When you treat yourself to a spa day, you aren't usually cutting your own hair or giving yourself a massage. To express getting someone else to do something for you, Dutch uses the verb laten.
Having Something Done
To say you "have [something] done", conjugate laten in the main position of the sentence. The action being performed by the other person (the bare infinitive) gets pushed to the very end of the clause.
| Do you have your hair cut in the salon? | Laat je je haar in de salon knippen? |
Just like with other verbs, if you use laten in a dependent clause (like a relative clause describing a noun), all the verbs stack at the end of the sentence.
| The boy who is having his hair cut lives here. | De jongen die zijn haar laat knippen, woont hier. |
This pattern is incredibly useful for all kinds of salon services, from manicures to massages.
| She is having her nails painted red. | Zij laat haar nagels rood lakken. |
Using "om ... te" with Laten
If you want to say you are doing something in order to have a service done, you will use the om ... te structure. The word te sits directly before laten, and the action verb immediately follows it.
| I choose the treatment to have my body massaged. | Ik kies de behandeling om mijn lichaam te laten masseren. |
Time Clauses: Voordat and Nadat
Conjunctions like voordat (before) and nadat (after) introduce subordinate clauses, which means laten and the action verb both move to the end of that clause.
Remember that if you start your entire sentence with this time clause, it triggers inversion in the main clause that follows.
| Before I go to the party, I am having my face cleansed. | Voordat ik naar het feest ga, laat ik mijn gezicht reinigen. |
| After the woman has her hair dyed, she goes to the party. | Nadat de vrouw haar haar laat verven, gaat ze naar het feest. |