About the treatment
Six to eight visits, and why that number never moves
Every clinic quotes roughly the same course length, and it is not an industry convention. It is arithmetic. A pulse of light is absorbed by the pigment in a hair, turns to heat and travels down to the follicle that built it — but only while the hair is attached and actively growing, and only a fraction of the follicles in any area are doing that on any given day.
The rest are detaching or dormant, with no pigment-filled shaft connecting the surface to the target. Light cannot reach them, so they are untouched, and they will cycle back into growth over the following weeks. Your next appointment exists to catch that group, and the one after that catches the next.
Which is why nobody can do this in one visit and why the gaps are not a payment plan. Sessions at our West Broadway clinic in Kitsilano are quick, there is nothing to recover from, and most people fit one in around the rest of the day.
The appointment
Start to finish, honestly described
Most of the anxiety about this comes from not knowing what the room is like. It is very ordinary.
Before we start
The area needs to have been shaved the night before and to be completely bare — no deodorant, no lotion, no make-up. Protective eyewear goes on, a cool gel is applied, and on a first visit we test a small patch and look at how it responds.
During
A snap of heat with each pulse, cooled immediately, moving methodically across the zone. An upper lip or a bikini line stings; legs and arms barely register. There is a faint smell of singed hair, which is normal and catches people off guard.
Afterwards
Pink skin and small raised bumps around each follicle for a few hours. Then, over the following fortnight, the treated hairs work their way out and fall away. That looks like regrowth and is the opposite of it.
Why here
Running a course in a city that lives outdoors
The one rule this treatment insists on is that treated skin must be its own natural colour. In Vancouver that is a scheduling problem worth thinking about properly.
Two weeks with no sun on the area, every time
Not a guideline. Pigment in tanned skin competes with pigment in the hair for the same energy, which is how burns and pale patches happen. If you have caught the sun, we move the appointment.
Grey days still tan you
A June afternoon under cloud on the seawall delivers plenty of ultraviolet, and people here are routinely caught out because it never felt like a sunny day. Cloud diffuses light; it does not remove it.
October is the sensible start
Begin in the autumn and the whole course runs through the months you are covered up, finishing before Kits Beach and the patios reopen. Starting in May means fighting your own summer for half of it.
We are open on Sundays
Useful for a course that needs six to eight appointments kept on schedule. Note that we are closed Mondays and Saturdays, so it is worth mapping the dates out at the start rather than improvising them.
Indications
What is it good for?
The hair itself, plus the collateral damage: the soreness, the trapped hairs and the shadowing left by years of shaving and waxing.
It needs pigment to work on, so blonde, red, grey and white hair will not respond and we will tell you that in ten minutes rather than sell you a package. Pale, soft facial down is a separate question altogether — see dermaplaning for that. Everything available in Kitsilano is on our Vancouver clinic page.
Being straight with you
Three ways people waste a course
The treatment works. What usually goes wrong is everything around it, and all three of these are avoidable.
Waxing or plucking in between
Both remove the root, and the root is the only thing we are aiming at. Turning up having waxed a fortnight ago means there is nothing there to treat, and you have bought an appointment that cannot do anything. Shave instead, always.
Letting the gaps stretch
Four to eight weeks tracks the growth cycle. Leave four months and the follicles you were chasing have gone round again, so part of the previous session is simply lost. Consistency matters more here than the equipment does.
Arriving with colour on the area
A weekend on the water, a spring hike, an afternoon that got sunnier than expected. We will reschedule rather than treat tanned skin, and repeated cancellations are how a six-month course turns into a year.
Getting ready
Pre & post treatment
Three rules carry almost all of this: a razor yes, sunlight no, and nothing that yanks from the root. Everything below is footnotes.
Before each session
- Shave the evening before. Hair above the surface absorbs energy that should be travelling downwards.
- A month since anything that pulls from the root — wax, thread, tweezers, epilator.
- A clear fortnight of no colour on that skin, from any source, natural or bottled.
- Turn up with nothing applied — antiperspirant, moisturiser and foundation all have to be off the zone.
- Flag anything newly prescribed. A surprising number of everyday drugs, antibiotics among them, leave skin sensitive to light.
For a few days after
- Redness and a scattering of raised dots for the rest of the day. Each dot is a follicle reacting, which is what you came for.
- Keep the temperature down for two days — skip the steam room, the heated class and the very hot shower.
- Let the shedding happen over the next fortnight. A gentle exfoliating cloth from about day five helps it along.
- Shave between appointments if you need to. Nothing that pulls, for the whole course.
- SPF on the zone for a fortnight, and cover it up if the light is strong.
What you actually get
What changes once a course is finished
A completed course leaves most of the hair gone and whatever remains finer and slower. Here is what that means in practice, which is more useful than a percentage.
Mornings get shorter
The daily or every-other-day routine stops being daily. For underarms and legs this is the change clients mention first, and it is the one they say they underestimated.
The bumps stop appearing
Ingrown hairs and the dark marks they leave are caused by shaving and waxing, not by the hair itself. Remove the cause and the area gets a chance to settle and even out.
Swimming stops needing planning
In a city where the beach and the pool are part of ordinary life, not having to organise anything beforehand is a bigger practical change than it sounds.
It is reduction, not erasure
We use that word deliberately. Most of it goes, what is left is fine and slow, and hormonal changes can wake dormant follicles later. An occasional top-up keeps it where you left it.
Also on West Broadway
Treatments that work well around this one
- Dermaplaning in Vancouver — the answer for pale soft hair that holds no pigment
- HydroFacial in Vancouver — for congestion on a face we are already treating
- Microneedling in Vancouver — for the marks left behind by years of ingrown hairs
- Laser Lipo Cavitation in Vancouver — shaping the body, and a common pairing with legs
- Laser hair removal brand-wide — how the treatment works across all our clinics
