I am considering purchasing a IPL. Is it worth getting one to save on Laser Hair removal costs?

 No. At home machines are very weak and will almost certainly never lead to permanent hair removal. If you want to permanent results, you need to see a professional with a medical grade high powered machine.

The only thing those devices reliably and permanently remove is money from your wallet.

Some people claim that if you have very fine, dark hair IPL may give you some temporary benefit.

Laser is not thought to be permanent.
Electrolysis requires many clearings to get rid of all the dormant hair follicles.
Estradiol will decrease body hair except on the face and pubic areas.

In my experience, only electrolysis is truly permanent.

Quote from: Dani on May 16, 2019, 08:08:51 AM
In my experience, only electrolysis is truly permanent.

+1

C -

permanent is not in my immediate monetary plans. I did opt for an IPL unit. After one use I only had sporadic hairs on my legs to remove. I also have no armpit hair to pluck or shave after two zaps a week apart. My arms are being just a bit more stubborn, they are fewer though. The leftover few dark face stubble that I had is also gone (I'm mostly gray ).

These are all attributable to the IPL. Is it permanent? I don't care, it's easy enough to do it again. IMO, it was worth it to me.

ps, my wife used it on her armpits as well, now she doesn't have to shave hers either.

I'm not advocating, I am just sharing my experience.

Thank you all for your replies.
Electrolysis is not within my near future. Big money and time investment. However it is long term goal.
I know the IPLs and Laser Hair will not be effective on my gray hair, even short term.
So for now, electric shaver while away from home in the truck, and good ol' shaving cream and blades when home.

I have a Tria 4X, which is technically a home laser and not IPL.

It worked really well on the thick, dark, hairs I had on my arms and the trail in the middle of my chest and stomach. The finer, long, dark, hairs the rest on my stomach and legs not so much.

It's hard to say if it's permanent, but I've had very little regrowth on my arms since I cleared them about 2 years ago.

Two years plus is pretty darn good for not permanent.....

Bea

I have the tria too. I've gotten lazy with it. I used it for about one year on my fingers, toes, feet, chest. On my fingers, the hair is less than half what it was and finer. I could only stand a level 3. My chest hairs are fewer n thinner. The feet n toes r about the same. I think it would work well if I used a level 4 or 5.

Since I am looking at a stop gap measure until I can afford electrolysis, I might try one of the ones on Amazon with 5 star rating for $99 or $119.
Either way will be a week or so before getting it.

I can talk only about the professional lasers.  They used them on the dark hair of my face, and not a sigle one came ever back.  The same with my pubic hair.  I am mainly free of hair down there and have no regrowth.

I have used a Venus silk expert, I got lazy and stopped. Overall I would say I have 50% reduction in body hair so far. It didn't do anything for the face.

Just wondering since it has been a few years since the last post in this topic.has anyone tried using new IPLs since this post was created or is it still the same general consensus that they do not really work.

I have two machines. One is a small one by KetchBeauty. It works for body hair like legs and arms.

The other machine is a clinical model used in salons by LumaRx. It is powerful and works very well except on facial hair. It is so powerful that when I hit the "zap" button, it trips the fast-acting circuit breaker.

Courtney_G and I were discussing a new technique that involves waxing first and then applying carbon dye. The carbon is micronized so it gets rubbed down into the now-open follicle. Carbon is a conductor and very dark so works the same way as if the follicle has black hair in it. The carbon transmits the energy to the root and kills it.

First off, waxing irritated the crap out of my skin, so I doused it with a cold wet towel. Applied the carbon dye and zapped away, resetting the circuit breaker in between zaps. Holy Moly, I thought the waxing was painful. Snap your lip with a rubber band. That's what it feels like x 10.

Another bout of cold wet towel then finished off with some After-Sun Aloe Vera Gel. Now we wait to see if I managed to kill them buggers, or if I went through all of that for nada.

The problem with facial hair is that it is coarser than body hair and the roots are very deep. That makes it difficult for IPL or lasers to get to it. The best way is electrolysis. The cheap way does not work.

I bought a Braun Pro 5 last year.
It is nice to be able to do something at home and not visit a specialist.

Zapped my underarm hair really well.

My face has a mix of white and black hairs.  Of course it does nothing to the white hairs but slows down the black.  This allows the white hairs to partially mask the 5 o'clock shadow.  There were a few troublesome hears in the creases of my mouth that were hard to shave that were quite visible in the mirror.  Then I realized I could just pull them!  There weren't that many of them.

I used one in the early days to remove body hair. I used it for a few months and the body hair disappeared and has never come back. I never had much to start but was so nice that it has gone.

Jessica xxx

I'd love more thoughts on this topic as I'm readying to buy a home IPL, probably a Tria.

My understanding is that for those with darker hair the home ones do work fairly well?

I bought a Tria (laser) unit at least 10 years ago. It does work, but it took many passes on the highest setting to begin making a difference. Maybe I just had excessively stubborn hair. The IPL device I tried was basically a high-powered flash unit. It literally burned the hair off. Everything was nice and smooth, but it always came back. Unless you just like the smell of burned hair, I would stick with electrolysis (any hair color) and laser (for dark hair).

Love always -- Jessica Rose

I own two different IPL units. One by Ketch Beauty (portable) and a LumaRx which is a high-powered salon quality device. Both work well on body hair. But facial hair is a whole different animal.

The follicles on facial hair go quite deep. The energy needed to kill the root cannot travel that far. As Jessica stated, you can burn off the hair, I have even burned my skin, but the root continues to produce hair. It takes electrolysis to get deep into the follicle to remove it permanently.