What Florida's Specialty Training Must Cover

The hours behind Florida’s specialty registrations are not a single number a school can allocate as it likes. The Board sets each curriculum line by line — 180 hours for nails and 220 for facials — and splits both between classroom topics and services the student must actually perform. Twenty-nine itemised figures in total, down to a single hour.

Nails: 90 hours of theory, 90 of performed services

The rule divides the 180 into two equal halves. The first is instruction:

topic	hours
Florida Cosmetology laws and rules	4
Sanitation	8
Ethics	2
Nail Theory, Practice, and Related Subjects, including nail disorders and diseases including but not limited to HIV/AIDS	76

The second is services the curriculum must include “instruction in and the performance of”:

service	hours
Manicures	15
Tips with Overlay	15
Pedicures	10
Sculpting Using A Form	10
Nail Wraps and/or Mending	10
Nail Fill-Ins	10
Polishing and Nail Art	10
Artificial Nail Removal	5
Gel Nails	5

Both halves are given in the rule as 90 hours and both sets of figures total 90 (Rule 61G5-22.016).

Facials: 149 hours of theory, 71 of performed services

The facial split is uneven, and weighted toward instruction:

topic	hours
Skin Theory, Disease including but not limited to HIV/AIDS, and Disorders of the Skin	67
Facial Techniques and Contraindications	50
Sanitation	10
Product Chemistry	8
Hair Removal	5
Florida Laws and Rules	4
Basics of Electricity	2
Ethics	2
Makeup	1

service	hours
Facials, manual and mechanical, including masks, packs or treatments, performed on a variety of skin types	30
Eyelash application, individual lashes, and semi-permanent lashes	12
Hair removal, including tweezing, waxing, threading, and sugaring	10
Makeup application for both daytime and nighttime looks	10
Manual extractions	6
Lash and brow tinting	2
Set up, use, and maintenance of electrical devices	1

149 and 71, as the rule gives them, totalling 220 (Rule 61G5-22.017).

The facial rule also defines what counts as a service for its purposes: “a facial client, a client consultation/skin analysis; exfoliation, either manual, mechanical, or chemical; cleansing, toning; manipulations; and packs, masks, or other treatments as needed.”

What the two curricula have in common

Three line items appear in both, at almost the same weight: Florida laws and rules (4 hours each), ethics (2 hours each) and sanitation (8 hours for nails, 10 for facials). That is 14 of the nail curriculum’s 180 hours and 16 of the facial’s 220 — about 7 to 8 per cent of each — on rules, conduct and hygiene.

In both, one theory line is much larger than the others and names HIV/AIDS expressly among the diseases covered. For nails it dominates: 76 of the 90 theory hours. For facials it is the largest single line at 67, though facial techniques and contraindications take another 50, so no one line holds the majority there.

The school sets a final examination, and it is not the Board’s

Completing the hours is not on its own enough for the certificate. A separate rule conditions it:

The school shall issue the student a certificate of completion … upon the student’s completion of [the hours], and achievement of a passing score of 75% or better on a comprehensive final examination administered and graded by the school (Rule 61G5-22.015).

The same provision applies to both specialties, at the same 75%.

This is a school examination, not a state one. Florida sets no board examination for a specialty registration — the statute’s qualification list is age or diploma, a certificate, an application and a fee. But a specialty student is examined, by the institution that trained them, and the certificate the registration depends on is not issued without that pass.

Training for a service is not the same as being authorised to sell it

Three of the facial lines are worth isolating together, because the same open question sits over all three. The curriculum requires 2 hours of lash and brow tinting, 12 hours of eyelash application, individual lashes, and semi-permanent lashes, and 10 hours of hair removal — with a further 5 theory hours on hair removal besides.

Those are training requirements. They are not statements about which credential permits the services to be offered commercially, and this site has an open question on exactly that point: s. 477.0135(11) places lash extensions, lash and brow tinting and hair removal outside the makeup exemption, and chapter 477 does not then say what authorises them. A rule that trains for a service is not self-evidently the rule that authorises it, so nothing on this page closes that question — it stays open under lashes, brows and microblading.

Where this sits

What each specialty registration actually permits, and the statutory hour figures behind these curricula, are under Florida’s four credentials — and in more detail on the nail specialty and the facial specialty. The full licence, which is a different and longer route, is a cosmetology license.

Both rules are titled for a minimum curriculum, and that is the word they use. What a program may add beyond the minimum is not something either rule addresses.