostly without saying how many nail businesses sit behind a figure. No survey owner we found measures tipping at nail salons.
• Health studies are small and varied. Exposure studies sample a handful of salons each, worker health surveys rely on self-report, the 2023 UV lamp study measured cells in dishes rather than people, and two widely cited UV lamp letters are left out because their publishers block AI agents.

How to cite this page

For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/nail-salon-video-statistics#DRV-210. To cite the page as a whole:

Mark Studios. "Nail Salon Video Statistics." Last verified Nov 4, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/nail-salon-video-statistics

@misc{markstudios_nail_salon_video_statistics_2026,
  author = {{Mark Studios}},
  title = {{Nail Salon Video Statistics}},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/nail-salon-video-statistics},
  note = {Last verified 2026-11-04}
}

Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.

Sources

Download the evidence table (CSV)

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4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census: Geographic Area Statistics (Census Data API, ecnbasic) (2023-10-24). Accessed 2026-11-04.
5. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics: 2024 (Census Data API) (2026-03-13). Accessed 2026-11-04.
6. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics: 2023 (Census Data API) (2025-03-06). Accessed 2026-11-04.
7. U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics: 2018 (Census Data API) (2020-05-05). Accessed 2026-11-04.
8. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns: 2023 (Census Data API) (2025-03-06). Accessed 2026-11-04.
9. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census: Establishment and Firm Size Statistics (Census Data API, ecnsize) (2024-11-27). Accessed 2026-11-04.
10. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW Open Data: 2025 annual averages, industry 812112 (CSV) (2026-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
11. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Integrated Economic Survey: Summary Statistics for Employer Firms: 2024 (Census Data API, aiesbasic) (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-11-04.
12. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Integrated Economic Survey: Summary Statistics for Employer Firms: 2024 (Census Data API, aiesbasic) (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-11-04.
13. U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 Economic Census: Geographic Area Statistics (Census Data API, ecnbasic) (2020-11-02). Accessed 2026-11-04.
14. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census: Industry by Products (Census Data API, ecnnapcsind) (2024-12-12). Accessed 2026-11-04.
15. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census: Industry by Products (Census Data API, ecnnapcsind) (2024-12-12). Accessed 2026-11-04.
16. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census: Industry by Products (Census Data API, ecnnapcsind) (2024-12-12). Accessed 2026-11-04.
17. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census: Industry by Products (Census Data API, ecnnapcsind) (2024-12-12). Accessed 2026-11-04.
18. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Annual Business Survey: Company Summary (Census Data API, abscs) (2024-08-07). Accessed 2026-11-04.
19. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Annual Business Survey: Company Summary (Census Data API, abscs) (2024-08-07). Accessed 2026-11-04.
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53. Regal Nails Salon & Spa, LLC, Regal Nails Salon & Spa, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document (Issuance Date: March 30, 2026), Clean FDD filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (2026-03-30). Accessed 2026-11-04.
54. Da Vi Nails Salon and Spa, L.L.C., Da Vi Nails Salon and Spa, L.L.C. Franchise Disclosure Document (Issuance Date: April 14, 2025), Clean FDD filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (2025-04-14). Accessed 2026-11-04.
55. Frenchies, LLC, Frenchies, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document 2025 (Issuance Date: April 2, 2025), Clean FDD filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (2025-04-02). Accessed 2026-11-04.
56. Townhouse Franchising, LLC, Townhouse Franchising, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document (Issuance Date: January 28, 2026), Clean FDD filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (2026-01-28). Accessed 2026-11-04.
57. Sola Franchise, LLC, Sola Franchise, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document 2026 (Issuance Date: April 30, 2026), Clean FDD filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (2026-04-30). Accessed 2026-11-04.
58. Phenix Salon Suites Franchising, LLC, Phenix Salon Suites Franchising, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document 2026 (Issuance Date: May 5, 2026), Clean FDD filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (2026-05-05). Accessed 2026-11-04.
59. Sally Beauty Holdings, Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 (2025-11-13). Accessed 2026-11-04.
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63. YouTube (Culture & Trends), Nailing it: Celebrating the nail art community (2023-05-05). Accessed 2026-11-04.
64. Pinterest, Pinterest Beauty Trend Report 2026 (2026-10-06). Accessed 2026-11-04.
65. Mindbody (salon, spa and fitness software seller), 2025 Beauty & Wellness Revenue Benchmarks: How Does Your Business Stack Up? (2024-11). Accessed 2026-11-04.
66. Square (Block, Inc.; payments and booking software seller), New Square Survey Finds 1 in 3 Consumers are in an Open Relationship with Their Hair Stylist (2024-06-26). Accessed 2026-11-04.
67. Square (Block, Inc.; payments and booking software seller), Square Shares the Fastest Growing Beauty & Self-Care Trends (2022-02-08). Accessed 2026-11-04.
68. GlossGenius (salon booking and payments software seller), Free Report: Self-Care Service & Pricing Trends (2024-07-25). Accessed 2026-11-04.
69. Zenoti (salon and spa software seller), Salon and spa booking and communication trends (The Check-In) (2025-10-06). Accessed 2026-11-04.
70. Fresha (salon booking marketplace and software seller), The World's Most Beauty-Obsessed Cities, According to Fresha Data (2025-04-28). Accessed 2026-11-04.
71. Fresha (salon booking marketplace and software seller), Barbie-inspired services are trending (2023-07-25). Accessed 2026-11-04.
72. Zenoti (salon and spa software seller), Survey reveals 6 surprising nail salon consumer trends for 2026 (2025-10-31). Accessed 2026-11-04.
73. Booksy (booking app and software seller), Booksy 2026 US Trends Report (Not stated (2026 trends page)). Accessed 2026-11-04.
74. Boulevard (salon software seller), Saunders and James Case Study: 53% More Appointments With Boulevard (2026-09-24). Accessed 2026-11-04.
75. Pinterest, Pinterest Predicts: Nonconformity, self-preservation, and escapism drive 21 trends for 2026 (2025-12-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
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77. Skin Appendage Disorders (Nickles et al., University of North Carolina), Onychomycosis on YouTube: A Cross-Sectional Analysis (2022-07). Accessed 2026-11-04.
78. Skin Appendage Disorders (Waterton and Lipner, Weill Cornell Medicine), Truth or Trend - Misinformation Spreading Fast on TikTok: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Onychomycosis Content (2023-12). Accessed 2026-11-04.
79. VietAID (Vietnamese American Initiative for Development, community organization), Safe Nail Salon Projects (Not stated). Accessed 2026-11-04.
80. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (Rosemberg et al., University of Michigan), An Online Training Module to Increase Knowledge and Awareness of Chemical Exposures and Safety Measures Among Nail Salon Workers (2024-09-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
81. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health (Quach et al., Cancer Prevention Institute of California / California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative), Improving the knowledge and behavior of workplace chemical exposures in Vietnamese-American nail salon workers: a randomized controlled trial (2018-11). Accessed 2026-11-04.
82. American Journal of Industrial Medicine (Quach et al., Cancer Prevention Institute of California), Evaluating an owner-to-worker training intervention in California nail salons using personal air monitoring (2018-10). Accessed 2026-11-04.
83. Annals of Work Exposures and Health (Huynh et al., Drexel University), A participatory approach to designing and implementing an occupational health intervention for the nail salon community in the Greater Philadelphia region (2023-09-21). Accessed 2026-11-04.
84. Women & Health (Fernandez-Esquer et al., University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston), Suc Khoe la Hanh Phuc (Health is Happiness): promoting mammography and pap test adherence among Vietnamese nail salon workers (2020-11). Accessed 2026-11-04.
85. Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association (Lux et al., Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department), Do educational interventions targeted to nail salon workers and customers improve infection control practices in these salons? (2014-03). Accessed 2026-11-04.
86. Annals of Work Exposures and Health (Ward et al., University of Michigan), Interventions Targeting Health and Wellbeing among Nail Salon Workers: A Scoping Review (2022-08-07). Accessed 2026-11-04.
87. Reviews on Environmental Health (Begum et al., Temple University), The nail salon workforce: a systematic scoping review of carcinogen exposure assessments, health outcome, and workforce intervention research (2025-11-10). Accessed 2026-11-04.
88. The Benchmarking Company, GCI: Obsessed with Nail Care – a Timeless Consumer Beauty Favorite (2025-06-12). Accessed 2026-11-04.
89. CivicScience, 10 Beauty Trends to Watch in 2026 (2026-01-22). Accessed 2026-11-04.
90. CivicScience, U.S. Moms Are Big on Beauty for Self-Care (2024-05-08). Accessed 2026-11-04.
91. YouGov, YouGov Survey: Beauty Standards (toplines and crosstabs) (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
92. CivicScience, Salon Visits Are Down, DIY Beauty Treatments Are up Amid Tariff Concern (2025-05-13). Accessed 2026-11-04.
93. Pew Research Center, Tipping Culture in America: Public Sees a Changed Landscape (report PDF) (2023-11-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
94. Bankrate (survey by YouGov Plc), Survey: 'Out of control,' 'Pay employees better' and other things Americans say about tipping (2025-06-04). Accessed 2026-11-04.
95. Indoor Air (Ceballos et al., Boston University SPH, Harvard T.H. Chan SPH, CDC Volatile Organic Compounds Laboratory), Biological and environmental exposure monitoring of volatile organic compounds among nail technicians in the Greater Boston area (2019-05-21). Accessed 2026-11-04.
96. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health (Zhong, Batterman, Milando; University of Michigan SPH), VOC sources and exposures in nail salons: a pilot study in Michigan, USA (2018-10-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
97. Journal of Community Health (Ma et al., Temple University), Characterizing Occupational Health Risks and Chemical Exposures Among Asian Nail Salon Workers on the East Coast of the United States (2019-12-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
98. American Journal of Public Health (Quach et al., Cancer Prevention Institute of California), Characterizing workplace exposures in Vietnamese women working in California nail salons (2011-05-06). Accessed 2026-11-04.
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101. Annals of Work Exposures and Health (Harrichandra, Roelofs, Pavilonis; CUNY SPH and UMass Lowell), Occupational Exposure and Ventilation Assessment in New York City Nail Salons (2020-06-24). Accessed 2026-11-04.
102. American Journal of Industrial Medicine (Thompson, Pavilonis et al., CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy), Clearing the Air: A Pilot Study of Ventilation Interventions in New York City Nail Salons (2025-08-07). Accessed 2026-11-04.
103. New Solutions (Seo et al., Hunter College CUNY and Temple University), Evaluating Occupational Workforce and Practices in New York Metropolitan Nail Salons (2024-10-14). Accessed 2026-11-04.
104. American Journal of Public Health (Seller et al., Boston Public Health Commission; Roelofs, UMass Lowell), Improving Boston Nail Salon Indoor Air Quality Through Local Public Health Regulation, 2007-2019 (2019-10-17). Accessed 2026-11-04.
105. American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal (Spencer et al., NIOSH), Control of ethyl methacrylate exposures during the application of artificial fingernails (1997-03-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
106. American Journal of Industrial Medicine (Garcia et al., with Quach, Cancer Prevention Institute of California), Evaluating a county-based healthy nail salon recognition program (2015-02-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
107. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health (Roelofs et al., University of Massachusetts Lowell), Results from a community-based occupational health survey of Vietnamese-American nail salon workers (2008-08-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
108. Environmental Pollution (Lamplugh et al., University of Colorado Boulder), Occupational exposure to volatile organic compounds and health risks in Colorado nail salons (2019-03-23). Accessed 2026-11-04.
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111. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Nguyen et al., University of California, Davis), Cognitive Functioning and Nail Salon Occupational Exposure among Vietnamese Immigrant Women in Northern California (2022-04-12). Accessed 2026-11-04.
112. Occupational and Environmental Medicine (Siegel et al., NIOSH), Maternal occupation as a nail technician or hairdresser during pregnancy and birth defects, National Birth Defects Prevention Study, 1997-2011 (2021-06-30). Accessed 2026-11-04.
113. American Journal of Industrial Medicine (Reutman et al., NIOSH), A pilot respiratory health assessment of nail technicians: symptoms, lung function, and airway inflammation (2009-11-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
114. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), CDC, Evaluation of Ergonomics, Chemical Exposures, and Ventilation at Four Nail Salons (NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation Report No. 2015-0139-3338) (2019-03-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
115. New England Journal of Medicine (Winthrop et al., California Department of Health Services and CDC), An outbreak of mycobacterial furunculosis associated with footbaths at a nail salon (2002-05-02). Accessed 2026-11-04.
116. Clinical Infectious Diseases (Winthrop et al., California Department of Health Services and CDC), The clinical management and outcome of nail salon-acquired Mycobacterium fortuitum skin infection (2003-12-08). Accessed 2026-11-04.
117. Emerging Infectious Diseases (Vugia et al., California Department of Health Services), Mycobacteria in nail salon whirlpool footbaths, California (2005-04-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
118. Archives of Dermatology (Sniezek et al.), Rapidly growing mycobacterial infections after pedicures (2003-05-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
119. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (Redbord et al., Cincinnati), Atypical Mycobacterium furunculosis occurring after pedicures (2006-03-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
120. Clinical Infectious Diseases (Stout et al., Duke University Medical Center), Pedicure-associated rapidly growing mycobacterial infection: an endemic disease (2011-10-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
121. Nature Communications (Zhivagui, Alexandrov et al., University of California San Diego), DNA damage and somatic mutations in mammalian cells after irradiation with a nail polish dryer (2023-01-17). Accessed 2026-11-04.
122. Scientific Reports (Słabicka-Jakubczyk et al., Medical University of Gdansk), Influence of UV nail lamps radiation on human keratinocytes viability (2023-12-18). Accessed 2026-11-04.
123. Photochemistry and Photobiology (Dowdy and Sayre), Photobiological safety evaluation of UV nail lamps (2013-05-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
124. Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences (Baeza et al., University San Pablo CEU, Madrid), Nail dryer devices: a measured spectral irradiance and labelling review (2018-05-16). Accessed 2026-11-04.
125. British Journal of Dermatology (Diffey, Newcastle University), The risk of squamous cell carcinoma in women from exposure to UVA lamps used in cosmetic nail treatment (2012-10-05). Accessed 2026-11-04.
126. European Journal of Dermatology (Metko et al., McMaster University), A systematic review of the risk of cutaneous malignancy associated with ultraviolet nail lamps: what is the price of beauty? (2024-02-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
127. Photodermatology, Photoimmunology and Photomedicine (Duong, Lim et al., Henry Ford Health), Revisiting Cutaneous Carcinogenic Risk From Ultraviolet Nail Polish Dryer Lamp Exposure (2025-11-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
128. Case Reports in Dermatology (Ratycz et al.), Multiple Dorsal Hand Actinic Keratoses and Squamous Cell Carcinomas: A Unique Presentation following Extensive UV Nail Lamp Use (2019-10-02). Accessed 2026-11-04.
129. Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology (Schwartz et al., Cincinnati), Ultraviolet Light Gel Manicures: Is There a Risk of Skin Cancer on the Hands and Nails of Young Adults? (2020-07-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
130. Dermatitis (Warshaw et al., North American Contact Dermatitis Group), Contact Dermatitis Associated With Nail Care Products: Retrospective Analysis of North American Contact Dermatitis Group Data, 2001-2016 (2020-05-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
131. Contact Dermatitis (Wilkinson et al., European Environmental Contact Dermatitis Research Group), Contact Allergy to Methacrylate Containing Nail Products: Lack of Impact of EU Legislation. An Audit on Behalf of the European Environmental Contact Dermatitis Research Group (EECDRG) (2024-12-25). Accessed 2026-11-04.
132. Contact Dermatitis (Gonçalo et al., European Environmental Contact Dermatitis Research Group), Allergic contact dermatitis caused by nail acrylates in Europe. An EECDRG study (2017-12-21). Accessed 2026-11-04.
133. British Journal of Dermatology (Rolls et al., UK multicentre), Recommendation to include hydroxyethyl (meth)acrylate in the British baseline patch test series (2019-04-21). Accessed 2026-11-04.
134. Contact Dermatitis (Steunebrink, de Groot, Rustemeyer; Amsterdam UMC), Contact allergy to acrylate-containing nail cosmetics: A retrospective 8-year study (2023-12-14). Accessed 2026-11-04.
135. Florida Legislature (Florida Statutes), Florida Statutes Chapter 477, Cosmetology (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
136. Florida Board of Cosmetology (Florida Administrative Code; text via Cornell Law School LII), Fla. Admin. Code Ann. R. 61G5-22.015 - Specialty Certification (2020-12-21). Accessed 2026-11-04.
137. Florida Board of Cosmetology (Florida Administrative Code; text via Cornell Law School LII), Fla. Admin. Code Ann. R. 61G5-22.016 - Minimum Curriculum for Nail Specialty Training (2020-12-21). Accessed 2026-11-04.
138. Florida Board of Cosmetology (Florida Administrative Code; text via Cornell Law School LII), Fla. Admin. Code Ann. R. 61G5-32.001 - Continuing Education (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
139. Florida Board of Cosmetology (Florida Administrative Code; text via Cornell Law School LII), Fla. Admin. Code Ann. R. 61G5-20.002 - Salon Requirements (2017-11-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
140. New York State Senate (Consolidated Laws of New York, General Business Law), New York General Business Law § 410 - Administration (2025). Accessed 2026-11-04.
141. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation / Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation (16 TAC ch. 83; text via Cornell LII), 16 Tex. Admin. Code § 83.108 - Health and Safety Standards-Foot Spas, Foot Basins, and Spa Liners (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
142. California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology (16 CCR § 980.1; text via Cornell LII), Cal. Code Regs. Tit. 16, § 980.1 - Procedures for Cleaning and Disinfecting Whirlpool Footspas and Air-Jet Basins (2001-05-16). Accessed 2026-11-04.
143. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation / Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation (16 TAC ch. 83; text via Cornell LII), 16 Tex. Admin. Code § 83.106 - Health and Safety Standards-Manicure and Pedicure Services (2023-01-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
144. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Nail Care Products (FDA) (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
145. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation / Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation (16 TAC ch. 83; text via Cornell LII), 16 Tex. Admin. Code § 83.112 - Health and Safety Standards-Prohibited Products or Practices (2006-03-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
146. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Nail Salons (OSHA Health Hazards in Nail Salons) (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
147. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Stay Healthy and Safe While Giving Manicures and Pedicures: A Guide for Nail Salon Workers (OSHA 3542-09R 2025) (2025). Accessed 2026-11-04.
148. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA) (FDA) (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
149. New York Department of State (19 NYCRR; text via Cornell LII), N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 19 § 160.16 - Facilities: ancillary provisions (2016-10-03). Accessed 2026-11-04.
150. New York Department of State (19 NYCRR; text via Cornell LII), N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 19 § 160.9 - Bond or liability insurance (2015-12-23). Accessed 2026-11-04.
151. New York Department of State (19 NYCRR; text via Cornell LII), N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 19 § 160.10 - Posting requirements (2015-11-18). Accessed 2026-11-04.
152. New York Department of State (19 NYCRR; text via Cornell LII), N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 19 § 162.6 - Nail specialist trainee (2016-06-22). Accessed 2026-11-04.
153. New York State Senate (Consolidated Laws of New York, General Business Law), New York General Business Law § 406 - License application; procedure; requirements; temporary license (2015-10-30). Accessed 2026-11-04.
154. Arizona Legislature (Arizona Revised Statutes), A.R.S. 32-512. Nail technicians; applications; qualifications (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
155. California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology (reproducing Business and Professions Code), License Requirements (Board of Barbering and Cosmetology) (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
156. Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers (Ga. Comp. R. & Regs.; text via Cornell LII), Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. R. 240-17-.02 - Nail Care Curriculum (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
157. Illinois General Assembly (Illinois Compiled Statutes), 225 ILCS 410/3C-2 (Barber, Cosmetology, Esthetics, Hair Braiding, and Nail Technology Act of 1985) (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
158. Nevada Legislature (Nevada Revised Statutes), NRS Chapter 644A, Cosmetology (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
159. New York Department of State (19 NYCRR; text via Cornell LII), N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 19 § 162.1 - Nail specialty (2020-11-10). Accessed 2026-11-04.
160. North Carolina General Assembly (General Statutes), North Carolina General Statutes Chapter 88B, Cosmetic Art (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
161. Ohio Legislative Service Commission (Ohio Revised Code), Ohio Revised Code Section 4713.28, Qualifications for examination (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
162. South Carolina Legislature (South Carolina Code of Laws), South Carolina Code of Laws Title 40, Chapter 13, Cosmetologists, Estheticians and Nail Technicians (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
163. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation / Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation (16 TAC ch. 83; text via Cornell LII), 16 Tex. Admin. Code § 83.202 - Technical Requirements-Curriculum Standards (on or after August 1, 2023) (2022-12-23). Accessed 2026-11-04.
164. Virginia Board for Barbers and Cosmetology (Virginia Administrative Code, via Virginia General Assembly LIS), 18VAC41-20-200. General requirements (Barbering and Cosmetology Regulations) (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
165. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation / Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation (16 TAC ch. 83; text via Cornell LII), 16 Tex. Admin. Code § 83.200 - License Requirements-Individuals (on or after September 1, 2023) (2023-09-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
166. Upmetrics (business-plan software seller), How to Start a Nail Salon Business (2024-02-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
167. Joyee Nails (press-on nail seller), The US Nail Market in 2026: $5.3 Billion, and Press-On Nails Are Its Fastest-Growing Segment (2026-03-26). Accessed 2026-11-04.
168. Hawaii Public Radio, It's All About Nails (2013-08-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
169. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), 2012-2013 Industry Statistics (NAILS Big Book), transcription hosted by Readkong (2012). Accessed 2026-11-04.
170. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), Note to Spa Owners: Nails Rock (2004-07-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
171. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), As I See It: Celebrate Regional Differences (2004-01-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
172. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), NAILS The Big Book 2014-2015, industry statistics (PDF copy hosted on a retailer's CDN) (2014). Accessed 2026-11-04.
173. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), Why It's Important to Know Your Industry Numbers (2017-03-21). Accessed 2026-11-04.
174. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), NAILS The Big Book 2018-2019, industry statistics (2018). Accessed 2026-11-04.
175. MarketResearch.com blog (John LaRosa), reporting Marketdata LLC (sells market reports), U.S. Nail Salons Industry Hurt by Pandemic, but Demand Is Still There (2021-09-22). Accessed 2026-11-04.
176. IBISWorld (sells industry reports), Personal Waxing & Nail Salons in the US - Market Size, Industry Analysis (2025-09). Accessed 2026-11-04.
177. Global Market Insights (sells market reports), Nail Salon Market Size (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
178. Global Market Insights (sells market reports), Nail Care Products Market Size (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
179. Grand View Research (sells market reports), Nail Polish Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report (2026). Accessed 2026-11-04.
180. Matador Network (travel and culture site), Why Vietnamese Americans rule the nail salon scene (2014-01-16). Accessed 2026-11-04.
181. UCLA Asian American Studies Center and LEAP (Craig Trinh-Phat Huynh), in 'Reframing the Immigration Debate', Vietnamese-Owned Manicure Businesses in Los Angeles (1996). Accessed 2026-11-04.
182. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), The Asian Influence (1997-03-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.
183. Journal of Community Health (Quach et al., Northern California Cancer Center), A preliminary survey of Vietnamese nail salon workers in Alameda County, California (2008-10). Accessed 2026-11-04.
184. ILR Review (Federman, Harrington and Krynski), abstract on EconPapers, Vietnamese Manicurists: Are Immigrants Displacing Natives or Finding New Nails to Polish? (2006). Accessed 2026-11-04.
185. UCLA Labor Center with the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (university and advocacy groups), Nail Files: A Study of Nail Salon Workers and Industry in the United States, key findings (2018-11). Accessed 2026-11-04.
186. UCLA Labor Center with the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (university and advocacy groups), Nail Files California: A Study of Nail Salon Workers and Their Industry (2024-03-18). Accessed 2026-11-04.
187. 8Asians (Asian American collaborative blog), Tippi Hedren Responsible for Vietnamese Nail Salons (2011-07-06). Accessed 2026-11-04.
188. NAILS Magazine (trade press, Bobit Business Media), The Vietnamese-American Nail Industry: 40 Years of Legacy (2015-12-30). Accessed 2026-11-04.
189. Beverly Boy Productions (video production company selling to salons), Video Production for Hair & Nail Salons (2025-10-08). Accessed 2026-11-04.
190. EyeView Digital (video production and testing vendor; sold the videos it tested), EyeView - The new "Conversion" game (2008-12-04). Accessed 2026-11-04.
191. EyeView Digital (video production and testing vendor; sold the videos it tested), UMOO - a prime beef example of EyeView's success (2009-02-10). Accessed 2026-11-04.
192. EyeView Digital (video production and testing vendor; sold the videos it tested), Another video conversion success story (2009-11-10). Accessed 2026-11-04.
193. EyeView Digital (video production and testing vendor; sold the videos it tested), Case study: TutorVista (2009). Accessed 2026-11-04.
194. EyeView Digital (video production and testing vendor; sold the videos it tested), Making Video Accountable (EyeView white paper) (2010). Accessed 2026-11-04.
195. Unbounce (landing-page software seller), The benefits of using video on landing pages (2010-08). Accessed 2026-11-04.
196. Unbounce (landing-page software seller; analysis of its own customers' pages), Video on landing pages means more conversions, right? Wrong. Here's why (2021-08-26). Accessed 2026-11-04.
197. DTK Nail Supply (nail product seller), Do You Need a UV/LED Lamp for Gel Nails? Complete Guide (2026-04-13). Accessed 2026-11-04.
198. RadTech conference proceedings (Doug Schoon, Schoon Scientific; co-chair, PBA Nail Manufacturers Council safety committee), UV Curing in Nail Salons (2012-05-01). Accessed 2026-11-04.

Update policy and change log

We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is February 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.

• Nov 4, 2026: First published with 564 figures from 94 publishers, each checked against its original source.