Wolverhampton has been named the best city in the UK for highly rated beauty salons, with 84% of salons in this area receiving ratings of 4.5 or above, found a study by New Nordic, which used data collated from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), booking platform Treatwell and travel site TripAdvisor to collate the results.
The West Midlands city not only boasts high ratings for the majority of its salons, but also has one of the best salon-to-person ratios in the UK, with a beauty salon for every 1,387 people, the report found.
Glasgow in Scotland placed second on the list of cities, with businesses in this area also holding ratings of 4.5 or higher for more than a third of its salons (35.9%), while Liverpool placed third overall, with 35.2% of salons having a rating of 4.5 or above. The area also narrowly missed the top spot for best salon-to-person rating, with a salon for every 1,197 people.
On the other side of the ranking, Southampton has one of the worst salon-to-person ratios, with one salon for every 5,074 people, unlike neighbouring city Portsmouth which ranked ninth with a salon for every 1,393 people.
Cardiff and Nottingham were the bottom two when it came to salon rating, with just 3.1% of Cardiff beauty salons rating more than 4.5 and only 8.8% in Nottingham, the report found.
Top 10 UK cities for beauty salons:
| Rank | City | People Per Salon | % with rating > 4.5 |
| 1 | Wolverhampton | 1,387 | 83.8% |
| 2 | Glasgow | 1,140 | 35.9% |
| 3 | Liverpool | 1,197 | 35.2% |
| 4 | Edinburgh | 1,451 | 48.7% |
| 5 | Manchester | 1,580 | 51.7% |
| 6 | Leeds | 1,495 | 38.1% |
| 7 | Huddersfield | 1,608 | 46.4% |
| 8 | Birmingham | 1,714 | 29.4% |
| 9 | Portsmouth | 1,393 | 9.3% |
| 10 | Sheffield | 2,085 | 12.6% |
“Online ratings are essential for helping local businesses thrive as people will use them to help decide on somewhere new to try, especially for salons,” said Amy Loader, sales and marketing manager at New Nordic.
According to the ONS, there has been an 8.3% increase in the number of salons on the high street compared to 2018, with a total of nearly 45,000 – an average of one salon for every 1,488 people.