Skin Tones Suitable for IPL Hair Removal Treatment

IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) is an advanced method of hair removal that pro­vides users with smooth, beau­ti­ful skin. The treat­ment is quick, pain­less and achieves results equiv­a­lent to or bet­ter than many of the lead­ing laser systems.
The treat­ment is how­ever not suit­able for all skin con­di­tions — so your first step should always be to find out if the treat­ment is safe for you to use.

What skin types are suit­able for IPL?

IPL is suc­cess­ful remov­ing body hair due to the pres­ence of a hair pig­ment known as melanin. This absorbs the light energy emit­ted by the device and directs it to the hair fol­li­cle, to remove hair and pre­vent future growth.
Nat­u­rally dark pig­mented skin how­ever will con­tain more melanin than lighter skin tones so more energy is absorbed. This means indi­vid­u­als with darker skin tones are more sus­cep­ti­ble to burns and hypopig­men­ta­tion fol­low­ing treatment.

IPL treat­ment is con­sid­ered safe for skin tones clas­si­fied as:

• White
• Beige
• Light and mid brown

The treat­ment is not effec­tive on the fol­low­ing hair:

• Red
• Grey
• Light blonde

The VISS IPL hair removal sys­tem has eight adjustable light inten­sity set­tings to ensure the treat­ment can be changed for the dif­fer­ent skin tones and body hair colours. The treat­ment is how­ever not rec­om­mended for grey, red or light blonde hair, or peo­ple with darker skin.
To find out if your skin tone is suit­able for the treat­ment visit our VISS IPL hair removal page and use our handy ‘Is It For Me?’ calculator.