Guide to Plucking Facial Hair

Plucking means removing hair with tweezers and is therefore sometimes called “tweezing”. It is generally used on individual hairs on the face, particularly the eyebrows and it is also a quick and easy solution to getting rid of the odd stray hair from the chin and other facial areas. Plucking facial hair is easy to do. It is accurate as you are dealing with each hair individually and you can do it anytime, anywhere without making an appointment or doing a lot of preparation. You see a hair growing in the wrong place and can immediately deal with it – it’s gone in a flash! It is also great to get rid of any odd hairs left behind by other hair removal methods.

How to Pluck Facial Hair?

There is really no mystery to plucking.

1. First of all you need a good pair of precision tweezers with slanted or pointed ends, like those below by Tweezerman, the company which is widely recognized to have the best tweezers (i.e. the easiest to use) on the market.
2. Make sure you work in a well-lit room and have a good mirror. A lighted magnifying makeup mirror like this one by Conair helps enormously and it means you don’t need full daylight to pluck out hair!
3. Wash and exfoliate the area where you are going to be plucking and make sure that the pores are open. The easiest way to do this is to pluck right after a shower.
4. Make sure the tweezers are clean by using rubbing alcohol or other antiseptic on them
5. Grab each individual hair as close as possible to the skin and pull in the direction of hair growth.
6. Wipe over the area where you have been plucking with a skin-friendly antiseptic lotion afterwards.

Tweezerman Stainless Steel Slant Tweezers (CLICK IMAGE FOR DETAILS AND DISCOUNT)

Any Drawbacks?

• This is really only for female facial hair removal. Plucking a full beard is not really practical!
• Plucking hair can be painful. If you do it right after a shower then your pores will be open and it will be easier however.
• It is slow and time consuming dealing with each individual hair. That’s probably why even though the ancient Egyptians thought it was a good idea, plucking body hair has never caught on in modern times.
• You need good eyesight, a steady hand and a magnifying mirror to grab each hair. Just when the hairs start to grow on your chin during the menopause, your eyes start getting worse! Still, plucking chin hair is a great solution to get rid of them!
• Some people have problems with ingrown hairs when they pluck. You can minimize the danger of this by making sure your skin and tweezers are scrupulously clean before you begin, exfoliating your skin to keep it free from dead skin cells and making sure your pores are open by holding a warm wash cloth to your skin before plucking. After removing the hair do not apply anything other than a light soothing lotion such as aloe vera or antiseptic lotion before the pores have had a chance to recover.
• You should not pluck facial hair from moles or from broken or sore skin. Instead cut the hair off close to your skin on that part of your face.
• It can be difficult to do the initial reshaping of eyebrows with tweezers yourself. The best solution is to have your eyebrows shaped at a salon and then do the upkeep yourself at home by plucking out any strays daily.
• Some say that plucking makes two hairs grow in the place of one. Not true at all. In fact, plucking makes the hair growth weaker. This means you need to take care over-plucking your eyebrows as they may not grow back and you will have to fill in the area with eyebrow pencil. Unfortunately over plucking does not seem to work so well on the upper lip!

If you have more than a few stray hairs, consider other types of face hair removal. The best method of permanent facial hair removal is electrolysis. It is a bit of a pain (literally) going for many appointments over months on end but you will be left with smooth hair free skin on your face and that has to be worth it. If you just want something you can do quickly at home try facial waxing. You can use cold wax strips to get rid of patches of hair and then use your tweezers on any strays which remain. Make sure that you do this some time before you go out however as it can leave your skin a bit red for a few hours. Alternatively, you could also try this facial hair remover for a quick solution.

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