Over the past year, IPL devices have essentially blown up. A while back, I was clueless to what IPL devices even were and now I see them drowning my social media feed, local shops and TV adverts. If you haven’t yet come across IPL devices, here is a quick explanation by SmoothSkin themselves:
Now, back to the story. Around a month ago, I was lucky enough to be gifted the SmoothSkin Bare IPL device through the post, with the promise that in four weeks time, my body hair would be non-existent. If you’re anything like me, and you’ve been plagued with dark, thick, stubborn body hair, you’d remain skeptical. By this point, I feel like I’ve tried every hair removal method out there. Shaving grows back the next day, waxing just doesn’t work full stop, hair removal cream fails to remove half of the hairs, and eplitators well, those things are just painful!
With it now being the beginning of October, I’ve been using this device for approximately 4-5 weeks, and I’m going to give you my breakdown of the time I’ve been using this.
Week One & Two
My initial thoughts on this device were positive overall. This particular device comes in a range of colours and works on different skin tones and body hair colours. The thing I loved most was just how simple and easy it was to use. The design is sleek, and there is only one setting – meaning only one button! The device offers unlimited light flashes, and for a price tag of £199, this puts it in a league with limited devices. The instructions are easy to follow, you complete a skin test 24 hours prior, then simply shave, plug it in and place the treatment window against your skin, moving the device whilst holding down the one button. I planned to use this device on my underarms, bikini line, and legs. In terms of time, it took around one minute each for underarms and bikini line, and around five minutes per leg to treat.
In both week one and two, I used this device 2-3 times per week after shaving. For both these weeks, I honestly didn’t notice a change, and after using this device five times by the end of the fortnight, I was beginning to doubt if it would actually work. Needless to say, not much progress was made by the half way point, I was still getting thick, stubbly hair across all regions by the next day and feeling discouraged thinking about all the time I’d wasted using this device.
Week Three
It was only by around week three that I started to notice change. So I kicked off week three by using the device following my usual shaving routine, but then we had a spell of cold and wet weather here in the UK (when don’t we?), and I’d skipped wearing shorts to the gym for the week, hence not having a need to shave my legs. I still continued to use this on my underarms and bikini line, but I really could not be bothered to shave legs. It was only around 6 days later where I realised my leg hairs had hardly grown back compared to normal. The hairs had begin to thin, and although I’d allowed them to grow for six days, there only appeared to be around two days growth, so by this point I was ecstatic!
Week Four
There we have it, four weeks gone and I’m now sitting evaluating the effort I’ve put in for the past month. I’m surprised I actually managed to stick for this for the entire tire, and in some ways I’m glad I did, and some ways I also feel like I’ve wasted valuable minutes.
In conclusion, this worked fabulously on my leg hairs. Naturally, my leg hairs are much finer and take a little longer to grow back than my underarms and bikini line, so I think eventually I did expect to see these result, especially when I noticed the change around week three. As I speak now, I last shaved my legs 8 days ago at the beginning of week four, and only the finest hairs are beginning to emerge. There have been so many occasions where I’ve packed my gym shorts without thinking, only to get to the gym and have a full panic because I forgot to shave my legs, so it’s nice to know I’ll be avoiding this now!
Admittedly, I did feel slightly disappointed that this didn’t work as well in other regions. In fact, it almost feels like it hasn’t worked at all. I probably used this device more on my underarms and bikini line than my legs because I noticed hair was still growing back just as quickly, and even now after week four, I haven’t really noticed a difference. However, I’ll battle onwards and hopefully see some progress in another couple of weeks. I’d love to eventually get around to using this on other areas such as the face, although I’m a little hesitant due to my sensitive skin and lack of facial attachments for the device. Overall, I am impressed with this device and it has certainly worked better than a lot of other hair removal methods that I’ve tried. The device is fairly pricey at £199, but if you add up all the money you’ve ever spent on shaving products, waxing, creams etc. you could actually end up saving money in the end!
A Beautiful Distance 