Kentucky tanning laws for salon owners

What Kentucky requires at the front desk

Kentucky's tanning law is short: KRS 217.920 to 217.928, passed in 2006, plus one regulation from the Department for Public Health, 902 KAR 45:075. Most of it is about minors and paperwork, so nearly every duty lands on the person at the counter.

1. Register the facility with your local health department before you open, and renew each year. Registration runs to December 31.
2. Give every customer the written warning statement required by KRS 217.924(1). Adults do not have to sign it, but they must receive it.
3. Check the age of every UV client. Under 14, a parent or legal guardian must be with the child when they tan.
4. For a 14- to 17-year-old, get a statement signed by a parent or legal guardian before the first session, and ask for a new one once the calendar year it covers is over.
5. Record the date and length of every session a minor aged 14 or over takes. The statute's wording is children 14 to 18 years of age.
6. Make sure every customer uses protective eyewear: hand out single-use disposable eyewear, or require customers to bring their own.
7. Keep the parent statements and the minors' session records for at least two years, and be ready to show them to cabinet or health department staff on request.

Minors: three age bands

The parent's statement must say three things: the parent has read and understood the warnings you give, consents to the minor using the tanning device, and agrees the minor will use protective eyewear. The law asks the cabinet to write forms for this, so ask your local health department whether it has a form it expects you to use.

Registration, monitoring and recent changes

You apply on form DFS-303 with a $75 fee paid to your district or county health department (902 KAR 45:075 Section 2). Health department staff visit when you first register and when someone complains. If they find a violation you get 30 days to correct it, a reinspection and another 30 days. After 60 days without a fix, your registration is suspended, and you can then ask for a new inspection.

The last change to the statute came from House Bill 327 of 2018 (2018 Ky. Acts ch. 136), effective July 1, 2019. It removed a $20 fee from KRS 217.924(3) and replaced it with a fee that may not exceed the program's administrative costs. The regulation was last amended effective September 9, 2019, and its history line shows a certification effective May 14, 2026.

Bills to ban tanning under 18 were filed in each session from 2014 to 2017 and none became law: KRS 217.922 still carries its 2006 text. The General Assembly's subject indexes for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 regular sessions list no bill mentioning tanning.

What Kentucky law does not cover

• Operator training and attendants: neither the statute nor the regulation sets any.
• Session frequency: there is no 24-hour or other gap between sessions. See the 24-hour tanning rule guide.
• Injury reports, lamp replacement and timer testing: not addressed in KRS 217.920 to 217.928 or 902 KAR 45:075. Federal equipment rules still apply; see FDA tanning bed regulations.
• Spray tans: the age rules cover equipment that emits radiation, so they set no age for a spray booth.
• Local rules: a city or county can add its own business license or conditions, so check with yours.

How TanVision helps with Kentucky's paperwork

TanVision's consent forms let clients sign on their own phone or a tablet, and each signed record keeps the exact wording they agreed to, plus a parent or guardian's name and signature for a client under your minimum age. At check-in a session cannot start without a signed statement and a date of birth on file, and a client under your minimum age cannot start without guardian consent on file.

Every session TanVision starts is saved with its date, room and minutes, and the client record lists recent visits newest first. That covers the raw material for Kentucky's minors log, but pulling a two-year record for one client is still a job you should plan for.

Three limits matter in Kentucky. With Minors and UV rooms at Yes, the default at Settings > Tanning rules, guardian consent on file lets a client under your minimum age start any room, UV included, with only a warning, and TanVision does not know whether a parent is in the building, so making sure a parent is actually present for an under-14 client is your desk's job. TanVision has no waiver expiry, so it will not flag a parent statement that has passed its calendar year. And Scan ID, which reads a client's date of birth from the barcode on a US or Canadian driver's license or ID card with a USB 2D scanner and records the day the ID was checked, does not compare the photo with the person. For other states, see tanning laws by state.