Faire Causatif: How to Say "Have Something Done" in French

Your friend in Lyon casually mentions she's having her kitchen repainted next week, and you go to translate it in your head as "Elle repeint sa cuisine" — except that sentence actually means she's the one up on the ladder with the roller. French has a completely different construction for jobs you pay someone else to do, and skipping it is one of the fastest ways to say something backwards without realizing it.

This gap matters the moment real life gets involved: you don't cut your own hair, build your own house, or fix your own car engine, yet English lets "I'm cutting my hair" and "I'm having my hair cut" slide by with barely any grammatical difference. French keeps those two ideas strictly apart, and the tool that separates them — le causatif, or faire + infinitive — shows up constantly once you start listening for it: hair salons, garages, tailors, contractors, anywhere someone else is doing the work.

What Faire Causatif Actually Means

Faire causatif is French's way of saying someone caused an action to happen, rather than performing it themselves. Structurally, it's simple: the conjugated verb faire followed directly by a plain infinitive, then the object. "Je fais réparer ma voiture" (zhuh feh ray-pa-ray mah vwa-tewr) means "I'm having my car repaired" — not "I'm repairing my car."

Key Phrases

• faire réparer (fehr ray-pa-ray) — to have (something) repaired
• faire construire (fehr kohn-strweer) — to have (something) built
• faire nettoyer (fehr net-wa-yay) — to have (something) cleaned
• Je fais réparer ma voiture. (zhuh feh ray-pa-ray mah vwa-tewr) — I'm having my car repaired.

[AUDIO: faire réparer] [AUDIO: je fais réparer ma voiture]

Grammar Note

Conjugate faire for the subject, then drop the bare infinitive right after it, with the object last: je fais, tu fais, il/elle/on fait, nous faisons, vous faites, ils/elles font — always plus infinitive.

• Common mistake: conjugating the second verb. Faire causatif always keeps it as a bare infinitive — je fais réparer, never je fais répare.
• Common mistake: using a plain present tense instead. "Je répare ma voiture" says you're personally under the hood — the opposite of having someone else do it.

Naming Who Does the Work: Par vs. À

Often you want to say exactly who's doing the job — the mechanic, the tailor, the contractor. French adds that person after the infinitive's object with par or, less often, à, and the choice depends on how crowded the sentence already is.

Key Phrases

• faire réparer quelque chose par quelqu'un (fehr ray-pa-ray kel-kuh shohz par kel-kuh-uh) — to have something repaired by someone
• Je fais réparer ma voiture par un mécanicien. (zhuh feh ray-pa-ray mah vwa-tewr par uñ may-ka-nee-syañ) — I'm having my car repaired by a mechanic.
• Elle fait faire une robe à sa couturière. (ehl feh fehr ewn rohb ah sah koo-tew-ryehr) — She's having a dress made by her dressmaker.

[AUDIO: faire réparer par un mécanicien] [AUDIO: elle fait faire une robe à sa couturière]

Grammar Note

French leans on par for the person doing the work, since the sentence already has an object and par keeps the roles unambiguous.

• Use par whenever the infinitive already has a direct object: je fais réparer ma voiture par un mécanicien.
• À survives mainly in set phrases built on faire faire (to have made): faire faire une robe à sa couturière keeps à by tradition.
• Common mistake: dropping the preposition and naming the person directly. French always marks the worker with par or à — never bare.

Se Faire + Infinitive: When It Happens to You

Add a reflexive pronoun in front of faire, and the causative shifts to describe a service done to the subject personally — almost always something to your body, your belongings, or your life. "Je me fais couper les cheveux" (I'm having my hair cut) is the phrase you'll actually reach for at a French salon, far more useful there than any literal translation of "cut."

Key Phrases

• se faire couper les cheveux (suh fehr koo-pay lay shuh-vuh) — to have one's hair cut
• se faire faire les ongles (suh fehr fehr lay zohngl) — to have one's nails done
• se faire livrer (suh fehr lee-vray) — to have something delivered (to oneself)
• Je me fais couper les cheveux demain. (zhuh muh feh koo-pay lay shuh-vuh duh-mañ) — I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow.

[AUDIO: je me fais couper les cheveux] [AUDIO: se faire livrer]

Walk into a French salon de coiffure and say "Je voudrais me faire couper les cheveux" rather than "je voudrais couper mes cheveux" — the second sentence tells the stylist you plan to grab the scissors yourself, exactly the mix-up this construction exists to prevent.

Grammar Note

Se faire + infinitive follows the same bare-infinitive rule as plain faire causatif, with a reflexive pronoun added to show the action lands back on the subject: je me fais, tu te fais, il/elle/on se fait, nous nous faisons, vous vous faites, ils/elles se font + infinitive.

• Common mistake: forgetting the reflexive pronoun and saying "je fais couper les cheveux" — that drifts toward having someone else's hair cut, missing that it's your own.
• Common mistake: swapping in a pronoun and putting it before the infinitive instead of faire — "je fais la réparer" is wrong; it's always je la fais réparer, pronoun attached to faire itself.

Putting Faire Causatif Into Practice

Picture calling a garage in Marseille because your car broke down on the way to the coast.

• You: "Bonjour, je voudrais faire réparer ma voiture." (Hello, I'd like to have my car repaired.)
• Mechanic: "Bien sûr, qu'est-ce qui ne va pas ?" (Of course, what's wrong with it?)
• You: "Je ne sais pas exactement, mais je veux la faire vérifier avant de repartir." (I don't know exactly, but I want to have it checked before I leave again.)
• Mechanic: "Pas de problème, on va la faire réparer aujourd'hui." (No problem, we'll have it repaired today.)

Notice the mechanic reaches for the exact structure you just learned — on va la faire réparer — proof this isn't a textbook curiosity but the phrase a real French speaker uses on the spot.

Practice Exercises

• Fill in the blank: Je ___ ___ (faire, réparer) mon téléphone. (I'm having my phone repaired.)
• Translate into French: "She's having a house built."
• Multiple choice: Which sentence means "I'm having my hair cut"? (a) Je coupe mes cheveux. (b) Je me fais couper les cheveux. (c) Je fais les cheveux.
• Fill in the blank: Il fait faire une robe ___ sa couturière. (à / par)
• True or false: In faire causatif, an object pronoun goes right before the infinitive, not before faire.
• Translate into French, using a pronoun: "I'm having it built." (referring to la maison)

Answer Key

• fais réparer — Je fais réparer mon téléphone.
• Elle fait construire une maison.
• (b) Je me fais couper les cheveux — (a) says you're cutting it yourself, (c) isn't a real construction.
• à — faire faire keeps à by tradition with the person who makes the item.
• False — the pronoun attaches to faire, not the infinitive: je la fais construire.
• Je la fais construire.

A Construction Worth Owning

• Faire causatif (faire + bare infinitive) says someone else did the action for you — je fais réparer ma voiture, not je répare ma voiture.
• Name the person doing the work with par (the default) or, in set phrases like faire faire, with à.
• Add a reflexive pronoun for services done to you personally — se faire couper les cheveux — and remember that any object pronoun clusters in front of faire, never the infinitive beside it.

Next time you need a haircut, a repair, or a delivery in France, you'll have the exact construction ready instead of a sentence that accidentally puts you to work. Try writing three of your own faire causatif sentences about errands you'd actually run, or head over to Passage's Grammar section for more constructions like this one.