At a backwash basin the client lies back, eyes shut, while warm water sprays a few inches from their nose and mouth. Hold that picture. A fine, warm aerosol, aimed straight at someone’s airway, several times a day, from a spray head and hose that almost never get taken apart and cleaned. That single arrangement is why a hairdresser or barber has anything to do with Legionella at all.

The good news first: most salons and barbershops are genuinely low risk, and the controls that keep them that way are cheap, quick and well within reach of a one-chair business. The catch is that “low risk” is a conclusion you are meant to reach and record, not assume. The duty to assess and control Legionella risk applies to employers and people in control of premises whatever the size of the business [1].

So this is a proportionate guide, not a scare. Here is where the risk actually sits in a salon, and the short list of things worth doing and writing down.

Where the risk actually sits

Legionnaires’ disease is caught by breathing in tiny droplets of contaminated water, not by drinking it [2]. That one fact reshapes the whole question for a salon. The taps a colourist fills bowls from barely matter. The kit that turns warm water into a breathable mist is what counts, and in a salon that is a short list.

The backwash spray head and hose. This is the main event. It delivers warm water as a spray, directly over a reclined client’s head and face, which is exactly the exposure route that matters. Spray heads and flexible hoses are also small, intricate and warm — they collect limescale and biofilm on the inside where you cannot see it, and the spray then pushes whatever is in there into the air the client is breathing. A scaled-up head on a busy shampoo station gets a partial natural flush every day. The same head on a quiet station does not.

Hand-held sprays at styling stations. The trigger bottles and spray attachments used to damp hair down produce a fine mist too. Most are fed cold and used constantly, which keeps them lower risk, but any that run warm or sit unused for days deserve the same attention as the backwash.

Basins and stations that go quiet. This is the part owners miss. A salon that is heaving on Saturday but dead on a Monday, a second backwash that only gets used when both stylists are in, a barbershop that shuts for a fortnight every summer — each leaves water standing still in hoses and short pipe runs at comfortable room temperature, which is squarely the range Legionella likes. Stagnation, not grime, is what turns a harmless spray head into a problem.

None of that makes a salon dangerous. It makes it a place with a couple of specific, predictable weak points — which is the kind of thing a few minutes of routine attention fixes.

A salon Legionella routine you can do in minutes

Here is the practical part: a short, recordable routine built around the weak points above. Group it, do it on a schedule your risk assessment sets, and keep a dated note each time.

Clean and descale the spray heads and hoses

  • Take the backwash spray head off and descale it on a fixed cycle — soak out the limescale, scrub off any slime, rinse and refit. Quarterly is a sensible starting point for spray heads and hoses, adjusted for how fast yours scale up [4]. The method is the same one used for shower heads, set out in Showerhead cleaning and descaling schedules.
  • Give hand-held spray attachments and trigger heads the same treatment, especially any fed with warm water.
  • Wipe down and dry hoses, and replace any that are cracked, furred or permanently scaled.

Flush the outlets that go quiet

  • Run every backwash basin, sink and spray for a minute or two at least weekly, and more often if your assessment says so, drawing water through both the hot and the cold. The how and why of this is covered in Flushing little-used outlets: best practices.
  • Pay particular attention to a second or third station that only gets used at peak times.

Reopen deliberately after any closure

  • After a holiday, refit or any shutdown of a week or more, flush all outlets before the first client — run the sprays to waste for a couple of minutes so nothing that has been standing still goes into the air over someone’s face.

Keep hot water hot and cold water cold

  • Hot water is generally kept hot and cold water genuinely cold (below 20°C where practicable), so neither sits in the temperature band where the bacteria multiply [3]. Check it occasionally rather than assuming the boiler is quietly doing its job.

Write it down

  • A dated line each time — descaled, flushed, temperature checked — turns “we keep on top of it” into evidence that you actually do. For most salons that simple record is all you will ever need to show.

The whole routine costs less and takes less time than almost anything else on a salon’s compliance list. The real discipline is remembering to do it on the quiet weeks — which is precisely when it matters most.

Most salons are low risk, but you still have to assess

It helps to be clear about proportion. A small salon with mains-fed taps, a couple of backwash basins, no stored water tank, no cooling tower and no spa is a low-risk setting, and an honest assessment will usually say so. You do not need a consultant on a retainer or a folder of monthly lab results to run a barbershop.

What you do need is to have looked. The duty to assess the risk and act on what you find applies regardless of how small the business is, and “we’re only a little place” is not an exemption [1]. A simple written assessment — what aerosol sources you have, who could be exposed, what you do about them, and a note that you keep it up — is the baseline. Larger salons sitting inside shopping centres or leisure complexes share the same aerosol logic as the buildings around them; the blind spots mirror those in Legionella in retail stores and shopping centres.

This is general guidance, not an assessment of your premises. The aerosol sources, the cleaning and flushing frequencies, and the temperatures that apply to a specific salon come from a competent, site-specific risk assessment — we are not giving you legal, medical or plumbing-design advice, and a one-chair barbershop and a twenty-station salon in a mall will not land on the same answer.

FAQ

Does a small barbershop really need a Legionella risk assessment?

Yes. The duty to assess and control the risk applies to any employer or person in control of premises, with no lower size limit [1]. For a typical small barbershop the assessment will often be short and conclude the risk is low — but that conclusion has to be reached, written down and kept current, not taken for granted.

How often should I clean and descale the backwash spray head?

Your risk assessment sets the exact frequency, based on how hard your water is and how heavily the station is used. As a working pattern, salons often follow the quarterly cleaning and descaling cycle that guidance suggests for shower heads and hoses, doing it more often where limescale builds fast [4]. The aim is a fixed, recorded schedule rather than cleaning only once the spray starts to spit.

We close for two weeks every summer — what should we do before reopening?

Treat the reopening as a deliberate restart. Before the first client, run every basin, sink and spray to waste for a couple of minutes so any water that has been standing still is cleared rather than sprayed into the air. The same applies after a refit or any shutdown of a week or more, and it is worth a dated note in your records.

Sources

[1] HSE, “Legionnaires’ disease - what you must do”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/what-you-must-do/index.htm [2] CDC, “How Legionella Spreads”. https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/causes/index.html [3] HSE, “Hot and cold water systems”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/hot-and-cold.htm [4] HSE, “Legionnaires’ disease: Technical guidance (HSG274)”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/hsg274.htm