Renewing the license, state by state
Getting the license is once. Keeping it is every year or every two years, for as long as you work. What it costs, whether any classes are required, and how long you can leave it lapsed before the license is gone for good are different in every state. These are the figures checked against the state board's own page or form, each line carrying the date it was checked.
Late costs money. Too late costs the license. In every state checked here there is a point after which renewal is no longer possible at all and you start over as a new applicant, exam included: five years in California, two years past expiry in Virginia. If your license has already lapsed, find your state below and read the dates before you pay anything.
Checked
- CaliforniaChecked September 9, 2026
- MassachusettsChecked September 14, 2026
- New YorkChecked September 20, 2026
- North CarolinaChecked September 21, 2026
- OklahomaChecked September 20, 2026
- OregonChecked September 20, 2026
- PennsylvaniaChecked September 21, 2026
- TexasChecked September 30, 2026
- VirginiaChecked September 9, 2026
Not verified yet
These states have no page yet. What cannot be verified does not get written, and each line below says exactly what stopped the check.
- FloridaThe cosmetology section of myfloridalicense.com returned HTTP 403 to every request from this connection on 2026-09-09, both the section index and the nail specialist page. Florida's renewal fee and continuing-education hours are therefore unverified.
- GeorgiaThe state's own site returned HTTP 403 and refused every request from this connection when re-checked on 2026-09-09. Until every figure can be checked against the state's own page, this page is not written.
- MichiganThe main michigan.gov pages DO load in Chrome, re-checked on 2026-09-14, unlike the earlier check, so the old reason has been corrected. What still blocks this page is elsewhere: the training hours and fees live in the Board's PDF licensing guide, and Chrome opens PDFs in a viewer whose text the page reader cannot extract. Reading a fee off a blurred image is exactly the kind of mistake this site's rules forbid, so it stays unwritten.
- New JerseyThe New Jersey Board’s pages sit behind Imperva/Incapsula bot blocking, re-checked 2026-09-20: the server answers 200 but the body is a block page of about a thousand characters ("Request unsuccessful. Incapsula incident ID..."), with none of the Board’s own text to check anything against, and we do not try to defeat that block. The regulation text can be read elsewhere, but every number on these pages is meant to link straight back to the state board’s own page so you can click through and check it, so New Jersey stays empty rather than citing a substitute. The earlier note dated 2026-09-09 saying the pages "returned an empty body" described the cause inaccurately.
- WashingtonThe state's own site still returns HTTP 403 and is refused at its Varnish edge, re-checked on 2026-09-14. This time it was tried in REAL CHROME and not only by tool, and it was refused the same way, so this is not a site that merely blocks scripts: dol.wa.gov refuses this connection. Until every figure can be checked against the state's own page, this page is not written.