Queensland regulates salons through the Public Health (Infection Control for Personal Appearance Services) Act 2003 (opens in a new tab), whose stated purpose is to minimise the risk of infection from personal appearance services. The Act treats hairdressing (cutting, styling, colouring, treating or shaving hair) and beauty therapy, which it says includes hair removal with hot or cold wax, as non-higher risk. Higher risk means a skin penetration procedure where bleeding or the release of other body fluids is expected: tattooing, body piercing other than closed ear or nose piercing, scarring and implants. Brisbane City Council (opens in a new tab) says no licence is needed for cutting, styling and colouring, or for waxing, nail sculpting, electrolysis and applying cosmetics, but those services still have to follow Queensland Health's infection control guidelines, now the 2024 edition (opens in a new tab), which replaced the 2013 one. Council may inspect a hairdresser or nail salon after a complaint or as part of an inspection program. That's a different arrangement from NSW, where only qualified hairdressers, or apprentices they supervise, can do hair for a fee, and NSW Health (opens in a new tab) says a salon that waxes must register with its council; our Sydney salon page sets that out.
The licence applies once a salon branches into higher-risk work. Brisbane City Council licenses those businesses, says employees must hold the infection control competency HLTINF005, and expects the premises to meet Mandatory Part 5.2 of the Queensland Development Code. The neighbouring councils follow the same Act but describe the line in their own words. Moreton Bay (opens in a new tab) puts cosmetic tattooing and semi-permanent make-up under tattooing, while hairdressing, waxing and artificial nails stay outside the licence. Logan (opens in a new tab) adds cosmetic injectables to the services that need one. A salon in Springwood, North Lakes or Cleveland deals with its own council, not Brisbane's, so the council your address sits in is the one to ask before a new service goes on the menu.
Getting clients to the door has changed over the past two years. The Brisbane Metro (opens in a new tab) runs two routes: M1 from Eight Mile Plains through Upper Mt Gravatt, Griffith University, Holland Park West, Greenslopes, Buranda and Mater Hill to the city and Roma Street, and M2 from UQ Lakes past Boggo Road and the PA Hospital, through the city, then on to Normanby, QUT Kelvin Grove, Herston and the RBWH. Council says weekday services come every five minutes from about 6am to 6pm, and the metro runs around the clock from Friday evening to Sunday evening. Translink's 50 cent flat fare (opens in a new tab) covers trains, buses, Brisbane City ferries and on-demand services across South East Queensland, though not Airtrain. Bulimba has two CityCat wharves, on Oxford Street and Apollo Road, and Westfield Chermside on Gympie Road has its own bus station where many routes start and finish. A salon near any of these can name the stop and the walk instead of leaving clients to work it out from a map pin.
Some details of the calendar belong to the council area too. The show holiday list (opens in a new tab) gives the City of Brisbane its Ekka holiday on 12 August 2026, two days after Logan, Moreton Bay, Redland and the Scenic Rim, and puts Ipswich's on 15 May. Home studios are another council matter. Brisbane City Plan 2014 has a home-based business code (opens in a new tab), and council says a home business that meets all of its acceptable outcomes doesn't need a development application. If yours doesn't, settle that before the website starts inviting clients round; the site can show the suburb and send the street address with the booking confirmation.
We're an Adelaide team and work with Brisbane businesses by phone and email. Queensland stays on standard time all year, so Adelaide is half an hour behind you in winter and half an hour ahead from October to April. Our client in Greater Brisbane is Queensland Dance & Performing Arts in Thorneside, on the bayside. It isn't a salon, and the next section is clear about that.
