Excess facial hair

Have you tried sugaring? There is less or no regrowth after a while (at least on my legs). Haven't tried it on my face.

I think I am going to invest in a balaclava.

glass I have fine down on each side of my face, I can remember my mum also having a similar problem. I have thought of trying the Threading method to remove it, just plucking up courage.

As beauty therapist I wax lots of ladies lips and chins and eyebrows!

It works quite well needs redoing everyn4 weeks or so. Some ladies go 6 some on 3 depending on growth.

Creams work well for one lady on her arms it is more relaxing treatment !

I use tweezers ever couple days on my annoying chin hair!

celeb think you need to set up on here and we could have a drop in, and have a treatment I blame my HRT but I might be barking up the wrong tree, they are course and very dark, dont think they pop through and it makes the skin feel rough.

It's the one thing I hate most about myself - facial hair. I have started having wax treatments and hope that the visits will change from once every two weeks to once in a blue moon. One can dream!!

I am embarrassed to say that I wet-shave every morning, which doesn't always get the tough hairs on my chin. These I remove with tweezers every few days, using a lamp and magnifying mirror.
When my facial hair was first becoming noticeable I went for a wax. Unfortunately she took off the top layer of my skin, which was sore and ugly for some time. Never again!

Laser treatment is the best. having had this problem for years and putting up with electrolysis. Not cheap though.

Electrolysis depends on the skill of the therapist, so do consider going elsewhere and find an older lady with lots of experience. It's true that you can't always reach every hair follicle so it doesn't always work, but it is something that you need to persevere with for a couple of years!

In my salon we think the best treatment for facial hair is threading. Lots of asian ladies have facial hair all their lives and this is what they use. The hair is tweaked out at the roots and doesn't break, so the hair is slightly weakened and the regrowth is finer. You can also thread shorter hairs than you can wax. The problem with wax and sugaring is that it can be too hot for older fragile skin. Also you need to stretch the skin to keep it taut, which is much harder on aged clients.

You can learn to thread yourself, you just need to get ordinary cotton thread, tie the ends to make a long loop and then put both hands into the loop as if you were holding yarn for winding. Twirl one end of the loop through 360 degrees about 10 times so that you end up with several twists in the centre of the loop.

Now put your thumb and first finger into each end of the loop as if you were doing a sort of cats cradle and practice making first one end of the loop wider by opening your finger and thumb and then the other. You will notice that the twists in the middle move from side to side as you open the fingers first of one hand, then the other.

Practise on your legs and try and co-ordinate a sort of scissor action with your fingers and trap a hair on the moving side of the twisted cotton thread. The hair will get caught and will be whisked out at the roots. It's a bit fiddly at first, but you soon get the idea.

Now try on your face. You need to stretch the skin to be as unwrinkled as possible, so stick your tongue into your cheek to stretch the skin and use a good light and mirror. You don't need to be very good at threading to whisk off quite a bit of facial hair with a minimum of fuss. (Don't try shaping your eyebrows this way, there isn't enough control).

If you get into the habit of running a bit of thread over your face every couple of days, you will be able to cope with the discomfort and you'll never need to feel self conscious again.

Laser (now called IPL) is the much the best treatment as Nelliemoser says but its not suitable for greying or fair hair and it can be tricky on dark hair on dark skins too. I had mine done years ago and it was worth every penny.

I am seriously thinking of having the laser treatment. Has anyone tried the IPL ones you can buy to do yourself at home or the No No product? Or is salon treatment the best?
I am currently using Nair hair removal cream.

Happy I doubt if the DIY versions of IPL would work well enough. They need enough power and very careful handing to be very effective. There are potential dangers and clinics have to be specially licensed.

I come from a family who have luxuriant thick dark hair, which is very slow to go grey. That is the up side. The downside is that with that comes facial hair, OK for the men, not so hot for the women.

I started plucking hairs out in my late teens, migrated to depilatory creams in my late 20s and started electrolysis around 40 when I began to need to use depilatory creams more than once a week.

I have been having electrolysis now for nearly 30 years, weekly to begin with but after the first six months it became fortnightly and then monthly. I now go as and when I think I need a tidy, maybe three or four times a year. Painful, yes, but effective, very. But over the years I must have spent thousands of £. It cost £6.00 for a ten minute session when I started and now costs £15.

DD, with the same problem, tried laser treatment but was not impressed. She uses tweezers and a razor.

Warm wax is never too hot granny angry threading can leave skin vulnerable and sore I find, waxing gives smoother finish, I have 80 year old client and waxing suits her very well. You need to have good thermostatic wax heater

Shysal please don't be embarrassed I have client who uses electric razor regularly on her chin I wax her lip she did not want to pay for frequent wax sessions! The hair is coarse and dark on her lip and waxes off beautifully!
It is shame your therapist was not good have never had that happen. When I was training a stupid student did not test temperature and burnt my chin so I know how painful that is. If temperature checked and set should not happen I always recheck with client couple times that it feels ok!

Not all salon treatments are the same. How good the treatment is depends on the quality of the machine and how experienced the therapist is. The IPL machines that you can buy are not as good as salon treatment - we get clients who have abandoned theirs in favour of treatment with us.

In my salon we have a £20,000 machine (that we service regularly and replace every 2-3 years) and 13 years experience. There is no comparison.

A decent salon will do a free consultation (you might have to pay for a patch test) Ask them how well your hair is likely to respond to IPL, if they explain that your hair will be tricky to treat, you probably won't find a home use machine any good.

You could try having just one treatment (don't get suckered into paying for a course) and see what difference it makes. You should have a noticeable reduction in regrowth, if not, don't go back.

After 3-4 treatments you might have 50% less hair and all the hair should be finer and less noticeable and you might be perfectly happy with that. There is a point where the hair that remains is difficult to treat, you get diminishing returns, so if you want a perfectly hair free result you will need lots of treatments. This is where the grade of machine makes a difference - it's the last bit of hair that's the hardest to treat.

I guess that the best financial option would be to get 50% of the hair removed by salon treatments, followed by home use machines to get rid of the next 25%, followed by salon treatment for the last bit - so you'd be replacing say three salon treatments with maybe a year of home use. But to be honest, everyone's hair is so different that what would work well for one person would be no good for another.

Either way, stay away from groupon offers. You'll only get inexperienced salons and newly qualified therapists, practicing on the "deal" customers. You can be scarred with a salon machine used inexpertly without proper supervision so don't take a risk.

celebgran - you're right to correct me, of course wax has temperature settings. Some of my clients have very fragile, papery translucent skins with the veins very close to the surface. I wouldn't dream of waxing skin like this at any temperature. I guess I use "heat" as the excuse!

I think it's important that clients can make the choice that suits them. My DD can't stand having her top lip threaded

We offer both waxing and threading. Threading is more popular. Both threading and waxing can make sensitive skin angry and red, but it's usually a therapist error.

My lovely beautician waxes and she has a weekly session in the local care home. Whenever I think I should go I bump into her in the oddest places. I suspect she is a psychic as well. She also raises enormous sums for charity and supports budding artists .

Sorry granny can fly did not mean correct you. I was nervous of waxing my elderly clients arms so used cream was huge success !

I use good after wax cream one laryngitis very red skin aloe Vera helps.

Everyone skin different to be honest I never linked threading so naughty of. Me don't offer it.

Thanks Ladies. Helps to know others have this dilemma too. Think I'll have to look into some of the alternatives suggested.

I've struggled with facial hair all my life. I had a relief from it when I was on the anti-baby pill. I had electrolyisis in my 20s and it has left my chin in a bad state like the skin of an orange! Fortunately this appeared only as I grew much older and I have got used to it. I use a microwave wax and in between use tweezers as there are still odd hairs growing. Sometimes when I'm tired and fed up with it I wet-shave.

I've been told that electrolysis has a one in three chance of working on each hair. It depends on the stage of growth. I go to a beautician who uses threading on my face and chin. My mother has her lip and chin waxed. Whatever method you go for make sure you take painkillers first. Let's not pretend - all of these methods are uncomfortable

I pluck the odd few BUT does anyone else have this strange phenomenum strange thing happen. Every now and then I see to produce in a night or a day a very very long fine hair, usually from my cheek bone or my collar bone area. It is almost paranormal - just springs from nowhere and I know it wasn't there the day before because I pluck and search like Bulldog Hammond.

Yes Flower I do get that strange hair every so often - sometimes on a cheek and sometimes right under my chin. I agree that the speed they appear is amazing.

I have found electrolysis very effective. Each hair usually takes several treatments to be destroyed and, of course, hairs in other hair follicles are constantly coarsening and sprouting, but without it I would have a beard to rival my husband's while, with electrolysis within a few years of starting treatment I only needed a treatment every couple of months and now only go a few times every year, in between times I can just forget about it.

Prior to electrolysis hair growth was a daily pre-occupation and needed some form of treatment twice a week.