SafePedicures Research — Texas licensing data

Salon suites are 30.3% of Texas cosmetology establishment licenses — and over half in some counties

30.3%

21,606 of 71,213 Texas cosmetology establishment licenses are the Mini Establishment class

A "Mini Establishment" is TDLR's license class for "a room or suite (leased or rented) inside of a barbering or cosmetology establishment" — enclosed with walls, separate from common areas, and "operated independently from the gallery-establishment." In plain terms: the salon-suite model, where individual practitioners run their own licensed business inside a host location.

Statewide, that model now accounts for 30.3% of all establishment licenses on the roster. The geography is dramatic: in Collin County it's 54.7% — more than half of every licensed establishment in the county — while in Hidalgo County it's just 4.1%.

Salon-suite share by county

Collin
54.7%
Tarrant
50.6%
Denton
46.8%
Williamson
43.6%
Fort Bend
42.4%
Dallas
39.9%
Montgomery
37.5%
Bexar
36.2%
Travis
32.4%
Galveston
29.3%
Harris
29%
Lubbock
28.7%

Mini Establishment share of all cosmetology establishment licenses; counties with at least 500 establishment licenses.

Full table

CountyEstablishment licensesMini EstablishmentsShare
Collin County3,7572,05554.7%
Tarrant County6,6263,35650.6%
Denton County2,04695846.8%
Williamson County1,78677843.6%
Fort Bend County2,01285342.4%
Dallas County7,3672,93839.9%
Montgomery County1,54758037.5%
Bexar County4,8131,74136.2%
Travis County3,1831,03132.4%
Galveston County83924629.3%
Harris County11,4913,33029%
Lubbock County84624328.7%
Comal County53414527.2%
Bell County82620124.3%
Brazoria County83818121.6%
McLennan County58610517.9%
Smith County59010517.8%
Nueces County74312817.2%
El Paso County1,63721413.1%
Jefferson County5395910.9%
Cameron County803384.7%
Hidalgo County1,985824.1%

Why it matters for consumers: in a suite-heavy market, the license posted in your technician's room may belong to their independent business, not the host salon whose name is on the door. Each is separately licensed — and separately responsible.

What this data does — and doesn't — tell you. These figures count license records on the state roster. They say nothing about cleanliness, inspection results, or safety — Texas publishes no establishment-level inspection or disciplinary data in this dataset. A licensed establishment is not certified safe, and an expired license on the roster does not mean a business is operating unlawfully: it may have closed, relocated, or renewed after the state generated the file. This dataset has no issue dates, so these figures are a snapshot of composition — they cannot say whether the suite share is growing, and we do not claim it is.

Methodology

Source: Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation (TDLR), "TDLR - All Licenses" open dataset, dataset 7358-krk7. TDLR last regenerated the dataset on 2026-07-16; we retrieved our snapshot on 2026-08-02. County populations: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 County Population Estimates (co-est2024-alldata.csv) (retrieved 2026-07-01).

Query logic:we downloaded every row whose license type is one of TDLR's cosmetology establishment classes (Full Service Establishment, Mini Establishment, Manicurist/Esthetician Establishment, Esthetician Establishment, Manicurist Establishment, Eyelash Extension Establishment, Mobile Establishment), kept the 71,213 rows with a parseable Texas business address (of 71,350 downloaded; 33 out-of-state and 104unparseable-address rows excluded), and computed all expiry figures against the dataset's own generation date. "Nail-specialty" means the Manicurist Establishment and Manicurist/Esthetician Establishment license classes. County analyses use TDLR business_county reconciled to Census county names; rows with blank or OUT OF STATE county are excluded from county tables (but included in statewide totals).

Limitations:

  • TDLR last regenerated this dataset on 2026-07-16; all "expired as of" figures are computed against that date, not the retrieval date (2026-08-02). A license shown as expired may have been renewed after the file was generated.
  • The dataset has no license-status field, no issue dates, and no disciplinary or inspection data. Nothing here measures cleanliness, inspection results, or safety.
  • An expired license on the roster does not mean the business is operating: it may have closed, relocated, or renewed after the file date. Texas allows late renewal (with higher fees) for up to three years after expiration.
  • Nail-specialty counts cover the Manicurist Establishment and Manicurist/Esthetician Establishment license classes only. Full Service Establishments may also offer nail services, so these figures undercount where nail services are available.
  • Counts are of licenses on the roster, not confirmed open businesses.

Every figure on this page is computed by scripts/research/analyze-tdlr.mjs from the committed snapshot data/research/tdlr-establishments-2026-08-02.json.gz— the analysis is re-runnable end to end. Cite as: "SafePedicures analysis of TDLR licensing data, 2026-08-02" with a link to this page.

Data update history

When we refresh the snapshot and a published figure changes, the change is recorded here with the prior value — numbers on these pages are never silently replaced.

Related

Compare with nail-salon density by county and how current Texas salon licenses are, or browse the Plano and Fort Worth directories — the two suite-heaviest metros where we publish per-salon license records.

← All SafePedicures research · Free pedicure safety checklist · How we build our listings