Leasing to a Nail Salon, Spa or Tattoo Studio in Ontario: Personal Service Setting Rules for Landlords

A barber, a nail bar and a tattoo studio all count as “personal service settings”, but they do not ask the same things of your unit. Here is what each one needs, trade by trade.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a broker with AZ Real Estate Partners. The phrase that should slow a landlord down on an offer to lease is a use clause that reads something like “beauty and personal care services.” It sounds specific. It is not. Under Ontario’s rules, that one phrase could describe a barber with a single sink and two chairs, a nail bar with a pedicure station and a tray of metal tools, or a tattoo and microblading studio running a sterilizer and keeping procedure records on every client.

All three are personal service settings, and all three sit under the same provincial regulation. But the plumbing, the paperwork and the insurance they need are very different, and so is what you should see before you hand over keys. The legal duties fall on the business operator, not on you. Still, your unit has to be able to carry the trade, and your lease is the one place where you can ask for proof. So this article goes trade by trade, after a short section on the rules they all share.

First, the rules every personal service tenant shares

The provincial rulebook is O. Reg. 136/18, made under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. Its duties are written for the operator, defined as the person with responsibility for and control over the setting. A few points apply whatever the trade:

• Who is outside it. Under s.2(2) the regulation does not apply to hospitals, retirement homes, long-term care homes, settings where services are primarily provided by a member of a health profession listed in Schedule 1 of the Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991, or services given in the client’s own home.
• Notice before opening. Under s.3(1), anyone who intends to operate a setting must give written notice to the local medical officer of health at least 14 days before starting, including the name and location, the operator’s contact information and a list of services (s.3(2)). Adding services later needs the same 14 days’ notice (s.3(3)).
• Notice before renovating. If the setting closes during a reconstruction or renovation, written notice goes in at least 14 days before work starts (s.3(4)); if it stays open, notice is due before work starts (s.3(5)). Routine maintenance and like-for-like equipment replacement do not count as renovation (s.3(6)).
• The room itself. Section 8(1) requires surfaces, fixtures and furniture that are in good repair, smooth, impermeable and easy to clean; potable hot and cold running water under pressure; at least one sink used only for hand washing, with soap in a dispenser and single-use towels or a hot-air dryer; lighting and ventilation sufficient for sanitary operation; waste receptacles; cleanable work surfaces; and adequate storage.
• Not a dwelling. Paragraph 3 of s.8(1) says the service room must not be a room, or part of one, used as a dwelling, including for dining, sleeping or preparing or storing food. Where services are offered in part of a dwelling, s.8(2) limits these requirements to the rooms actually used for services.
• Inspections and bans. The operator must post inspection results as the inspector asks (s.4), keep animals out other than service animals and fish kept in sanitary tanks (s.9), and may not offer ear candling or any service using live aquatic species, fish pedicures included (s.7).

In Toronto there is a second layer. Chapter 545 of the Municipal Code requires a personal services setting licence with a separate endorsement for each class of service offered (§ 545-516 B), and the city sends every application to the Medical Officer of Health, whose report is considered in deciding the licence (§ 545-516 A). Other Ontario municipalities run their own licensing, so treat Toronto as the example here, not the rule everywhere.

Nail salons, spas and aesthetics

This is where the plumbing question bites. Beyond the hand-wash sink, according to Ontario’s O. Reg. 136/18 (as consolidated since 2022), s.8(3) requires any setting that uses reusable equipment to have at least one more sink that is not the hand-wash sink. That sink must be able to immerse the largest reusable item, have hot and cold running water under pressure, have enough counter space to prepare the equipment for re-use, not be in a room with a toilet, and be separated enough from the service area to prevent contamination. The washroom vanity does not qualify.

Whether a given nail or spa operator uses reusable equipment is a question about their menu and tools, so ask rather than assume. My inference is that most nail services using metal implements will need it; the hair-only exemption discussed in the next section is not available to them.

Other points that touch your premises or your lease:

• Client details. Before any service, the operator or provider must collect the client’s name and contact information (s.5(1)).
• Disinfectants. Products used must carry a Health Canada DIN or NPN and be used per the manufacturer’s instructions (s.11(2)); chlorine bleach is exempt from the DIN/NPN requirement (s.11(3)).
• Ventilation. The regulation’s test is that lighting and ventilation are “sufficient” for sanitary operation (s.8(1) para. 7). It sets no air-change figure, so the practical question is what the operator plans to install and whether your HVAC and building rules can take it.
• Toronto licensing. Manicure and pedicure, and aesthetics, are two separate classes in § 545-1, each needing its own endorsement. A nail bar that later adds waxing or facials is adding a class.

What a landlord can ask for: a copy of the operator’s notice to the medical officer of health; a fixture plan showing both sinks and their supply and drain runs before any plumbing is approved; the HVAC or exhaust changes they intend to make; and, in Toronto, the licence showing the endorsements that match the use clause.

Barber shops and hair salons

Hair is the lightest load in the regulation, and it is lighter in two specific places.

• The second sink can be waived. Under s.8(6), the reprocessing sink in s.8(3) is not required where the setting only provides hairdressing or barbering services and reprocesses reusable equipment before the start and after the end of each business day. Both conditions have to hold.
• No client contact log. Section 5(2) exempts a setting from collecting client names and contact information where the only service is hairdressing or barbering.

Everything else in the shared section still applies: the hand-wash sink, cleanable surfaces, the 14-day opening notice and the rule against using the service room as living space. In Toronto, hairstyling is its own class and needs its own endorsement under § 545-516 B; it is defined as cutting, shaving, styling or colouring hair, including facial hair (§ 545-1).

The exemption is the reason the use clause matters more here than anywhere. The day a barber adds brow waxing or a nail station, the “only hairdressing or barbering” condition is gone. The operator then has to give the medical officer of health 14 days’ notice of the added service (s.3(3)), and in Toronto has to tell Municipal Licensing and Standards and the Medical Officer of Health in writing at least 30 days before a change that may alter the classes offered (§ 545-516 C). If reusable equipment is used, the second sink comes back into play, and your unit may not have the plumbing for it.

What a landlord can ask for: a use clause limited to hairstyling; a requirement that the tenant get your consent, and show you its notices, before adding any other class of service; and confirmation that any future second sink would be at the tenant’s cost.

Tattoo, microblading, piercing and electrolysis studios

These trades cross a line the regulation draws explicitly. An invasive procedure is any procedure that introduces equipment or instruments into the body by cutting, puncturing or otherwise entering intact skin or mucous membranes (s.1). Toronto’s by-law describes tattoo and micropigmentation as depositing pigments below the dermis with needles or similar implements, and electrolysis as removing hair with an electric current conducted through a needle inserted into the follicle (§ 545-1).

What that adds for the operator:

• Risk explanation and records. Before an invasive procedure, the client must be given an explanation of the procedure and its risks (s.6(1)). The operator keeps records of each procedure, including the body part, the client’s and provider’s names and contact information, the date, and the lot numbers and expiry dates of the pre-packaged sterile equipment used (s.14(1) para. 3).
• Sharps. Sharps must be sterile, single-use and from unopened, undamaged packaging (s.10(6)); they go straight into a sharps container close to where the service is done (s.10(7)); containers must meet Canadian Standards Association standards and be disposed of under the Environmental Protection Act and its regulations (s.10(8)).
• Sterilizers. Sterilizers must meet Health Canada and CSA standards (s.10(9)). Unless a medical officer of health or inspector directs otherwise, they must be checked and tested at least once every two weeks (s.10(10)), and the results go into the sterilization records (s.14(1) para. 1).
• Toronto insurance. According to § 545-521 of Toronto’s Municipal Code, a setting that offers tattoo, micropigmentation, body piercing or electrolysis must carry comprehensive liability insurance of at least $1,000,000 per accident for bodily injury, death or property damage, endorsed to give Municipal Licensing and Standards at least 10 days’ written notice of any cancellation, expiry or change, with a certified copy or certificate deposited with that division.
• Toronto records. Section 545-519 A(4) requires a record of every body piercing, electrolysis, tattoo and micropigmentation service, with the worker’s full name and the customer’s full name, telephone number and address.

For your premises, this means room for a sterilizer and a reprocessing sink kept apart from the service area, and a secure place for records. It also means someone has to arrange for full sharps containers to leave the building as biomedical waste.

What a landlord can ask for: the certificate of insurance the tenant deposits with the city, plus any coverage you require for yourself under the lease; written confirmation of how sharps and biomedical waste will be removed; and a description of where the sterilizer and records will sit in the unit.

Two rulebooks, two sets of numbers

What to ask for, by trade

Each group adds to the one before it. The legal obligations are the operator’s; these are things a landlord can ask for in the lease.