This week, fearless Ali Taylor tries at-home laser hair removal for the pages of beautywoome.com. Find out if you can fry your follicles while having a cuppa in your kitchen or if, indeed, it's best done under a doctor's supervision!
SO, PHILIPS LUMEA is a home laser hair removal device. I tested it over an eight-week period – one session per fortnight - under the supervision of the lovely Philips people. The way it works? Well, it’s startlingly simple. There is a screen – like a mini TV screen - which houses the Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) technology at the end of the curvaceous L-shaped hand-held. You press the screen against your skin and work your way through the affected area bit by bit, zapping as you go. It feels a little hot, or like the feeling of an elastic band pinging against your skin, but not what you’d call painful. And let’s face it, when it comes to hair removal; no pain no gain, eh?
We were instructed to shave before the first session so that you can apply the laser to a clean area. I wasn’t too happy about this – through bitter experience I’m a waxer when it comes to the bikini area; shaving is rash central for me. I went ahead though and was excited to see the results. It took less than ten minutes to do my bikini line. You pick a setting according to your skin and hair colour (there are five settings) and can adjust them as you go depending on how sensitive the area is. You literally press ONE button before moving onto the next bit. It’s unbelievably easy and, of course, mess free.
I inspected the area closely over the next week and sure enough the hair started to grow back pretty much as normal but this is usual, apparently. Between session two and three, though, there was a massive difference. I had very patchy re-growth and nowhere near the discomfort you usually experience from shaving ‘down there’. It was amazing – I was excited... Is that sad?
By the last session, week four, there was virtually no re-growth and I used my final fling to really give that sucker a good going over. It’s not stayed completely hair free in the past four weeks but the re-growth has been minimal and not an, erm, patch on what it would normally be like. I reckon two more sessions would see the back of it for good. Now that is really something – and just in time for holiday season.
Hair removal nirvana, needless to say, doesn’t come cheap. It’ll set you back £399 (buy at Boots, John Lewis or Amazon) but compare this to the amount spent on waxing over the years and how much it would cost for a similar treatment in a salon, it’s not bad at all.
For more info on how it stops the hair from growing, see British Beauty Blogger's review in The Telegraph here.
I will be investing.
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