Hair and Beauty Industry Statistics for the UK & Worldwide in 2021 - 2022

Here at Gee Hair, we always love to be up-to-date with all of the latest trends, statistics and figures in the wonderful world of hair and beauty. That’s why we’ve created this up-to-date piece, to give you the lowdown on all of this year’s most important hair and beauty facts.

The main findings of our investigation include:

• A typical UK adult spends over £400 a year (£33.36 a month) on hair and beauty products and treatments. Women spend more than men, though, averaging at £37.84 per month compared with mens’ £28.57.

• By 2024, the global hair and beauty industry is expected to be worth $510.8 billion (£368 billion).

• The leading beauty and haircare brand in terms of sales is L’Oreal, who generated $33.26 billion in 2020.

• The most popular hair and beauty brand in the world in 2021 is CHANEL, who are searched for online approximately 3.8 million times a month!

• The most searched-for hair and beauty brand in the UK is Ted Baker, which generates an average of 414,000 searches per month.

• 69% of beauty and haircare brands on the highstreet in 2021 are cruelty free.

• 22% of hair and makeup brands in 2021 are vegan.

How much does a typical UK adult spend on hair and beauty each year?

Appearance is really important to many of us, whether it’s to help us feel more confident or to impress a prospective romantic partner, but just how much money do people in the UK spend on their looks?

To find out, we used the market research company Censuswide to ask 2,000 UK adults:

How much do you spend on makeup, skin care and hair products in any given month? (Including haircuts, salon treatments, body modifications, tattoos, piercings, etc)

We provided respondents with the following options:

• I don’t spend anything
• Up to £20, please specify in pounds
• More than £20, up to £50
• More than £50, up to £100
• More than £100, up to £200
• More than £200, please specify in pounds

Our survey found that:

• The average UK adult spends £400.32 a year on hair and beauty products and treatments. That’s £33.36 a month.

• Women spend more money on beauty and haircare than men, spending an average of £454.08 a year, compared with men who spend an average of £342.84.
• As you can see from the graph below, the age group that spends the most amount of money on hair and beauty products is 16-24 year olds, who splash out an average of £67.30 a month. This is then followed by those aged 25-34 who spend £53.23 and 35-44 year olds who spend approximately £51.26 each month.

• The age groups who spend the least on the other hand are 45-54 year olds who spend £42.79 on hair and beauty products and treatments each month and those aged 55+ who spend an average of just £32.23 a month.

To find out more about how we obtained this data, please see our methodology.

What is the most popular hair and beauty brand in the world in 2021 - 2022?

We all know our favourite go-to brands when it comes to makeup, hair products and skincare. But what we wanted to find out was which brands are the most popular across the entire globe. To do this, we used the tool Keyword Finder to discover which hair and beauty brands are the most searched-for online each month. Our analysis compared search volumes of over 230 different brands and found that:

• The most popular beauty brand in the world is the French luxury fashion house… CHANEL. On average every month, the term ‘Chanel’ is searched for online 3.8 million times worldwide.

• The second most-loved hair and beauty brand when it comes to online popularity is another renowned brand in the world of fashion and beauty and that’s Dior. Receiving approximately 3.3 million global searches per month, it’s quite clear that this brand is still much-loved amongst many.

• Also amongst the world’s most popular hair and beauty brands is Rituals, which has a global average monthly search volume of 1.9 million.

The table below shows the 20 most popular hair and beauty brands in the word, based on average global searches per month in 2021.

The top 20 most popular hair and beauty brands in the world, based on average monthly searches.

The full methodology detailing how we obtained this data can be found at the end of this article.

What is the most popular hair and beauty brand in the UK?

So, it’s clear that luxury fashion powerhouses such as CHANEL and Dior are much-loved all over the planet. But we wondered whether or not this would change if we looked at searches conducted in the UK only.

To find out, we analysed UK search volumes for each of the 237 hair and beauty brands on our list to discover which brands us Brits love the most in 2021 - 2022. Our analysis revealed that:

• The most popular beauty brand in the UK in 2021 is Ted Baker, which generates around 414,000 searches every single month.

• With 259,000 searches a month, another much-loved beauty brand in the UK is The Ordinary which only launched back in 2016 but is now one of the country’s most popular skincare brands, receiving more searches each month in the UK than any other skincare brand in our analysis.

• In third place is the one and only CHANEL, who follows closely behind The Ordinary, receiving an average monthly search volume of 210,000 in the UK.

The table below shows the 20 most popular hair and beauty brands in the UK in 2021, based on average global searches per month.

The top 20 most popular hair and beauty brands in the UK, based on average monthly searches.

As mentioned above, our full methodology can be found at the end of this article.

Which hair and beauty brands are vegan or cruelty free in 2021 - 2022?

When choosing a new haircare product, skincare regime or a new item of makeup, popularity can be a really great indication of a brand’s quality. But there are also a wide range of other important factors to consider when it comes to choosing hair and beauty products, one of which is whether or not the brand is vegan or cruelty free.

That’s why we thought we’d do some digging in order to discover just how many of the world’s biggest beauty and hair care brands have ethical ingredients and testing procedures and how many are not quite so ethically produced.

Cruelty free makeup and hair care brands

Our analysis included 237 of some of the biggest hair, skincare and beauty brands of 2021 - 2022 and found that:

• 69% of beauty and haircare brands on the highstreet in 2021 are cruelty free and do not test their products on animals. This includes brands such as TRESemmé, Estée Lauder, Morphe and Urban Decay.

• However, this also means that 31% of hair and beauty brands either sell products that are not cruelty free or do not make it clear as to whether or not their products are tested on animals. Some of these brands include companies who don’t do any animal testing themselves, but do sell their products in countries such as China where governments conduct animal testing in order to check their safety before they can be sold. These brands include MAC, Benefit, Toni & Guy and Max Factor.

Vegan hair and makeup brands in 2021 - 2022

Given the rise of veganism in the last few years, an important factor for many people when it comes to choosing their makeup or hair care products is whether or not the ingredients and packaging is vegan.

Our investigation found that:

• Only 22% of hair and makeup brands in 2021 are vegan. These include brands such as The Ordinary, Spectrum, e.l.f and and Eco Tools.

• A staggering 25% of hair and beauty brands in 2021 are not vegan or alternatives. This includes brands which test their products on animals and those that use animal-derived ingredients such as collagen, lanolin, milk, keratin, honey and elastin.

• And around half of brands (49.8%) provide some vegan options in their hair and/or beauty product ranges. This includes the likes of Bare Minerals, Tony & Guy, Yves Saint Laurent and Eylure.

• In the rest of brands (2.5%) it’s unclear as to whether or not their products are vegan.

Which hair and beauty brands have the biggest social media following?

Another way of measuring popularity of beauty and skincare brands is to take a look at their social media followings. We thought we’d look at Instagram first, given its popularity amongst beauty bloggers and influencers all over the world.

Most popular beauty brands on Instagram

The table below shows the top 10 most followed beauty and haircare brands of 2021 based on the 237 brands we analysed.

• As you can see, the leading brand in terms of Instagram following is by far CHANEL, with a staggering 46 million followers!

• This is then followed by NYX Professional Makeup, who have a following of 14.7 million.

• Then Maybelline, who have 11 million followers.

Most popular beauty brands on TikTok

Next, we looked at TikTok to see just how popular beauty and hair care brands are on this video-based platform. Our study found that the brands in the following table are the top 10 most popular in terms of TikTok followers.

As you can see from the table:

• Huda Beauty has the largest TikTok following of all of the beauty brands in our analysis, with over 5.6 million followers consuming their content.

• DIOR’s TikTok account comes in joint second place alongside Morphe, who both abe 1.2 million followers.

Most popular beauty brands on Facebook

Another great social media platform for beauty and hair care brands in terms of marketing and engaging with their customers is Facebook, so we thought we’d take a look at which brands have gained the most followers on the platform.

In terms of Facebook followers:

Maybelline are most popular, with more than 34 million followers in total on the platform.

Dove comes in second place, with 27.5 million people following their account.

And MAC Cosmetics is also one of the most popular beauty brands on Facebook, with a total of 20.5 million followers.

Hair and beauty industry statistics of 2021 - 2022

The hair and beauty industry is one of the most successful industries in the world and statistics suggest that it’s expected to continue to grow rapidly in response to increases in demand for products to help improve our overall health and wellbeing. But just how successful is the industry? And who are the main market leaders in the hair and beauty sector?

How much is the global hair and beauty market worth?

• A recent report by Goldstein Market Intelligence found that the global cosmetics industry is predicted to be worth $412.10 billion by 2024.

• According to the IMARC Group, the hair industry was worth $93.8 billion in 2020 and reports suggest it’s now expected to reach $98.7 billion by 2024.

• This means that by 2024, the global hair and beauty industry is expected to be worth $510.8 billion.

Hair and beauty industry leaders in 2021 - 2022

The leading hair and beauty brands in terms of revenue are:

• L’Oreal who had a revenue of around $33.26 billion (27.99 billion euros) in 2020.

• Unilever who’s beauty and personal care brands generated a revenue of 21.1 billion euros (approximately $25.08 billion) in the same year.

• And Estee Lauder who’s revenue totalled $14.29 billion in 2020.

Our Methodology

Brands we analysed

The list of 237 brands we analysed searches for was found on the Boots website here. We used Boots list of beauty and skincare brands as we knew they stocked a wide range of hair and beauty products and that they shipped to customers both in the UK and around the world.

Things to note

It’s important to note that the search volumes obtained using the Keyword Finder tool may not accurately reflect the brand’s popularity in all instances. This is because people may conduct product-specific searches when shopping for items from each specific brand. For instance, someone may search for ‘true match foundation’ which is one of L’Oreal’s products but does not contain the keyword ‘L’Oreal’.

It’s also possible for some individuals to have varying intent when searching for some of the above keywords. For instance, someone searching for ‘Dove’ may actually be searching for species of bird. However to combat this, we made sure to only include keywords whose top ranking results pages were relevant to the brand itself. This means that it’s highly likely that the majority of searches for the keywords mentioned above were genuine brand searches.

We hope this roundup of all the latest statistics and facts on the hair and beauty industry in 2021 - 2022 has proved useful in bringing you up to date with everything you need to know about the industry!

If you enjoyed this piece, check out our piece on Hair Care Industry Statistics for the UK and Worldwide in 2021 - 2022 here for all the latest facts and figures in the world of hair care.