Many people want to show off their newly hairless body with a beautiful tan, but please want until you are done with all the treatments. Lasers and tanned skin don’t go well together.
People with tanned skin have been generally discouraged from traditional laser hair removal treatments because tanning changes their natural skin pigmentation. During a laser hair removal procedure, light energy is directed to the skin where the unwanted hair is located. The skin absorbs some of the laser energy before it reaches the hair follicles. How much energy is absorbed will be determined by the skin color. Tanned skin will usually absorb excess amounts of light energy and can cause burning or discoloration after treatment. Therefore, to treat a tanned patient, the laser energy must be turned down to prevent burning. This, in turn, decreases the effectiveness of the light energy to kill unwanted hair follicles.
Even using sunless tanning lotions will have the same effect.
You should also avoid sun expose for a week or two after a laser hair removal treatment as this can cause easier burning since the laser treatment gives a slight sunburn effect (but without the UVA or UVB dangers.). If you do go out in the sun put on at least SPF 30 sunscreen.
So for your best laser hair removal experience and results we recommend avoiding tanning the area being treated and limit sun exposure and always use a SPF 30+ sunscreen.
What we recommend to our clients is a mineral based sunscreen which is free ofparaben or formaldehyde releasing preservatives. ColoreScience produces such a sunscreen which works very well. Please contact us, Bella Pelle Laser for more information on this product line or the Sense preservative free skin care line as well.
I want to get my legs done but they are tan now and i’m fare skin and even if i wait until november i think they will still be darker than my original fair skin tone even if i don’t go out in sun for a month. what should I do?
i want to get my legs done, but even if I stay out of the sun for a couple of months, my legs are still a darker shade than normal. i am normally quite fair skin and dark hair. what should i do?
Hi Laney, What is key is to avoid sun 2-3 weeks before and after each treatment. Legs are normally treated every 8-10 weeks, so you could sneak some sun in-between treatments. But if you are in the sun, just keep well covered with a high SPF sunscreen and/or wear pants and you should be OK. It isn’t so much the color of you skin, unless you are extremely dark (Indian, African American, dark middle Eastern, etc) but the sun exposure. We can safely treat medium dark pigmented individuals such as southern European, Asian, Lighter Middle Eastern, Lighter Indian, etc. What you want to avoid is the actual sun exposure since it would be like getting a sunburn on top of a sunburn. Not that the laser causes a burn but it can excite the melanin in the skin and, especially when compounded with sun exposure, to cause either hyper-pigmentation or hypo-pitmentation. (dark or white spots) Both are usually temporary and return to normal after several months.