A student working on a client with a fine brush while an instructor leans in to watch, at a beauty school station

50 states and DC, read from the boards

Cosmetology schools, checked against their state board license

Cosmetology programs have no programmatic accreditor. The license your state board holds on a school is what makes your hours count toward the exam, so that is what every program here is checked against.

Find schools in your state See what the work pays

What does accreditation mean for a cosmetology school?

Accreditation for a cosmetology school means the institution has been accredited, not the program. Nursing and social work each have a programmatic accreditor that reviews the course itself. Cosmetology programs do not. NACCAS accredits schools as institutions, so a school can be accredited while the program inside it has been reviewed by nobody.

What decides whether your hours count is the license the state board holds on that school. Hours banked at a school that was not licensed at the time do not count toward the exam, and no accreditation badge changes that. So this site reads the board's own license file for every school it lists, and says plainly where a board publishes nothing that would support a ranking.

How many hours do cosmetology programs take?

Cosmetology programs take between 1,000 and 2,000 clock hours, depending entirely on which state you train in. 24 of the 49 states that publish a single figure set it at 1,500, which makes that the default rather than the rule.

The floor is set in state law rather than by the schools: California requires 1,000 hours, and a board at the other end of the range requires 2,000 for the same license.

1,000 hours 7 states 7 states
1,200 hours 3 states 3 states
1,250 hours 3 states 3 states
1,500 hours 24 states 24 states
1,550 hours 3 states 3 states
1,600 hours 5 states 5 states
1,650 hours 1 state 1 state
1,800 hours 2 states 2 states
2,000 hours 1 state 1 state

Clock hours required for a cosmetologist license, by number of states (49 states publishing a single figure)

The spread matters more than the middle. Training in a 1,000 hour state and moving to a 1,600 hour state can leave you short by more than a term, and reciprocity is decided by the receiving board rather than by the school that taught you. Each state page carries its own board's rule, cited to the regulation.

Which cosmetology schools are ranked in your state?

Cosmetology programs are ranked here in 47 of the 51 jurisdictions, on the completion rates their own institutions report to the federal government through the College Scorecard. In the rest, the boards and the federal data together publish nothing that would support an order, so those states get a checked directory instead of a ranking. Inventing one would be easy and worthless.

Across all of them, 4,034 school records have been read from board files. Start with your state, or read how the ranking is built first.

Where can you find cosmetology schools in your state?

Every state has its own page: its board, its hour rule, and the schools that hold a current license.

What do cosmetology careers pay in 2026?

Cosmetology careers pay a median salary from $35,790 for a cosmetologist to $48,590 for a salon manager, on May 2025 BLS figures. The median is the least interesting number in that sentence: the top tenth of cosmetologists earns $71,190, roughly double it, because this is a commission and rebooking business rather than a salaried one.

Every wage figure on this site also leaves out the same people. Renting a chair makes a stylist self-employed, and the federal survey collects from employers, so booth renters and salon owners are outside it. Six roles are covered in full, with the range and the state detail, on the careers and salary pages.

Which cosmetology careers does this site cover?

Six roles, each with a career page covering the work and the license, and a salary page covering the pay. Medians are May 2025 BLS figures.

Career and salary pages for each role
Role	Median	Pages
cosmetologist	$35,790	How to become one · Salary
nail technician	$35,760	How to become one · Salary
salon manager	$48,590	How to become one · Salary
esthetician	$45,330	How to become one · Salary
barber	$38,210	How to become one · Salary
makeup artist	$97,150	How to become one · Salary

Common questions about cosmetology school

Hour rules below come from the state boards, and wage figures from the May 2025 BLS release.

Are cosmetology programs accredited?

Cosmetology programs are not accredited as programs; the school around them is accredited as an institution. No programmatic accreditor exists for cosmetology the way one does for nursing or social work, so an accreditation badge speaks to the school as a business rather than to the course you would enroll in. What decides whether your hours count toward the licensing exam is the state board license on that school.

How many hours do cosmetology programs take in 2026?

Cosmetology programs take between 1,000 and 2,000 clock hours depending on the state, and 24 states set it at 1,500. The hours are set by the state board, not by the school, so the same program length can leave you licensable in one state and short in the next.

What happens if a cosmetology school loses its license?

Hours banked at a school that was not licensed at the time do not count toward the state exam. That is the single most expensive thing that can go wrong in this field, and it is why every school on this site is checked against the license file of the board that regulates it rather than against its own marketing.

Where does the data on this site come from?

State board license files and regulations, read from each of the 51 boards directly. Hour requirements are cited to the board's own rule on each state page.
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. National, state and metro wages and employment for all six occupations.
College Scorecard, US Department of Education. Completion rates, which are what the state rankings are built on.