Barbering and cosmetology establishments in Texas
Texas licenses this trade at state level through the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, so one search covers the whole state. This page holds 71,564 licenses, copied from the TDLR file published 2026-10-22.
Built from the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation file published . Every answer here states the date it is speaking from, and TDLR's own lookup is where a check is confirmed. Barbering and cosmetology establishments only.
What this file says about itself
Every figure here is as of 2026-10-22, the day TDLR published the file — not as of today. That is deliberate: a count of current licenses recomputed on each page view is a different number every day and a wrong one the moment the refresh stops.
- 71,564licenses in the file
- 57,99681% of the file — still unexpired on that date
- 13,56819% of the file — past their expiry date on that date
- 5,094still live, but due to expire within the following 90 days
That last figure is the reason a license check has a shelf life. 5,094 of these licenses lapse within three months of the file’s own date unless they are renewed, and a printout of this page taken today can be wrong about any of them by the time the work starts.
TDLR’s published file carries no status column. There is no field in it saying active, suspended or revoked, so standing on this page is read from the expiry date — and an expiry date cannot know about a suspension. A license can be suspended with years left on it. (TDLR’s own record page does print a status; it is the bulk file this page is built from that does not.) TDLR’s own lookup is the only thing that can tell you which.
Establishment class
A TDLR establishment licence is not one thing. The file records a licence type — what TDLR issued — and a class code beside it, and the two do not restate each other. Neither of them says anything about who is working in the shop.
The class is the establishment, not the person working in it
Every licence on this page is an establishment licence. The cosmetologist, barber, esthetician or manicurist working there holds a separate licence of their own, and none of those are on this page — a licensed operator in an unlicensed shop, and an unlicensed operator in a licensed one, both look the same from here.
A barbershop is in this file, under a cosmetology class
TDLR publishes this file as “Barbering & Cosmetology Establishments”, and its own search still offers Barber Shops and Cosmetology Salons as separate license types. The file does not carry that distinction: it records eight establishment classes and no barber class, and its own key defines a `BS` — Barber Shop — code that appears on none of the 71,296 licences. So a barbershop found here is not a shop in the wrong register, and a barbershop not found here has not been shown to be unlicensed by this page alone.
The class does not follow the licence type
The two columns disagree by design: all 170 Mobile Establishments carry the same `CS` as the 35,592 Full Service Establishments, so the file records 35,762 `CS` licences against 35,592 of that type. Read the licence type for what TDLR issued and the class for what its key calls it; neither one is a restatement of the other.
The code beside each license is TDLR’s own. TDLR — License Listing File Format defines six of them under its own heading Cosmo Salon. It defines no others, and the two this register uses most after those are not among them, so they are printed as TDLR wrote them:
| Code | What TDLR’s key calls it | Licenses | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
CS | Beauty Salon | 35,775 | 50% |
ME | TDLR recorded this code and its own key does not define it. | 21,737 | 30% |
FM | Facial/Manicure Salon | 7,617 | 11% |
FS | Facial Salon | 4,861 | 7% |
MS | Manicure Salon | 841 | 1% |
EL | TDLR recorded this code and its own key does not define it. | 648 | under 1% |
HS | Hair Weaving/Braiding Salon | 85 | under 1% |
ME and EL are on 22,124 of these licences and TDLR’s key defines neither, so this page does not say what they mean. Its key also defines BS — Barber Shop — which no licence in this file carries, and WS — Wig Salon — which none carries either. Each share is rounded to the nearest whole percent and the small ones read under 1%, so that column does not add to exactly 100; the counts beside it add to 71,564, and they are the figures to read.
Where these licenses are held
TDLR records a county against each license, and this file names 247 distinct ones, plus 48 licenses it records as held out of state — held by someone licensed in Texas who is not based in it. The county appears beside every result because two holders often share a name and the county is what tells them apart. It is also what a place word in your query is checked against — but only a word the name did not account for, and only once another word has matched the name. So the county column alone will not find anybody: a county typed on its own returns only the businesses and holders whose name carries that word, while a county typed beside a trade returns the holders in it.
| County | Licenses | Share |
|---|---|---|
| HARRIS | 11,502 | 16% |
| DALLAS | 7,304 | 10% |
| TARRANT | 6,602 | 9% |
| BEXAR | 4,862 | 7% |
| COLLIN | 3,775 | 5% |
| TRAVIS | 3,165 | 4% |
| DENTON | 2,089 | 3% |
| HIDALGO | 1,993 | 3% |
| FORT BEND | 1,985 | 3% |
| WILLIAMSON | 1,834 | 3% |
| EL PASO | 1,626 | 2% |
| MONTGOMERY | 1,564 | 2% |
The twelve largest of 247 counties in the file. The rest are in the register and searchable; they are not listed because a table of 247 rows is not something anyone reads.
What a result here means
It means the TDLR file of 2026-10-22 recorded that license with that expiry date. It does not mean the license is current right now: a license can be suspended or revoked between the board’s files, and this copy would not know. That is why every result links to TDLR’s own lookup, and why you should use it before hiring anyone.
If a name is not here
A license issued after 2026-10-22 will not be in this copy. This is TDLR’s establishment file: the licence held by the salon, barbershop or booth, not by anyone working in it. TDLR licenses cosmetologists, barbers, estheticians and manicurists separately, and none of them are on this page.
Texas licenses electricians and air conditioning contractors at state level, but most general contractors and roofers are not licensed by the state at all, so there is no state record to check. For those, ask your city or county building department.
What Texas licenses, and what it does not — and what a license covers, which is less than most people hiring a contractor assume.