How to Make a Nail Price List for Instagram
Quick answer: Keep a nail price list to one screen. Group services into six or seven lines with a starting price each, add your deposit and soak-off policy, and set it in large plain text on a 4:5 graphic. Put it in a pinned post and a story highlight called Prices, and update it whenever your rates change.
The same message arrives four times a week. How much for a full set? Do you do infills? How much is removal? Each one takes two minutes to answer and about half of them go quiet the moment you reply with a number.
That silence usually is not rejection. It is a stranger finding out at the end of a conversation what they wanted to know before starting one.
Should nail techs post prices publicly?
Yes, for a reason that has nothing to do with fairness.
Hidden prices do not filter clients, they filter enquiries. The people who message anyway are a mix of ready-to-book clients and price shoppers, and you spend the same two minutes on both. Published prices flip that: the shoppers self-select out before they reach you, and the people who message have already accepted the number.
Booking friction is expensive in this industry. Zenoti's 2025 salon and spa survey found 69 percent of customers have abandoned a booking attempt because they could not easily reach a business or navigate its system, and that 73 percent of regulars would be more loyal to businesses with easier booking and communication. A price nobody can find is friction of exactly this kind.
The one honest counterargument is that publishing invites comparison with the cheap salon down the road. That comparison is happening regardless. What you control is whether they compare a bare number or a number sitting next to a photo of your best work.
What goes on the list, and what does not?
Six or seven lines. Not twenty.
Treating the price list as a full catalogue of everything you can do is what kills it. Nineteen services in tiny type gets one glance and no reading. Group instead into the categories clients actually think in: full set, infill, gel manicure, BIAB, pedicure, nail art, removal.
Use starting prices where the work varies. "Gel-X full set from £45" is honest and stops the conversation where a flat number would create an argument later. Say what the starting price includes and what pushes it up, in one short line rather than a paragraph.
Three things belong on the graphic that people leave off, and each one prevents a specific awkward conversation.
Your deposit, and whether it comes off the total. Your soak-off and removal charge, including whether it differs for another tech's work. And your late or no-show policy in one line, which you will be glad of the first time you need to point at it. If your pricing itself needs work before you publish it, how to price nail services is the place to start.
How do you design it so it reads on a phone?
Assume it is being read one-handed on a bus, on a cracked screen.
Set the graphic at 4:5 portrait, the tallest format Instagram displays in full, and keep everything inside a comfortable margin so nothing clips when the platform crops it for a story highlight cover or a grid thumbnail.
Type size is where most price lists fail. If the text is not readable when the image is the size of a postage stamp, it needs to be bigger or there needs to be less of it. Thin script fonts, gold text on cream, and low-contrast pastels all look elegant on a laptop and vanish on a phone in daylight.
Keep to one font, two sizes, and high contrast. Dark text on a light background beats the reverse for anything with numbers in it. Left-align the service names and right-align the prices so the eye can run down a single column of figures.
And put your booking link or booking instruction at the bottom of the graphic itself, because a price list without a next step just leaves people admiring your rates.
Where should the price list actually live?
In more than one place, because people arrive from different directions.
| Where it lives | How fast a client finds it | Effort to update | Stops the "how much?" DMs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Story highlight called Prices | Instant, visible on your profile | Re-upload the graphic | Mostly |
| Pinned carousel post | Fast, one tap from the grid | Re-post, keep the old one deleted | Yes, and it collects saves |
| Link in bio to a booking page | Two taps, and some drop off | Easy, always current | Partly |
| Only in DMs on request | Never | None | No |
The highlight and the pinned post are the two that matter, and they cost nothing to keep. Name the highlight "Prices" in plain language rather than something decorative, because people scan highlight covers for a word, not a symbol. Instagram highlights for nail techs covers the full set worth keeping, and link in bio for nail techs covers making the booking step short once they have decided.
Should you put photos of your work in it?
Yes, and this is the part that turns a price list into a booking tool.
A text-only price list asks someone to judge value with nothing to judge it against. Forty-five pounds means nothing on its own. Forty-five pounds next to a photograph of a flawless BIAB set means something immediately, and the same number next to a dim yellow photo means something worse than nothing.
The practical version is a carousel. Slide one is the price list itself. Slides two to five are your strongest set from each priced category, captioned with the service name and price. Now the person deciding sees the exact work the number buys.
That only works if the photos are consistent with each other. A carousel where the gel-X slide is bright and the pedicure slide is orange undermines the professionalism the graphic is trying to project, which is the same problem covered in how to make your nail Instagram feed look consistent.
A price list you can build this evening
- Write six or seven service groups with a starting price for each, in a notes app, before opening any design tool.
- Add the three policy lines: deposit, removal, and late or no-show.
- Lay it out at 4:5 in large high-contrast text, service names left, prices right, booking instruction at the bottom.
- Pick one strong photo per priced service and build a carousel with the list as the first slide.
- Pin the post and set the highlight, then diarise a reminder to redo it whenever prices change.
The slides doing the persuading
A price list graphic is mostly a design job, right up until slide two. From there it is a portfolio, and the photos have to survive being viewed next to a number. A yellow-tinted set beside "from £50" invites a comparison the client makes silently and quickly, and no amount of tidy typography fixes it.
NailTech is a nail image editor for getting those slides to match before they carry a price tag.
- Neutralise the salon cast so a nude set is not competing with an orange one.
- Bring the gel back to the colour the client actually walked out with.
- Clear the desk behind the hand so the eye lands on the work.
- Crop every slide identically so the carousel does not jump around.
NailTech is a phone editor, not a graphic design app and not a booking system, so the layout and the link are still yours to build. It handles the photos that sit under the numbers.
A price nobody can find does not protect you from price shoppers. It just means every enquiry costs you two minutes, and half of them end the second you answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should nail techs put prices on Instagram?
Nail techs should put prices on Instagram. Published prices filter out price shoppers before they message, so remaining enquiries come from people who have already accepted the rate. Zenoti's 2025 survey found 69 percent of salon customers abandoned a booking when information or access was hard to navigate.
What should be included in a nail price list?
A nail price list should include six or seven grouped services with starting prices, plus three policies: the deposit amount and whether it comes off the total, the soak-off or removal charge, and the late or no-show rule. Keep it to one screen rather than listing every service.
What size should an Instagram price list graphic be?
An Instagram price list graphic should be 4:5 portrait, which is the tallest format Instagram shows in full. Keep all text inside a generous margin so nothing is clipped when cropped for a story highlight cover or a square grid thumbnail, and use large high-contrast type.
Where should I put my nail prices on Instagram?
Put nail prices in two places: a pinned carousel post on your grid and a story highlight named Prices. Both sit on your profile permanently and take one tap to reach. A booking-page link in bio is useful as well, but adds a step some people abandon.
Should a nail price list include photos?
A nail price list should include photos. A number alone gives a client nothing to judge value against, while the same price beside a clear photo of the actual service makes the value obvious. Build it as a carousel with the list first and one strong photo per priced service.
Final Takeaways
- Publish the prices. Hiding them filters enquiries, not time wasters.
- Six or seven grouped services, with starting prices where the work varies.
- Include deposit, removal and no-show policies, because each one prevents a specific argument.
- Design for a phone screen: 4:5, big type, high contrast, one font.
- Pin it and highlight it, and name the highlight Prices in plain words.
- Photos sell the number. A carousel with one strong set per service does the persuading.
The NailTech Team
We build NailTech, the nail image editor that helps nail technicians and salon owners turn quick phone shots of their work into portfolio-grade photos.
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