Salon & Spa Fit-Out Cost Philippines 2026: Plumbing, Power, Permits

The mirrors and chairs are what customers see. The drains behind the shampoo bowls and the circuits behind the mirrors are what decide whether the salon works. Illustrative photo.

Short answer: on AEDO's 2026 planning rates, a 60 sqm streetfront hair salon with six styling stations, two shampoo bowls, a new toilet and new split-type aircon comes to about ₱1.46M to ₱2.50M at a mid-range finish, roughly ₱24,000 to ₱42,000 per sqm. That is above a plain office fit-out of the same size, and the reason is the services, not the mirrors. A salon packs a row of sinks with hot water, a dryer circuit at every chair, and a lot of heat into a small unit. A massage spa adds something most owners don't expect: the DOH implementing rules for PD 856 Chapter XIII set the minimum room size, the number of showers and toilets per massage table, the lighting level and the ventilation. Those are drawn on the plan before the sanitary inspector ever visits.

The calculator below takes your shop type, floor area and station count and gives a line-item cost band, the aircon tonnage, and a planning count of electrical circuits. The sections after it explain where each number comes from.

1. What Drives the Cost

Published 2026 fit-out bands for Metro Manila run about ₱10,000 to ₱20,000 per sqm for a basic refresh, ₱20,000 to ₱35,000 mid-range and ₱35,000 to ₱45,000+ high-end. Those come from office fit-out guides (Alphabuild and J.I. Raymundo Builders, which our clinic fit-out guide covers in detail). A salon lands at the upper half of its band or above it, for the same reason a clinic does: a lot of plumbing and power per square metre.

The calculator builds the cost the way we would price it, from the room outward:

The general interior rate sits below the published full fit-out bands on purpose, because the salon-specific plumbing, power and cooling are priced as their own lines. Add them back and the total per square metre lands where the published bands say a services-heavy fit-out should. The mall uplift is the same 15 to 25 percent we use on restaurant and retail fit-outs.

Keep equipment out of this budget: styling and barber chairs, shampoo units with their chairs, hood dryers, steamers, nail tables bought ready-made, massage beds and sauna cabinets. Suppliers quote those. What the fit-out has to get right is the point where each one plugs in and drains out.

2. Shampoo-Station Plumbing: Traps, Hair and Vents

Hair in the drain is the single most common complaint we hear from salon owners, usually six months after opening, when the branch line under the floor has closed up. Here is what the Revised National Plumbing Code of the Philippines actually says, read from the code text:

• Every fixture gets its own trap. Section 1001.1: each plumbing fixture, except those with integral traps, shall be separately trapped by an approved water-seal trap, and not more than one trap is permitted on a trap arm.
• The seal depth. Section 1005: each trap shall have a water seal of not less than 51 mm and not more than 102 mm.
• No S-traps, no double traps. Section 1004: "S", bell and crown-vented traps are prohibited, no trap may depend on movable parts for its seal, and no fixture shall be double trapped.
• Short tailpiece. Section 1001.4: the tailpiece from any fixture shall not exceed 0.6 m.
• A vent at every trap. Sections 901 and 1002.1 require each trap to be protected against siphonage and back-pressure by a vent. Section 1002.2 and Table 10-1 set the maximum developed length of the trap arm from the trap weir to the vent: 0.76 m for a 32 mm arm, 1.07 m for 38 mm, 1.52 m for 51 mm and 1.83 m for 76 mm, at a slope of 2% (20 mm per metre), and never less than two pipe diameters.
• A trap you can clean. Section 1003.1 says every trap, except one for an interceptor, shall be self-cleaning, and Section 1003.3 that the trap must drain the fixture rapidly and be the same size as its trap arm.

What the code does not have is a line for a shampoo bowl. Table 7-2 (minimum trap diameters and drainage fixture units) lists a single lavatory at 32 mm and 1 DFU, wash basins in sets at 38 mm and 2 DFU, and a service sink at 51 mm and 3 DFU, but no salon fixture. And there is no clause titled "hair interceptor". The nearest thing is Section 1008.1: interceptors shall be provided when, in the judgment of the Administrative Authority, they are necessary for liquid wastes containing solids or other ingredients harmful to the drainage system, and Section 1008.5 says every interceptor must be readily accessible and shown on the building plans.

So the design is ours to justify. AEDO's practice, not a code value: a 38 mm trap at minimum on a single shampoo bowl and 51 mm on the shared branch under a row of bowls, a removable strainer at every bowl outlet, and a trap with a cleanout that staff can reach from the front without taking the cabinet apart. If you prefer a manufactured hair interceptor under each bowl, it becomes that fixture's trap. Don't install a P-trap below it as well, because that is the double trapping Section 1004 prohibits.

Two more things we check on every salon. First, the floor. In a condo or mall podium, the branch drain usually has to run in the slab or under a raised floor to reach the building stack, and a row of bowls on an island far from the stack often can't meet the trap-arm distances without a vent riser in an awkward place. Put the shampoo row near the wet core if the unit allows it. Second, don't let the shampoo drain share a line with anything carrying grease. If the salon has a pantry sink, that one is a separate branch. Our National Plumbing Code guide covers the drain and vent sizing tables in more depth.

3. Hot Water

A shampoo bowl without warm water is a complaint on the first day. For a hair salon or barbershop, no code sets a temperature. It's a comfort call, and the choice is between one storage heater feeding the whole shampoo row and a small instantaneous heater per bowl. A storage heater gives steady temperature when several bowls run at once and uses one circuit. Instantaneous heaters need no tank but each one needs its own heavy circuit, which is where small salons get caught by the panel. The calculator assumes one heater per three bowls, each on its own circuit, as a planning figure.

For a massage spa there is a code figure. The DOH implementing rules for PD 856 Chapter XIII, Section 6.1.1, require handwashing facilities with hot water of at least 48.9 °C (120 °F), and Section 6.2.2 requires hot and cold running water. Plan the heater and its piping for that, and keep the pipe run from heater to basin short, or the water arrives lukewarm and the inspector's thermometer says so.

4. Dryers, Irons and Steamers: the Circuit Count

The fastest way to trip a salon's main breaker is four stylists blow-drying at once on a panel that was sized for a boutique. The arithmetic is simple enough to do yourself. Current is power divided by voltage, so a 2,000 W dryer draws about 8.7 A at 230 V (2,000 ÷ 230). Flat irons, curling irons and facial steamers add smaller loads on the same outlets. Two dryers on one 20 A circuit is already about 17.4 A before anything else is plugged in.

That is why AEDO plans salons this way. These are planning rules, not code values:

• Styling and barber stations: we load a 20 A branch circuit to about 16 A in planning. At 2,000 W per dryer that means one station per circuit; at 1,600 W or less, two stations can share. Use the dryer's nameplate, not the box.
• Nail stations and massage rooms: UV or LED lamps, e-files, towel warmers and table extraction fans are small loads, so we plan one circuit per four stations or rooms.
• Water heaters and aircon: one circuit each, always. An instantaneous shower heater is a dedicated circuit on its own.
• Lighting and general outlets: one lighting circuit per 50 sqm and one general outlet circuit per 40 sqm, plus one for exhaust fans.
• Spares: about 20% spare ways on the panel, because every salon adds a chair or a steamer within a year.

The actual circuit design, wire sizes, breaker ratings and demand calculation belong to the Philippine Electrical Code, applied and signed by a registered electrical practitioner under RA 7920. What the planning count tells you early is whether the unit's existing panel and service can take it. In a mall or condo, the landlord allots a fixed load per unit, and a salon often needs more than a retail allotment. Ask for the allotted kVA before you sign the lease, and see our electrical service sizing guide for how service capacity is worked out.

5. Aircon and Exhaust, Including Nail-Salon Fumes

Salons are hot rooms. Every dryer running is a small heater pointed into the space, on top of the people and the lighting. The calculator starts from the retail allowance our aircon tonnage guide uses (700 BTU/hr per sqm plus 550 BTU/hr per person), adds dryer heat at 30% of the connected dryer wattage as an AEDO diversity allowance, and converts at 12,000 BTU/hr per TR. The heat-load calculation by your mechanical designer replaces this; the planning figure is for the budget and the panel.

Nail salons need exhaust, not just cooling. Aircon recirculates the room air, so solvent vapour from polish, removers and acrylic liquids stays in the room unless something takes it out. We did not find a Philippine code that sets a ventilation rate specific to nail salons, so we point owners to the US OSHA guide for nail salon workers (OSHA 3542). It calls ventilation the best way to lower the level of chemicals in the salon, and says to keep the exhaust system on, pull fresh air in at one end and push it out the other, change the charcoal filters on ventilated tables at least monthly, and use local extraction at the work area. The guide reports chemical levels during acrylic removal of over 826 ppm with the ventilation off, dropping below 12.4 ppm with it running. That difference is the business case for a proper exhaust duct.

In practice: a ducted exhaust to the outside with the fan at the discharge end, a makeup air path so the door isn't the only inlet, and a downdraft or ventilated table at each nail station. In a mall, the exhaust route and discharge point need the landlord's approval, and some malls only allow a connection to their own exhaust riser, which dictates the fan size.

6. Massage Spas: the DOH Room Rules

A massage spa is the one salon-type business where the national sanitation rules set physical requirements you draw on the plan. The chain is PD 856 (the Code on Sanitation) Chapter XIII, Sections 59 to 62, and the DOH Implementing Rules and Regulations of Chapter XIII, adopted 2 October 1996. PD 856 Section 61 already requires massage rooms to be adequately ventilated, fitted with a sliding curtain at the entrance and a clean massage table, and handwashing, bath and toilet facilities to be available. The IRR puts numbers on it:

Two items in that table catch owners who are converting a unit that was fitted out for something else. The one shower and one toilet per five tables rule means a ten-bed spa needs two showers and two toilets before it opens, which may be more wet rooms than the unit's floor drains and stack can serve. And no locks on massage room doors is easy to miss when a designer specifies standard door sets. The calculator applies the shower, toilet and handwashing minimums automatically when you pick "Massage spa".

The same Sec. 5.5.4 also gives an aircon rule of "1.50 horse power (6,000 BTU/hr)" per 50 m³ of room volume. We quote it as written, but the horsepower and the BTU figure in it don't agree with each other, so we size spa cooling by heat load like any other room and use the rule only as a floor to check against.

What changed since 1996? DOH Administrative Order No. 2010-0034 (10 December 2010) revised the implementing rules for massage clinics and sauna establishments. Reading its text, it reorganised the licensing of massage therapists (the Committee of Examiners for Massage Therapy, examinations, registration and practice) and did not restate the 1996 structural and sanitary-facility sections. Its repealing clause only repeals rules inconsistent with it. We therefore treat the 1996 facility rules above as current, and we still ask the city or municipal health office for its inspection checklist at the start of design, because it is that office's EHS inspection form that decides the sanitary permit.

7. Permits: Sanitary, Fire, Business and the Landlord

The usual order is landlord approval, then the building permit for the fit-out, then the occupancy or use clearance, then the sanitary permit and FSIC that feed the business permit. Your LGU may shuffle it. The list:

• Landlord's fit-out approval. In a mall or commercial building, the tenant fit-out manual comes first: drawing submission, accredited contractor, bond, working hours, and rules on where you may tap drains, power and exhaust. Our tenant fit-out requirements guide covers what landlords typically ask for.
• Building permit for the fit-out. New partitions, plumbing, electrical and mechanical work go through the Office of the Building Official. See our commercial fit-out permit guide. If the unit was a different use before, check whether a change of occupancy applies.
• Sanitary permit. PD 856 Section 58 covers "tonsorial and beauty establishments", defined as barber shops, beauty parlors, hairdressing and manicuring establishments and figure slendering salons. They need a sanitary permit from the local health authority before operating, and no one may serve customers without a health certificate from the local health authority. Massage clinics and saunas need theirs under Section 60, and the 1996 IRR (Sec. 3.2) adds that any extension, additional construction or alteration requires a new sanitary permit. It is valid for one year and ends on 31 December (Sec. 3.5).
• Fire Safety Inspection Certificate. The 2019 Revised IRR of the Fire Code (RA 9514), Division 3 on classification of occupancy, lists "massage parlors, beauty parlors, barbershops of less than fifty (50) occupants" as business occupancies. Section 10.2.16.3 then requires a fire alarm system in business occupancies of two or more storeys above exit discharge, 50 or more occupants above or below it, or 300 or more in total, and a manual fire alarm system for business occupancies below those thresholds. Section 10.2.16.2 allows a single exit for a room or area with fewer than 100 occupants if it discharges directly outside and total travel is no more than 30 m. See our FSIC guide and our egress guide for the rest.
• Business permit from the city or municipality, which collects the sanitary permit and FSIC.
• Accessibility. If the space is open to the public and the building has to provide accessible facilities under BP 344, the toilet you build or rebuild may need to be an accessible one. Check the rules in our BP 344 toilet dimensions guide before you fix the wet core.

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