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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!

I have a nice variety of hair types on my body for some reason, from thick, coarse, dark hairs in some areas (including my head) to finer, blonde hairs on my thighs. This has given me the chance to see how different hair removal types work for different hair types. And I’ve had quite a bit of practice using epilators to pull out my fine hairs.

Do epilators work on fine hair? Epilators work for fine hair. In fact, most epilators work better on fine hairs than coarse hairs. Fine hair is also less painful to remove for most people.

There are some caveats to this, though. I’ve used epilators to remove fine hair with little problems and I know of lots of other people who report the same. But there are still some people who say they’ve had no luck removing fine hairs with an epilator.

Is this because they are using a low-quality epilator? Or are they using the epilator incorrectly? I don’t know. But there are specific things to do that will increase your chances of success when using an epilator for fine hair.

Do You Even Have Fine Hair?

Before you need to know how epilators work with fine hair, it’s good to know for sure that you actually have fine hair. So how do you do that?

Well, the easiest way is to get a strand of hair and hold in between your fingers. What do you feel?

If you can’t even feel a hair, you have fine hair.

If you feel a hair and it feels strong and thick, your hair is probably coarse.

And if you feel the hair, but it doesn’t feel particularly thick, you can consider the hair about medium.

Whatever your hair type, there should be an epilator that works for it. You just need to know what to look for when buying one.

Features of the Best Epilators for Fine Hair

When choosing an epilator, you should look for a few specific features if you want to get good results with fine hair:

Light

Many epilator models have LED lights that shine on your skin as you epilate. This is really essential if you have fine or light-colored hairs. You will be able to see the hairs well as you epilate, even in the shower or bath or a room with poor lighting.

Multiple Speeds

It’s pretty easy to find epilators with at least two speeds these days. I highly recommend getting an epilator with two speeds if you have fine hair. This allows you to try different speeds to see which works best for your hair.

Generally, a lower speed is best for fine hair. The higher the speed, the more likely that you’ll break off hairs at the surface instead of pulling them out. And this is especially important with fine hair because it is weaker.

Hair Lifting or Gripping Technology

There are different terms for this, depending on the brand, but the general idea is that you want an epilator that has some extra feature that helps to lift or grip hairs better. This will make it more likely that your epilator will grab all your fine hairs without as much hassle.

Braun calls this “close-grip technology,” a feature on most of their epilators, that increases the gripping power of the tweezers. This is why these epilators can pull out hair as short as 0.05 millimeters.

Some Philips epilators come with a “hair lifting massage cap” that you can clip on the epilator head. It combs and lifts hairs from the skin so that the epilator can grab them better.

Using an Epilator on Fine Hair

Once you have a good epilator for fine hair, you can follow most of the general advice about epilating. However, the most likely hurdle you’ll have with fine hair is that it will break while epilating instead of being pulled out completely. If that happens, the hairs will be back in a few days which defeats the purpose of epilating!

So here are a few specific steps that people with fine hair should remember:

Don’t Be Smooth

You want your hairs non-slippery and easy to grab. Even if you have a wet epilator, it’s best to epilate fine hairs without water.

Instead, you should take a shower or bath before you calm skin and open pores, but then thoroughly dry your skin and hair before you start epilating.

You should also make sure that your skin is squeaky clean with no moisturizer or anything else. To increase the traction, you can also add some baby powder, corn starch, or other powder to your hairs before you begin epilating.

Pull Skin Extra Taut

You should do this no matter your hair type, but it’s especially important if you have fine hair. Pull your skin with one hand so that it is stretched and hairs will be easier to grab and pull out.

Go Slow

This is one of the most important steps for people with fine hair. You need to start with your epilator at the lowest speed and probably just stay at that speed. Basically, the epilator needs that extra time for grasping.

Hold the epilator at a 90-degree angle against your skin and move very slowly until you get the hang of it. Then you can try speeding up until you start noticing hairs snapping off instead of being pulled out. After a few tries, you’ll find the perfect speed to go.

Move Against the Direction of Growth

Move your epilator in an upward direction against hair growth. Moving in this direction will help lift hairs better so that they get pulled out.

Preventing Ingrown Hairs

Fine hair doesn’t seem to be that prone to ingrown hairs, but when epilating, people with fine hair are at risk for ingrown hairs, unfortunately.

Why is this? When fine hairs re-grow from the follicle, the tips are so fine that they don’t make it through the skin surface very well.

To prevent this, it’s important for people with fine hair to exfoliate and remove the upper skin layers regularly. I recommend exfoliating before you epilate, the day after, and then every other day, as long as it doesn’t irritate your skin.
There are tons of ways to exfoliate. Here are a few that tend to work well:

• Washing with Massage Sponges
• Exfoliation Peels
• Sugar and Salt Scrubs
• Mechanical Exfoliation Brushes
• Using Pumice Stones

Final Takeaways

Epilators can work well for all hair types, including fine hair. The main concern you’ll have is that your hairs may break off while epilating instead of being pulled out by the root. However, you can address this by buying an epilator with the right features and then following a few guidelines for epilating with fine hair, including making sure the hairs are dry and then moving the epilator slowly along your skin.

Related Questions

What is the best epilator for fine hair?

My pick for best epilator for fine hair is the Braun Silk-épil 9 (click to check it out on Amazon). This epilator has two speeds and works great on fine hairs. The wide head covers lots of area quickly and it even pivots so you reach hairs better. It also comes with an LED light so you can see all those fine hairs and make sure you don’t miss any.

Do epilators work on coarse hair?

Epilators work on coarse hair, but not always as well. The main drawbacks to epilating with coarse hair are the pain and ingrown hairs. You can address these problems by trimming hairs before epilating and exfoliating like crazy.

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!