How much should a tattoo deposit be?

A deposit does three jobs. It holds a slot in your diary that you would otherwise sell to somebody else, it pays for the drawing time you put in before the client sits down, and it filters out the people who were never going to turn up. Get the amount wrong in either direction and it stops doing one of them.

Here is how to set one, and how to write the rules around it so they hold up when somebody cancels.

The short answer

For most UK artists a deposit sits somewhere between £50 and £100 for small and medium pieces, or 20% to 30% of the quote for larger work. Either is normal. What matters more than the number is that it is big enough to hurt a no-show a little and small enough that a genuine client does not think twice.

A deposit comes off the final price. It is not an extra charge, and your booking confirmation should say so in plain words.

Fixed amount or percentage?

A fixed amount is easy to explain and easy to remember. It works well for flash and for artists whose work sits in a narrow price range.

A percentage scales with the job, so a £1,200 back piece is not held by the same £50 as a £90 flash piece. The trade-off is that you need a price before you can take it, which suits custom work that is quoted first.

Many artists use both: a percentage with a minimum. Take 25% of the quote, but never less than £50. That covers the small job without making the big one feel under-protected. Our free deposit calculator shows what yours comes to on any price, and how it splits over several sittings.

Multi-sitting work

For a piece over several sittings, take the deposit for the first sitting when it is booked, and decide up front what happens to it. The usual choices are:

• it comes off the last sitting, so it holds the whole project, or
• it comes off the first, and each later sitting takes its own smaller deposit when you book it.

Booking every sitting months ahead rarely works. You cannot judge the second session until you have done the first, and clients do not want four Saturdays pinned down in March. Book the first, then book the next one as the work goes.

Cancellations, reschedules and no-shows

This is where most arguments start, so write it down before anybody books. A clear policy usually covers:

• Notice. How much warning the client must give to move or cancel without losing the deposit. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours is common.
• Moves. Whether one reschedule with enough notice is free, and what happens after that.
• No-shows. The deposit is kept.
• When you cancel. If you are ill or double-booked, the client gets their deposit back, or a new date if they would rather. Who cancelled should decide what happens to the money.

Our free booking policy generator writes these rules out in plain words from a few answers.

Keep it proportionate. UK consumer law expects terms like these to be fair and clearly explained before the client pays, and a deposit that is a reasonable part of the price, kept because a slot was genuinely lost, is far easier to stand behind than a large sum kept on a technicality. This is general information rather than legal advice; if you are unsure about your own terms, ask a solicitor or your insurer.

Taking it without the chasing

The bank transfer is where deposits fall apart. You hold a Saturday on the promise of a payment, the payment does not arrive, and by the time you chase it the slot could have gone to somebody else.

Taking the deposit at the moment of booking fixes that. The client picks a time, pays by card, and only then is the slot theirs. If they walk away from the checkout, the time goes back on sale without you doing anything.

It is also worth offering a way to spread the cost on bigger pieces. Klarna and Clearpay at checkout let a client pay a deposit or balance in instalments while you are paid in full up front.

How Chairtime handles it

Chairtime takes the deposit when the client books, from your own booking page, flash store or an accepted quote. You set a deposit percentage and a minimum in your booking rules, and it fills in the deposit on every quote from them. The time is held while the client pays and released if they abandon the checkout. Who cancels decides what happens to the deposit, and the money goes straight to your own Stripe account.

It is free to run your bookings this way: nothing a month, and a flat £1 a booking.