Senate Bill 803 took effect on January 1, 2022 and cut the cosmetology course from 1,600 hours to 1,000 and barbering from 1,500 to 1,000. It also removed the practical exam, widened what an esthetician may do, and created a 600-hour hairstylist license that is still waiting on regulations. Four years on, some schools are still carrying the old numbers in their catalogs, their enrollment agreements and their software. This is what changed and what a school owner has to check.
Updated September 2026 · Facts verified against the Board’s SB 803 Questions and Answers (updated July 2022) and barbercosmo.ca.gov
The Board published a questions-and-answers document for SB 803 in 2022 and it remains the clearest official account of what schools were expected to do. Most of what follows is drawn from it.
The hour changes, and the programs you may still offer
The 1,000-hour figure is a minimum. The Board confirmed that a school may keep offering its approved 1,600-hour cosmetology or 1,500-hour barbering program, provided the curriculum is revised to include any new required subjects, such as eyelash and eyebrow perming. A school may also offer both a 1,600-hour and a 1,000-hour cosmetology program side by side.
Offering the longer program carries two obligations. Education Code section 94905 requires the school to disclose that hours beyond the state minimum are not required for licensure, and to list which programs those are. And a school participating in federal Title IV aid was told to check with the US Department of Education, because a 1,600-hour program exceeds 150% of the 1,000-hour minimum. Both programs also need approval from the Board and the Bureau before enrolling anyone.
Students who were enrolled when the law changed
The Board’s advice was to let students already in a 1,500- or 1,600-hour program finish it as contracted in their enrollment agreements, and to notify the Board and the Bureau when the last student completed and the program was discontinued. Discontinuing a program while students remain enrolled puts the school in default of those agreements and means full refunds.
Students who wanted to move to the 1,000-hour program had to be given the option to transfer hours earned. The Board required a careful evaluation of hours and competencies completed against those required, documentation that the student completed everything the new program requires, and a new enrollment agreement. And it closed the obvious shortcut: a student in a 1,600-hour program who has 1,000 hours cannot test. The Proof of Training must show a completed program, whichever one it is.
The owner’s checklist
- Catalog and School Performance Fact Sheet
Program hours, the subject breakdown, the exam description (written only) and the licensure disclosure. If the catalog still says 1,600 hours without the § 94905 disclosure, or still mentions a practical exam, it is out of date.
- Enrollment agreement
Hours, program title and completion terms must match the program the Board and the Bureau approved. A transfer between programs needs a new agreement signed by the student.
- Curriculum on file with both agencies
New required subjects (lash and brow perming for estheticians and cosmetologists) must be in the approved curriculum, and any 1,000-hour program you added must have the Board’s approval and the Bureau’s acknowledgment of the change.
- Your own records and software
Program hour totals in your student information system, your time clock and your transcript template have to match the approved program. A transcript that prints a 1,600-hour program for a student enrolled in the 1,000-hour one is the kind of mismatch an inspector notices first.
- Scope-of-practice language
Since January 1, 2022 estheticians may perform lash perms, brow lamination and dermaplaning. If your esthetics curriculum or marketing still lists these as cosmetology-only, update it.
What did not change
Licensure is still required to cut and style hair; an early draft would have removed it, and the Legislature put it back. Application and examination fees stayed as set in regulation. Apprenticeship remains 3,200 hours, set by the Division of Apprenticeship Standards, with the 39-hour pre-apprentice training now administered by the Board. And the two-agency structure is untouched: Board approval for the course, Bureau approval for the institution, both before enrolling. How the two approvals fit together covers that.
