Brownish red hair skin#

Brownish red hair skin#

When using an IPL handset on coloured skin we always recommend keeping the intensity low, and only increasing it if there is no pain whatsoever.įor this same reason, anybody with light coloured hair roots (light blonde, grey, white) and those with red hair roots (which features a different type of melanin, called pheomelanin) may also struggle to see results. Please check the chart below.Īt best, results on very dark skin will be minimal but there is also a risk of long term damage, so best to avoid completely. This doesn’t mean every person of colour isn’t a great candidate for IPL, it just means that the efficacy depends on how dark your skin is.

The catch is that if you try to IPL on dark skin tones the IPL device will have difficulty differentiating between the colour (or eumelanin) in the hair shaft and the skin. And both work by automatically spotting the darkness in the follicle and targeting that area. It’s a similar situation with laser hair removal, which works slightly differently by using a monochromatic coherent light source for a much more intense and targeted focus on the follicle.īoth systems are kind of magic, really. This heat ‘damages’ the hair cells resulting in a major reduction in growth. The light gets absorbed by the hair follicle and gets transformed into intense heat (by follicle standards, we promise it’s not too painful overall). Intense Pulse Light therapy works by emitting a strong wavelength that targets the pigment in hair.

However, it turns out that hair root colour and the amount of melanin in the skin are some of the most important factors when it comes to determining the success of a candidate's treatment.

‘Why is that important?’, we hear you ask? Sounds kind of unfair, right? About to invest in an at-home IPL hair removal device? You might notice that one of the first things a clinic technician will ask you to confirm is your hair colour and skin tone.