8 Ways to Get Rid of Unwanted Facial Hair

3. Waxing

You can temporarily remove hair with hot or cold wax, at a salon or at home. Results last several weeks, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.

But women may find it less appealing as they age and their skin gets thinner, Rogers says. “If you have thin skin, the wax can rip off your skin as well as the hair,” she says, causing a lot of irritation. She advises patients to stop using skin products such as retinols and glycolic acid for three to five days before waxing to reduce that risk.

4. Depilatory creams

Creams, lotions and gels applied to the skin can dissolve hair, with results that last longer than shaving. But “if you’re going to use a chemical depilatory on your face, I would tell you to test it somewhere else first to make sure you don’t have a bad reaction,” Johnson says. Also, she notes, “the smell is offensive to many people.”

5. Plucking

You can pull or pluck hairs out in several ways: with tweezers, with a device called an epilator or with a method called threading, in which twisted threads are used to pull hairs from your eyebrows or other facial areas.

These methods can cause inflammation and ingrown hairs, Rogers says. Using old-fashioned tweezers probably gives you the most control with the least risk, she says.

If you want to try threading, find a skilled technician to do it for you, Johnson says. “We’ve seen some people get some pretty severe skin irritation” from doing it for themselves, she says.

6. Laser treatments

If you’re willing to put in the time and money, laser treatments can reduce hair growth permanently. The treatments are done by dermatologists, professionals they oversee or other operators, depending on state laws. Lasers work by targeting pigment in the hair follicle. With multiple treatments, “the hair strand becomes thinner until it is permanently destroyed,” says DiAnne Davis, M.D., a dermatologist in Dallas.

She says she generally recommends six to eight initial sessions, plus maintenance visits once or twice a year.

Costs will vary by location and provider, but the average is $582, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

An important caveat: Lasers can target dark hair but not light hair, meaning they won’t help with your peach fuzz or any other fair hairs, Rogers says.

It’s also important to be treated with “the particular laser that is best suited for your particular skin type and tone,” Davis says.

7. Home IPL devices

Another option is a home device that uses a technology called intense pulsed light (IPL). The devices, which are not lasers but use light in a similar way, “do seem to work, but not as well as laser hair removal,” Rogers says. She adds that it “really only works for dark hair and on lighter skin…. On darker skin, there’s a risk of your skin getting burned by the device.”

Devices from major brands cost about $200 to $600.

8. Electrolysis

Electrolysis, in which an electrical current is used to destroy hair follicles, “is the one true permanent way to remove hair,” Davis says. Like lasers, it requires several treatments; unlike lasers, it requires no maintenance visits and works on light hair, according to the dermatology academy.

But, with the popularity of lasers, electrolysis has become less popular and less widely available, Johnson says. A big reason, she says, is that “it takes a lot of time.” A typical laser treatment, she says, takes no more than an hour, but with electrolysis, “you really need to set aside the whole day.”

Costs vary widely, depending partly on how much hair is removed.

A final tip

After any kind of hair removal treatment, Rogers says, it’s important to baby your skin for at least a day or so. So, skip products with ingredients like retinol or glycolic acid, and “just follow up with a nice bland moisturizer.”