The route almost everyone takes
Hardly anyone opens a salon in the Netherlands without first having worked in someone else's. You learn the trade on the floor, you build a small group of regulars, and at some point you think: I could do this for myself.
That is also where it gets tense. You are leaving someone in the same town, in the same trade, probably with clients who like you more than they like the business. And that is exactly where the clauses live that you signed four years ago without reading.
This article is about those clauses. Not about whether you should go, but about what your contract says and what it is actually worth.
Step 1: dig out your employment contract
Before you say anything to anyone, read your own contract. You are looking for four things:
- The notice period. Often one month, sometimes longer.
- A concurrentiebeding, the non-compete. Usually a paragraph with a radius in kilometres and a term in months.
- A relatiebeding, the non-solicitation clause. Often in the same paragraph, sometimes separate.
- A nevenwerkzaamhedenbeding, the side-activities clause. Relevant if you are thinking of starting alongside your job.
If your contract says nothing about competition, there is no non-compete. It cannot be agreed verbally and it cannot arise by implication. No text means no clause.
Also check whether a collective agreement applies. For hair salons that is often the cao for the Kappersbedrijf, and a cao can set different notice periods.
Notice, and the date people get wrong
The statutory notice period for an employee is one month, unless your contract or cao says otherwise. Notice runs to the end of the calendar month.
That last part regularly costs people four weeks. Give notice on 3 March and your contract does not end on 3 April: the notice month only starts on 1 April, so your last day is 30 April. Give notice on 2 April and you work through 31 May. If you have signed a lease starting 1 May, that difference is the difference between paying for an empty shop and not.
Your contract may set a longer term. The law allows up to six months, and as a rule the employer's term then has to be twice yours. A unilateral three months for you and one month for them is worth questioning.
The non-compete: when it actually counts
This is where most of the unnecessary fear sits, because a good share of the clauses in this trade are not valid.
Article 7:653 of the Dutch Civil Code sets three basic conditions. The clause must be agreed in writing, you must have been 18 or older when you signed, and you must be on a contract for an indefinite period.
That third condition is the important one. On a fixed-term contract a non-compete is in principle not allowed. The statute has an exception: it is permitted if the employer sets out in the contract itself, in writing, which weighty business or service interests make the clause necessary. Case law requires that reasoning to be tailored to your role or to you personally. Pasting the same standard paragraph under everyone's contract is not enough.
In Dutch hairdressing your employer cannot lean on that exception, and that works in your favour. Article 2.2 sub b of the CAO Kappersbedrijf makes a non-compete clause in a fixed-term employment contract void, even where reasoning is attached, and that nullity survives if the fixed-term contract rolls over into an open-ended one. The CAO was declared universally binding on 25 November 2025 (Staatscourant 2025, no. 36597), so it applies to every salon within its scope, including salons that belong to no trade body. What an employer can and cannot do with this is set out from their side in the guide on an employee who leaves and takes clients.
In practice: if you are a hairdresser on a fixed-term contract, the non-compete is void, reasoning or not. Have that confirmed by someone who actually reads your contract and the applicable CAO, because even a void clause can make a conversation difficult if you cannot back that up.
And even a valid clause is not untouchable. A court may annul or narrow it where it burdens you unfairly relative to your employer's interest. In practice the radius gets smaller or the term gets shorter more often than the clause disappears.
Source: article 7:653 of the Dutch Civil Code at wetten.overheid.nl, with the plain-language explanation at rijksoverheid.nl. Checked September 2026.
The non-solicitation clause is the lighter version
A relatiebeding does not block the work, it blocks the clients. You may open a salon around the corner, but you may not approach your former employer's clients.
For a salon that is often the clause that really matters. A five-kilometre radius is manageable in a large city. A ban on your own regulars hits your revenue on day one.
Watch the definition. "Clients of the employer" means the whole file. "Clients the employee has treated in the last twelve months" is far narrower. That difference decides whether you have something to negotiate about.
Can your clients come with you?
Split this into three situations.
While still employed. No. As long as you are on the payroll you owe good-employee conduct, and actively recruiting for the business you are about to open does not qualify. No flyers by the till, no messages from the salon floor, no Instagram account already taking bookings.
After you leave, with no non-solicitation clause. In principle you may compete fairly. Nobody owns a client. Someone who seeks you out because you have cut her hair for three years is yours to serve.
After you leave, with a clause. Then it says what it says, until a court decides otherwise.
One line applies in all three: data. Exporting or copying your employer's client file is a different thing from clients who follow you of their own accord. It touches privacy law as well as your contract, and it is the fastest way to turn an awkward conversation into an expensive one. Leave the file where it belongs.
What you should do instead is make sure you are findable. A client looking for you should be able to find and book you without calling your old employer.
The legislation on its way
A bill to modernise the non-compete clause is on the table. The direction is a maximum duration, a compulsory geographic scope and compensation where the employer invokes the clause.
That bill is not in force. So do not count on it, and plan on the rules as they stand. Check the state of play on rijksoverheid.nl before you walk into a conversation with your employer, because if this changes, your negotiating position changes with it.
The conversation with your employer
Two things practice shows.
First: a clause is negotiable. Plenty of employers drop one or soften it if you give notice properly, serve your term and hand your work over well. That costs them less than a dispute. Ask for written confirmation, because a promise at the wash basin is not a settlement agreement.
Second: the timing. Have this conversation after you have read your contract and before you sign a lease. The other way around you are negotiating with a deadline at your back, and the other side can tell.
The penalty clause underneath
A non-compete usually comes with a penalty clause: an amount per breach, sometimes plus an amount for each day it continues. That figure, not the clause itself, is normally what stops people.
Two things to know. First, the penalty stands or falls with the clause: if the non-compete is invalid, so is the penalty. Second, a court can reduce a penalty that is out of proportion to the actual damage. A sum approaching your annual salary because you cut two former clients rarely survives in full.
So do not panic, calculate. Find the amount in your contract, set it against what a dispute would cost you in time and legal fees, and let that inform how far from your old salon you choose to sit.
What your former employer realistically does
The sequence is almost always the same. First an angry conversation or a message. Then a letter from a legal representative telling you to stop. Only after that, and far less often, an injunction.
That letter is where people panic and agree to something they did not have to. A demand letter is a position, not a ruling. Never reply the same day and sign nothing before someone who knows employment law has read your contract. Do reply, though: silence makes it worse.
What sharply reduces the odds of any of this: leaving well. Serve your notice, hand over your diary, let clients come rather than taking them, and do not run your old employer down in public. A few weeks of patience can save you a year of trouble.
The middle route
Not everyone has to jump in one go. You can start alongside your job and give notice once you have enough clients.
Different rules apply there. Since 1 August 2022 an employer may only forbid side activities where there is an objective justification; a bare ban in your contract is no longer enough on its own. A non-compete can still bite in that situation, because you would be trading in the same field while still employed.
If that is your route, read the separate article on starting part-time alongside a job. The question there is not how to leave well, but how to run two things at once without breaching your contract.
What to do over the next month
Four evenings, and you know where you stand.
Evening 1: read your contract and any applicable cao. Note your notice period and whether there is a non-compete, a non-solicitation clause or a side-activities clause. If there is a non-compete, check whether your contract is fixed-term or permanent and whether specific written reasoning is attached.
Evening 2: count backwards from your intended start date. Notice period plus notice running to month-end gives you the last date on which you can resign.
Evening 3: if a clause worries you, put it in front of an employment lawyer. An hour of advice costs less than an injunction, and Dutch legal expenses insurance often covers it.
Evening 4: set up where clients will be able to find and book you. Do not publish while you are still employed, but have it ready, so that on your first day on your own you have a link to share rather than a plan.
That link is something you can already have standing with CelerBook. You get your own booking page on your own subdomain, so you have an address to share the moment you are free to. Clients pick their own treatment and time, you see everything in one calendar, and confirmation emails go out automatically, and an SMS reminder ahead of time costs 0.11 EUR ex VAT per appointment. You start with an empty client list that you build yourself, cleanly separate from where you came from. The pricing suits a first month with little coming in: the first 5 appointments each month are free, then 0.25 EUR excluding VAT per completed appointment, capped at 30 EUR a month for a solo operator plus 5 EUR per additional active staff member. No contract, and no usage means no cost. Try CelerBook for free.