What in-house laundry actually costs your salon

The numbers most salon owners don't run

Most salon owners we talk to know what their towel pile looks like. Very few have actually added up what running those loads in-house costs them.

The water and detergent isn't the expensive part. The expensive part is who runs the machine — and what they aren't doing while it runs.

A realistic week

A small-to-mid Brisbane salon — say four stylists, busy diary — typically pushes through three to four loads of towels and capes per day. That's around 18 to 25 loads a week.

If a junior or front-of-house team member runs those loads, you're paying them to:

• Sort the bin
• Load the machine
• Switch to the dryer
• Fold and stack
• Restock the trolley

Conservatively, that's 25 to 40 minutes per load when you include the start, switch, and finish steps. Across 20 loads a week, you're looking at 8 to 13 paid hours going into laundry.

At a junior wage with on-costs (~$35–$45/hr loaded cost in 2026), that's $350 to $550+ a week of staff time spent in the back room instead of:

• Greeting clients
• Answering the phone (and converting bookings)
• Restocking and selling retail
• Helping move the next client through

What outsourced laundry actually costs

For the same 20 loads a week, The Washing Club is a flat $60 + GST for the first 2 loads, then $25 + GST per additional. That's roughly $510 + GST per week for 20 loads — and free pickup and delivery is included.

That lands somewhere between *line-ball* and *modestly cheaper* than your staff cost, depending on what you actually pay your junior. But the staff-hours analysis only counts one side of the ledger — the bigger payoff is what those 8 to 13 hours produce when they're spent on the front desk instead. Every booking taken, every retail product sold, every client greeted personally is revenue that doesn't show up in the laundry maths but absolutely shows up at the till.

The break-even isn't where you think it is

The maths only works if you're honest about what your team is doing during laundry hours. If your back of house is genuinely empty at those times — small salon, quiet weekday — in-house can make sense.

If your back of house is busy and people are juggling laundry around clients, you're paying twice: once in wages, once in lost front-of-house time. Once you count the revenue you give up — bookings missed at the phone, retail not sold, clients waiting — outsourcing usually pencils out.

Next step

Try a single week of pickups. Track what your team does with the recovered hours. Most operators we work with don't go back.

You can book a pickup here — first 2 loads is a flat $60 + GST, no contract, no payment required to book.