Hair removal journeys are quite the experience, especially when you are testing diverse techniques to determine which ones fit you the best. How Often Should You Epilate? Several factors go into making that decision including, but not limited to:
- Time consumption
- Associated costs
- The preparation and post-care needs
- Frequency of usage
- Pain tolerance
- Convenience
Mentioned above are only some of the factors you will probably evaluate each technique against before making the final choice. However, you’re here to learn more about epilation so let’s talk about that more.
Epilation is one of the most popular methods of hair removal despite being unfairly notorious for being painful.
However, when done correctly, epilation is easily one of the best hair removal methods. Given its effectiveness, the question mostly comes down to how often you should epilate.
Before getting into that discussion, let’s look at what epilation is all about.
What is Epilation?
Epilation means removing hair from the roots. In terms of hair removal techniques, epilation refers to hair removal by using any one of the three main types of epilators:
- Spring Epilator
- Disc Epilator
- Tweezer Epilator
Each type focuses on trapping hair and then pulling them out to give your skin the smooth and hairless look you wanted to achieve. However, we want to clarify that not all epilators are the same.
While you might still see recommendations for spring epilators for facial epilation, tweezer and disc epilators are the more common choice.
Why Epilation is a Great Hair Removal Technique
There are several reasons why epilation is popular and will continue to remain one of the essential hairs removal methods in the future.
1. Reduction in Hair Density Overtime
Like waxing, epilation pulls hair out from the root. The technical detail here is that the consistent pulling damages hair follicles in your epidermis and, thus, extensively reduce hair density in the region you epilation regularly.
This means that using an epilator will help you reduce the effort you need to epilate yourself in the future. How cool is that!
2. Minimum Preparations
The part you will love the most about epilation is the little preparation required for it. Unlike several methods (like waxing), you don’t need to follow a ritual of cleansing, moisturizing, and scrubbing to prepare for your epilation session.
At best, you will need to exfoliate a few days before and take a hot shower right before you start epilation. Other than that, it would be best if you had special arrangements for this method, which makes it even easy and convenient.
3. Affordable
Due to the minimal preparations and post-care, epilation is very affordable. The maximum cost you will incur is the amount of money you spend on the epilator itself. You will not need to buy anything extra just for epilation.
You can use your usual items for exfoliation and moisturizing, so you will not need to buy them separately. All in all, it is a perfectly affordable method if you are on a budget.
4. Quick and Easy
Epilation is efficient and convenient because of its sheer simplicity. The epilator itself is a small device that can easily fit in any of your backpacks, helping you carry it around on your travels.
Since it does not require much preparation, you can use it while away from home without any concerns.
Additionally, epilators are very efficient when it comes to hair removal. Any good epilator should help you get done with your basic need in about two hours, even at slow to medium speed.
5. Effective against Short Hair
The best part about epilators is that they can grab on to even the short hair that sometimes gets missed out in waxing due to length.
It is more challenging to get the wax to stick to concise hair and, therefore, a typical waxing session would leave some hair on your body.
Epilators are designed to capture hair and pull at them the way a thread does so that they can catch various lengths.
6. Hair Takes Longer to Grow Back
Compared to shaving or hair removal through depilatory creams, hair regrowth takes a lot longer to happen.
Shaving and cream removal results in the hair growing back within a few days because they only cut the hair off at the skin’s surface.
Since epilators pull hair out of their roots, the new hair takes time to grow back to reach the surface and become visible.
We will carry this advantage onto the next part of this article, where we discuss the answer to the main question, ‘how often should you epilate?’
How Long Does it Take for Epilated Hair to Grow Back?
Like we mentioned before, when you epilate your hair, you remove them from the roots. So, a new hair starts to grow in the previous one’s place and eventually breaks the skin’s surface. This process takes longer than when the hair is growing from the surface.
On average, it takes about 1.5-2 weeks for the hair to grow enough to reach and break the surface and then another 1.5-2 weeks to reach a length that can be epilated.
How Often Should You Epilate?
Skincare experts recommend epilating once every 3-4 weeks, and they have a good reason for deciding on this timeline.
Aside from the fact that your hair needs this amount of time to reach the best length for epilation, your skin also needs this time to heal.
When you epilate, you pull hair out from the roots. This process exerts a fair amount of strain on the skin itself, which gets pulled along with the hair for a little while at least. Then there is also the matter of open pores, which are essentially minor wounds.
Just like all other wounds, pores also need time to heal before you can exert the same strain upon them again.
Epilating before they have recovered will increase the chances of your skin becoming irritated and might even trigger worse problems in extreme cases.
Therefore, it is best to wait for 3-4 weeks before you repeat epilation. You might have visible hair for some time, but that is alright since it will eventually become less dense in the long run anyway.
Some Tips about Epilation
Now that we understand how often you should ideally epilate, let’s look at some tips about epilation to help you get the best experience.
1. Exfoliate a Few Days in Advance
Make sure you exfoliate a few days before you are set to epilate your body. It will help you clean out your pores and crevices thoroughly and give your skin enough time to recover from any irritation exfoliation may have caused.
When you forget to exfoliate until the day of epilation, either delay epilation by two days or go ahead without exfoliating. However, don’t do both on the same day.
2. Trim Your Hair
Do not try epilating your hair at its full length. Trim the hair down before epilating; otherwise, it will be more difficult for the epilator to pull the hair from the roots, making the process painful.
This is a major reason why the myth of painful hair removal exists around epilation. Most people don’t know that they need to cut overgrowth before epilating and end up in too much pain.
3. Take a Hot Shower before Epilation
Hot water helps open up the pores, making it easier for you to epilate them with minimal discomfort.
You can now also get wet epilators that are waterproof and can be used in the shower, making the process even more convenient for you.
But generally, make sure you don’t miss this step. It can drastically improve your overall epilation experience, especially if you have a lower pain tolerance.
4. Hold the Epilator at a 90° Angle
Holding the epilator at a right angle against your skin gives it the perfect access to your hair.
Holding it at a tilt will make the hair capture and removal less physically optimal and cause more pain. Therefore, keep this detail in mind when you are epilating.
It would be best if you ideally epilated in front of a mirror to help you make sure you are positioning it correctly and have removed hair from parts that are not directly visible.
5. Start from Your Legs
Legs are the least sensitive part of the body and feel the least pain. If you are new to epilation, make sure you start epilating from your legs and move upward once you feel like your body is well adjusted to the feeling you get from epilation.
Getting accustomed to the feeling helps you adjust to how epilating feels and eventually feel less and less discomfort after you epilate regularly.
6. Keep the Skin Taut
Keeping your skin stretched out is one of the most important tips you need to keep in mind if you want to make your epilation experience as painless as possible.
If your skin is loose, it will have more stretching ability, and your epilator will need to pull longer to get the hair out.
To avoid your skin getting carried along for the drive, make sure you are helping it well-positioned.
7. Take Pain Killers if your Pain Tolerance is Low
Some people have naturally low pain tolerance and still find the entire process too painful, even though they like the results.
If you are such a person, get some over-the-counter pain medications and have them 30 minutes before starting epilating.
That will give them enough time to kick in and ease the pain you feel.
8. Moisturize!
We cannot emphasize this tip enough. Moisturizing makes the skin soft, and it is easier to pull hair away from soft skin than from rough and dried skin.
Moisturizing skin is generally essential as well because it prevents wrinkles and keeps the skin fresh and smooth.
Following these tips will make epilating easier, convenient, and less painful for you.
What to Avoid If you Epilate
Aside from the general tips that we gave you to improve your epilation experience, here are a few tips on what to avoid if you are trying epilation or doing it for some time.
1. Using a Dry Epilator in the Shower
All corded epilators are dry epilators, and unless you want to risk electrocution or get your epilator to malfunction, we would advise you against this practice.
Companies can now produce wet epilators that are perfect for those of you who want to manage all your business in the shower while their pores are fully open.
This choice also helps them simultaneously clean their epilator and their body from loose hair getting stuck everywhere.
2. Using the Epilator on Fast Setting as a Beginner
Unlike waxing, attempting to do everything with an epilator quickly will only cause you pain and potentially lead to ingrown hair. Ingrown hair is a result of hair breaking at the stem and skin forming around damaged hair
3. Overdoing Epilation
You may already have read our answer about how often you should epilate, and this advice is a reiteration of the same. Over epilating can be harmful to your skin and can cause several skin reactions as a result.
Simply follow the guidelines, and you have beautiful, glowing, and smooth legs that you can enjoy.
Wrap Up
To sum up, epilation is an important hair removal technique and rightfully gained its popularity. The answer to how often you should epilate is 3-4 weeks.
You need this time for your hair to grow back, and you should avoid trying to schedule another epilation session until fully recovered.
If you would like to learn more about epilation and its dynamics, check out more of our blog entries. We have several articles written about the subject, and we are confident you will enjoy reading them.