The session takes minutes, but half of the result comes down to what you do afterwards. We ask for nothing complicated: the aftercare is mostly two bans for two days and SPF for two weeks.
The first hours
The skin will feel warm and look red, and small bumps like goosebumps may appear around the follicles. That is how a follicle reacts to heat, and it is normal: it usually settles within a few hours, sometimes it lasts into the next day.
If you want to take the heat out, hold something cool against it through a cloth rather than ice on bare skin. No alcohol-based lotions or warming products that day.
Sources: American Academy of Dermatology
The first two days
Put off the sauna, the pool and hot baths: heat deepens the redness and chlorinated water irritates freshly treated skin. A shower is fine, warm rather than hot.
High-friction sport is worth moving too. Wear loose clothes: tight jeans, leggings and stiff underwear rub exactly where the skin is more sensitive than usual right now. When to go back to the gym, the pool and the sauna is covered in exercise after laser hair removal.
For underarms add a day without deodorant, for the face a day without make-up on the treated area. Whether sweat and odor change after laser: does laser hair removal reduce sweating and odor?.
The first two weeks
The rule that matters here is the sun. No tanning beds, no serious sunbathing, and SPF on anything exposed. It is not about the sun being harmful in itself: a tan changes how much pigment is in your skin, the laser works on pigment, and we would have to run the next session at lower power.
Fake tan is out for these two weeks as well, and right before the next visit it gets in the way more than anything.
Drop scrubs, acids, retinol and rough cloths from your routine. Bring them back once the skin has stopped reacting, usually after a week to ten days.
Hairs will fall out, and that is not regrowth
Five to ten days after the session the treated hairs start pushing out of the skin. From the outside it looks as if the hair has grown back, and plenty of people decide at that point that the treatment did not work. It is the opposite: the hair is coming out because the root no longer holds it.
Tweezing them is unnecessary and harmful: tweezers pull out the hairs the laser has not reached yet, and the next session will have nothing to act on there. Let them come out; some will go in the shower on their own.
What to put on the skin
For the first few days a plain soothing product without alcohol, acids or fragrance is enough - panthenol or the moisturiser you already use. There is nothing special to buy.
After two or three days go back to your usual routine. Dryness in the first days is a common reaction, and moisturising deals with it fastest.
What is allowed between sessions
You can and should shave if the hair bothers you: shaving takes off only the visible part and leaves the root alone. Wax, sugaring, tweezers and epilators are out until the course ends - they pull the hair out by the root, and the laser is left with nothing to work on.
If a beach holiday falls between sessions, tell us in advance. We will move the visit so it does not land on your tanning days. What to get ready for the next visit is collected in how to prepare for laser hair removal.
When to message us
Write to us if blisters appear, if redness lasts more than a day, or if the area hurts rather than simply feels tender. It is rare, but sorting it out is our job, not yours with advice from the internet.
We are in touch throughout the course: a question about aftercare is an ordinary thing, and we answer it faster than you could look it up.
Sources: Cleveland Clinic
Reviewed by: MEDULLA team