Ulta on Thanksgiving: What Actually Happens
Ulta is closed on Thanksgiving Day. This is one of those things everyone seems to discover the hard way. You show up at 8:45 AM expecting those typical early Black Friday lines, and the doors are locked. The parking lot is empty except for someone's car that clearly made the same mistake. I learned this in 2019 and haven't forgotten since. Their standard operating hours are Monday through Saturday from 9 AM to 10 PM, with Sunday hours running 10 AM to 8 PM. Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday, which means the store simply does not open that day. No exceptions. No secret midnight opening for loyalty members. Just closed.
Ulta Hours Thanksgiving Day Your Ultimate Guide To Shopping And Savings
If you need to shop around Thanksgiving, your options are limited but not entirely useless. The website remains operational throughout the holiday, and online ordering doesn't stop just because the physical locations don't open. Shipping is slower during this window though. Expect anything from three to seven business days for standard delivery, and the holiday surge in orders means even expedited options can slip. Black Friday is where the actual deals live. Ulta runs one of the more aggressive holiday sales cycles in the beauty retail space, and it technically begins on Thanksgiving evening or sometimes earlier. The Beauty Insider Sale kicks off with 20% off everything for Platinum members and 15% for Diamond members. If you are still in the regular tier, you get nothing but disappointment and a reminder to accumulate those points faster next year. The doorbuster events start at various times depending on your location. Some stores open at midnight Thursday night, others wait until 6 AM Friday morning. There is no universal schedule. The best move is calling your local Ulta the week before Thanksgiving and asking directly. Most managers have the posted hours printed somewhere, and they will tell you. Checking online is unreliable because the corporate website often lists placeholder hours during the holiday week.
Here is something most people miss about Ulta's holiday savings structure. The Beauty Insider coupons stack in ways that are not immediately obvious. You earn 1 point per dollar spent, and at 400 points you receive a $10 reward certificate. During Black Friday week, there is often a promotional multiplier event where purchases earn double points. If you time your spending correctly and apply a standing 20% off coupon from your rewards account alongside the holiday sale, the effective discount can reach roughly 35% or higher on select items. The catch is the fine print on those holiday sale items. Most exclusions apply to limited edition collaborations, new launch products from brands like Fenty Beauty and Rare Beauty, and items already heavily discounted through vendor agreements. You will see a shelf tag that says "20% off" and then another tag underneath that says "exclusions apply." Read both. I have wasted time in line only to find my favorite products were excluded from the promotion entirely. Another edge case that caused me real headaches last year: gift card balance confusion. Ulta runs a recurring promotion where you get a bonus gift card when you purchase one, typically something like spend $50, get a $10 bonus card. The bonus card has separate terms and a different expiration date from your regular balance. During the 2023 holiday rush, I used my bonus card for half of a purchase and my regular card for the other half, and the system applied the 20% discount only to the regular card portion. I noticed this at the register but was too embarrassed to ask them to re-split the transaction. I walked away paying full price on roughly a third of my purchase. Learn from my mistake. Make sure the cashier applies promotional discounts to the correct balance before you leave.
Get the Full Details
The online channel during Thanksgiving week has its own quirks. Free shipping thresholds sometimes shift during the holiday period, and Ulta occasionally drops a 20% off code that is exclusive to online orders. These codes do not appear in the Beauty Insider portal. You have to find them through email newsletters or social media. I check the Ulta account page first thing every morning during November because the codes rotate frequently and some expire within 24 hours. Payment processing issues spike during peak hours. Ulta accepts their own credit card, the Visa card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and gift cards. During the first hour of Black Friday sales, I have watched credit card terminals freeze repeatedly, probably from transaction volume. The workaround is simple: have a backup payment method loaded on your phone. If the card reader locks up, mobile pay options often bypass the same congestion because they route through a different payment gateway. For people who cannot make it to a store during the holiday window, consider this workaround. Ulta prices are consistent across channels, meaning the item costs the same online and in-store. Order online the day before Thanksgiving if possible, or on Black Friday morning if your order qualifies for same-day delivery in your area. Same-day delivery through Ulta's partnership with Shipt is available in most metropolitan markets for a flat fee, and sometimes free if you hit the spending threshold. The fee is usually around nine dollars, but it is still cheaper than driving around looking for an open store.
One counter-intuitive thing about Ulta's holiday pricing strategy that bears mentioning: the so-called "doorbuster" products are not actually the deepest discounts. The items most likely to be marked down significantly are older inventory that Ulta is trying to clear before brand replenishment cycles. This includes discontinued packaging versions of popular products, seasonal items from the previous year, and lip colors in shades that underperformed. The deeply discounted sections in-store often hide better deals than the prominently displayed Black Friday tables. I have found five-dollar products in those clearance zones that normally run twenty dollars retail. The downside to relying on clearance is that inventory is unpredictable. What is there today will not be there tomorrow, and restocks during the holiday period are rare. If you see something you want in a clearance bin, buy it immediately. Do not come back next week expecting it to still be there. There are scenarios where Ulta simply does not work as a shopping destination during this period. If you are trying to coordinate a gift for someone with specific brand preferences, the sold-out items on Black Friday will ruin that plan. High-demand products from brands like Pat McGrath Labs and Charlotte Tilbury frequently sell out within hours of the sale starting, sometimes before the sale officially begins if there is any early access loophole. If your gift target is not flexible on brand choice, consider a different retailer with better stock availability.
Also worth noting: Ulta's return policy during the holiday season is modified. Standard returns require a receipt and go back to the original payment method within 60 days. Holiday returns extend that window to 90 days, but only for purchases made between November 1 and Christmas. If you are buying gifts for other people, this extension matters. If you are returning something yourself after the holidays, you still fall under the standard 60-day rule unless the purchase was explicitly tagged as a holiday return at the register. The bottom line is straightforward. Ulta is closed on Thanksgiving. Plan your shopping around that constraint, call your local store to confirm Black Friday hours before you drive there, and read the exclusion tags on sale items before you load up your basket. The savings are real if you know where to look, but the hassle factor is proportionally high during peak holiday weekends.
