Author: Heather McClure

Hair removal and ingrown hairs go hand in hand, unfortunately. One of the biggest drawbacks of using an epilator is the possibility of getting ingrown hairs. Since this is such an important topic for epilator users, I researched the topic thoroughly to get a good understanding of the problem and the best ways we can address it. This post breaks down the causes of ingrown hairs and how to prevent ingrown hairs when epilating.

What is an Ingrown Hair?

An ingrown hair is a hair that gets trapped under the skin when it is growing out. These usually look like a breakout of pimples or you may see hair bumps with black dots under the skin. Obviously, you are epilating because you care about your appearance so you want to avoid these.

The Causes of Ingrown Hairs

Does an epilator cause ingrown hairs? Unfortunately, an epilator can potentially cause ingrown hair. All hair removal methods may cause ingrown hairs. This can happen when a hair follicle becomes damaged and the hair starts growing sideways or curls and grows back toward the bottom of the follicle. This is most likely in people with curly hair and happens pretty infrequently, fortunately.

The most common cause of ingrown hairs, however, is dead skin cells getting in the way. With epilation, the main issue is that the tips of the new hairs growing back are finer and therefore can have more difficulty getting through the skin, especially if there is a build up of dead skin inside or on top of the follicle.

Tactics for Preventing Ingrown Hairs

To prevent ingrown hairs from epilating, you need to make sure that dead skin cells are thoroughly sloughed off on a regular basis. You can do this with either physical or chemical exfoliation methods.

Physical methods of exfoliation include facial scrubs or microdermabrasion. They work by using friction to rub off the dead skin cells.

Or you can use chemical exfoliation products such as peels or lotions. These remove dead skins cells by speeding up cell turnover. Beta hydroxy acids are a great choice for preventing ingrown hairs from epilating because they reach deep into the skin and follicle.  They also have antibacterial properties, can reduce inflammation, and have anti-aging effects.

You may want to try both to see which gives your skin the best results. I prefer using physical exfoliation right before epilating, but use chemical lotions between epilating to prevent ingrown hairs.

Are You Prone to Ingrown Hairs?

Some people are just more prone to ingrown hairs in general than other people. And some people are just prone to ingrown hairs with certain types of hair removal. And some body parts in some people are more prone to ingrown hairs.

And this is particularly a challenge when epilating more noticable areas like arms or the face because no one wants to wake up one day with a chin full of ingrown hairs. And you just can’t know if you have a tendency to have ingrown hairs from epilating until you try it.

So if you’ve never epilated before, I highly recommend trying out a small patch of hair on your leg and waiting a few days to see how it goes before epilating a large area of skin.

If you get an ingrown hair, experiment with some different exfoliation methods and routines. Try epilating a tiny patch again to see if your exfoliation method worked. If you don’t see good results, epilation may not be the best method for you, unfortunately.

Treating Ingrown Hairs

If you are cursed with an ingrown hair from epilating, here re some treatment recommendations from the National Health Service in the UK:

• Leave it alone for a few days to see if it goes away on its own.
• If it’s near the surface, use a sterile needle or tweezers to remove it.
• Don’t dig into the skin to try to remove a hair. Don’t pick, scratch, or squeeze your skin as this can cause infection and wounds. That could mean scars and skin discoloration that you don’t want.
• If there is inflammation, try applying a mild antiseptic like tea tree oil.
• If these steps don’t help resolve the problem and the ingrown hair doesn’t go away, contact your health care provider for advice. They may have to remove the hair for you or prescribe you antibiotics for an infection.

Have more questions about epilation? Check out the Epilator FAQ and Beginner’s Guide!

Want to remember this? Pin this to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it later!

References

National Health Service: Ingrown Hairs

So you’ve finally bit the bullet and bought an epilator? Woohoo! You are probably both excited and nervous about trying it out the first time, but don’t worry, it’s really pretty simple. I learned how to epilate from a lot of trial and error and have a lot to say on this subject.

However, to make sure you are starting out on the right footing, I sat down and read through the manuals of all the most popular epilators to gather all the important info a new user should know before trying out their first epilator. In this post, I have tried to summarize it all as well as possible so you don’t have to read a crap ton to know how to use an epilator.

What You’ll Need to Epilate

• Your epilator
• Batteries or epilator charger
• Headband or hair ties to keep your hair out of your face
• Facial cleanser
• Exfoliation scrub or mitt
• Clean, dry towel
• Rubbing alcohol
• Epilation numbing cream or other products for pain relief (optional)
• Mirror in a well-lit room or a mirror with a light attached to it
• Moisturizing cream
• Ice pack for pain (optional)

Before You Use an Epilator for the First Time

• Consider different ways you can keep it as pain free as possible, which I wrote about in this post.
• Read your manual. Don’t miss the safety warnings and make sure you know how to operate your specific device properly.
• Check batteries. Either charge your epilator fully or make sure you have batteries for it on hand.
• Start in the evening. Ideally, you should epilate at night so that any irritation or redness has time to subside while you sleep.
• If epilating your face, pull hair back with a headband or hair tie to keep it out of your face. The last thing you want is to get the hair on your head caught in an epilator.
• Wash skin well in warm water. Exfoliate.
• If using a dry epilator, dry skin well. Even if you have a wet and dry epilator, overall, hairs are easier to grab when they are as dry as possible.
• If your skin is not too sensitive or dry, apply alcohol to thoroughly disinfect it. This will help avoid breakouts from epilating as well as prevent infections.
• Make sure your epilator head is thoroughly clean. Use rubbing alcohol to disinfect it as well.
• If you are using skin numbing cream, apply it at this time and wait for it to completely dry before you start epilating.

During Epilation

• If you have multiple attachments, choose the best one for the body part you are starting with.
• Turn on your epilator to the lowest setting if this is your first time. Once you are used to epilating, you can try a higher speed.
• To get used to the epilator, start on your lower legs. If you are just epilating face, start on the outer edges of your mouth or on your chin.
• Use one hand to stretch skin while the other holds the epilator at a 90-degree angle. To stretch the skin around your mouth, you can press your tongue against your lip or cheek area.
• Move the epilator slowly against the direction of growth. If hairs are not being pulled, turn the epilator around and see if that works better. If you aren’t holding it correctly and moving in the right direction, it won’t work.
• Move the epilator around your skin slowly and steadily. If it isn’t working well, move it in different directions as hair growth is often in different directions.
• Use gentle pressure the whole time. Too much pressure against your skin can cause cuts and other injuries.
• If you notice that hairs or breaking instead of being pulled out by the root, make sure you are using the lowest speed and move your epilator more slowly.

After Epilating

• Apply a moisturizing cream after you epilate to soothe, relax, and soften skin.
• If the skin is really irritated or sore, you can apply an ice pack for about 10-15 minutes to help with pain and reduce inflammation
• Clean your epilator according to your manufacturer’s instructions. Usually, this involves using a brush to get all the hair out and then applying rubbing alcohol. Cleaning your epilator after each use will help it perform better, last longer, and prevent skin infection or breakouts.
• If this is your first time epilating, then plan to do it again in a week. Do it weekly for about a month to help your skin adjust. You’ll find that discomfort decreases each time. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can just epilate once every three weeks or as needed.

Epilating Tips

• If you’ve never epilated before, try out a patch on your lower leg before other areas to see how painful it is. This is usually one of the least painful areas to epilate, so if you can’t handle the pain, you may want to skip your face or bikini area altogether.
• If you are worried about pain, take a non-steroid anti-inflammatory like acetaminophen about 30 minutes before you start epilating.
• To prevent spreading germs, causing gross breakouts and infections, never share your facial epilator with other people.
• If your skin is irritated or broken, don’t epilate there.
• Never epilate near your eyes unless you want to go blind. Never try to epilate your eyelashes. Not only would you look weird without eyelashes, but that’s also dangerous.
• You can epilate a unibrow between your eyebrows if you have a Braun Face, Gillette Face Perfection, or another small facial epilator designed for that, but don’t try to shape your eyebrows with an epilator. None of them are designed for that. One wrong move and there goes half your eyebrow and then what are you going to do?
• If your epilator head ever becomes damaged, don’t use it. It is dangerous and could cut you.
• If using a battery-powered epilator, replace batteries as soon as you notice that power is decreasing. This will ensure you get the best results.

Related Questions

When epilating legs, I get ingrown hairs. What can I do about this? 

Ingrown hairs are a complex topic, which I dive into in a post you can read here. However, to answer your question quickly, the best way to prevent ingrown hair is to exfoliate, exfoliate, exfoliate.

How can I epilate without pain?

The best way to epilate without pain is practice! Once you get used to using a epilator, it barely hurts, if it hurts at all. My long list of tips on epilator pain can be found here.

Have more questions about epilation? Check out the Epilator FAQ and Beginner’s Guide!

Want to remember this? Pin this to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it later!

So you have stomach hair that’s driving you nuts? Thankfully, my days of showing off my abs are over, so I just let my stomach hair grow wild and free like a hippie love child, but I understand the struggle. And I know how to epilate a belly like a boss.

Can you epilate stomach hair? You can safely epilate stomach hair. The main drawbacks to doing this are the pain and potential of ingrown hairs. The main benefits include less regrowth and many more days between hair removal sessions than with shaving.

Epilating the stomach is not for the feign of heart, however. In order to pull it off, you should do your research beforehand and know what you are getting into. Then you should plan ahead so you’ll get the best outcomes. Here are my best tips for epilating the belly:

1. Determine The Cause Of Your Stomach Hair

If you’ve always had more hair on your stomach than you’d like since puberty, you can probably thank genetics for that. However, if you’ve recently seen a change in the hair on your stomach, you may have a hormonal issue and it’s best to consult with a doctor to make sure all is okay.

There are many health issues that could cause unwanted, male-pattern hair (also called hirsutism). These issues include polycystic ovary syndrome, Cushing’s syndrome, and medication side effects.

Depending on the cause of your hair, you may need to have your underlying health issue treated. Or your doctor may prescribe medications or creams that will reduce the unwanted hair growth. Then you won’t have to worry about removing your stomach hair.

2. Decide If It’s Worth It

Do you even need to remove your stomach hair? Is it really that bad or are you just being hard on yourself?

Stomach hair is normal on both men and women. The color, thickness, and density vary from one person to the next, depending on hormones and ethnicity, but we all have some hair there. So if your stomach is covered 99.9% of the time by clothes and you’re not feeling overly self-conscious about it, skip removing the hair on your belly.

On the other hand, if your stomach hair bothers you and you’ll be showing off your abs often, epilating may be a path you’d like to try.

But epilating is not without side effects and is best for people who are in it for the long haul. You get the best results after regular use.

3. Get Your Hair To The Right Length

The worst thing you could do is start epilating fully grown stomach hair. It will be traumatizing, trust me.

Before you epilate, you need to get those hairs down to about a millimeter or two.

There are several ways you could go about this. You could just use an electric trimmer. Or you could plan ahead and shave, wax, or use any other hair removal method and then wait for the hairs to grow back to the proper length.

4. Prepare For The Pain

You cannot over-prepare for this, my friend. Probably one of the worse parts of epilating stomach hair is the pain.

But I’m pretty confident that it isn’t that much worse than epilating anywhere else on the body. Most of the horror stories I’ve heard were by people who didn’t trim their hair beforehand. If you’ve followed the previous tip, you’re already ahead of the game.

Besides that, there are many ways to keep your pain to a minimum.

Icing your belly for about 20 minutes before you start will help numb the skin. Another option is using heat by taking a hot shower beforehand or using a hair dryer to open pores, warm the skin, and reduce sensations of pain.

I have many more options for reducing epilator pain in my post about epilator pain.

5. Plan For Several Sessions

If this is your first time epilating a body part, you should probably expect to not finish your whole stomach in one session. It’s going to be intense. You will probably only be able to epilate a small section before you’ll need a breather.

So I would just plan to take several days. Doing a little each day until you’ve epilated your whole stomach. If you are able to do more, then great. It’s just important that you don’t have big plans for wearing a bikini the next day because that may not work out so well.

After you’ve gotten the whole stomach epilated and free of hair, you should epilate the whole stomach every week for a few weeks. This will help your body adjust to the pain and make sure you get all the hairs that are in different growth cycles.

After that, you can start epilating just once or twice a month when you start seeing multiple hairs growing back. By then, you’ll be a pro at using an epilator and the pain should be minimal.

6. Prepare A Chill But Sanitary Experience

You want the least stressful environment possible. So plan to try out epilation on your stomach when you don’t have a lot going on and you won’t be rushed. A quiet, relaxing evening is ideal.

Get all your supplies together and make sure your epilator is clean so you don’t spread bacteria to your pores, which could cause infection.

Then turn on some relaxing music or a movie and go for it.

7. Clean and Dry Your Belly Well

Make sure your abdominal is clean before you start epilating. Use the cleanser to remove oil, moisturizer, and dirt from the skin. Rinse well so that no residue is left. The cleaner the skin and hair, the better the tweezers can grab hold of your hairs.

Just as your skin and hair need to be clean, they also need to be super dry as well. Any moisture will make it harder for the tweezers to grab hairs.

If you use any numbing cream, wait until it has completely dried before starting.

To make your hairs even easier to grab, you can dust some cornstarch or baby powder on your abdominal as well.

8. Follow Proper After Care

If you’ve made it this far and still alive, pat yourself on the back!

Soothe that skin with some ice if necessary. Soothe the skin with an astringent such as witch hazel. Then slather on some moisturizer. Aloe based gel or lotion works well.

9. Beware Of Ingrown Hairs

Ingrown hairs are your number one enemy when using an epilator. And unfortunately, hair on the belly tends to be coarser and more prone to ingrown hairs than many other areas of the body, so you have to be hypervigilant.

Ingrown hairs are caused by dead skin cells blocking the hair from reaching the surface. So the best way to prevent them is to make sure you remove all those dead skin cells.

You do this by exfoliation. Exfoliating a day after epilating and then every other day or so will make a huge difference. You can use methods like exfoliating scrubs and massage sponges.

Or you can try a product with salicylic acid like Tend Skin (click here to compare prices and read reviews on Amazon). These help to remove dead skin that is still deep in the hair follicle and may work better than other exfoliation methods.

10. Consider Other Hair Removal Methods

Epilating may just be more trouble than it’s worth for belly hair.

If you only plan to remove belly hair a few times of the year when you’ll be at the beach, you may just want to use less painful methods like shaving or hair removal cream. It may appear as though more hair grows back, but that is just an optical illusion caused by the blunt tip when you haven’t removed the whole hair out by the root, so don’t worry about that.

On the other hand, if you’d like a hair-free stomach year-round, you may want to invest in other hair removal methods like waxing. Or semi-permanent methods like laser or IPL. These three types cost more than epilating but may be more suited for you depending on your pain tolerance and skin type.

And the last and most expensive option is electrolysis. This is the only method of permanent hair removal and should be done by a professional. However, if you are only going to focus on your belly hair, it cost may be reasonable.

11. Just Bleach It

If your hair is just dark, but not superabundant, bleaching can be a decent alternative to hair removal. It does require lighter skin and some exposure to chemicals, but you don’t have to worry about pain.

And if you are prone to ingrown hairs, it may be your best bet for dealing with your stomach hair without spending tons of money.

Related Questions

What is the best epilator for stomach hair?

My pick for best epilator for stomach hair is the Panasonic ES-ED50-N Multi-Functional Wet/Dry Shaver and Epilator (click to check it out on Amazon). This is one of the better epilators for sensitive areas. The gentle epilator head is just the right size for navigating the belly area. And the LED light makes it easy to see hairs. It also has extra protection that keeps skin from getting caught in tweezers.

Have more questions about epilation? Check out the Epilator FAQ and Beginner’s Guide!

Want to remember this? Pin this to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it later!