Epilating Tips and Tricks

I guess all women will agree with me that hair removal is a procedure that we all wish we wouldn't have to do. Shaving is one of the easiest and less painful methods of hair removal, in fact it's not painful at all unless you are careless and you accidentally cut yourself. The big downside of it though is that you have to do it pretty much daily is you want silky soft results. Unfortunately I'm not one of those lucky ladies who barely have few hairs on the legs, like my mom - ugh stupid genes-, and because of that I had to shave daily and the whole routine became really annoying because I wasn't 100% happy with the result. So one day I decided to buy an epilator hoping I would manage to get used to it. To be honest I feel that I kinda skipped one step/stage in hair removal, the waxing but here I'm talking to you about my experience with epilating. 

- If  you are like me and you have never used an epilator before I have a couple tips that might help you. First is important to find a good epilator. I was lucky enough and the one that I first bought worked and still works wonderfully. Mine is the one in the picture below, it's the Braun Silk epil 7 xpressive. It's a wet and dry epilator, meaning you can use it under water, and it comes with 3 different heads, one for trimming/shaving, one for epilating small areas ( it's the one you see in the picture) and one  for epilating large areas which I use to epilate my legs. You definitely don't need an epilator like mine but to be honest I use all of the 3 heads and I barely even reach for my razor now. I also wouldn't opt for one of the cheap ones,it's not that they are not that good but that's just my personal opinion.

- Like I mentioned before I went straight from shaving to epilating but to make the transition easier I did a small trick. I first waxed my legs and then as the hair started coming back I started using epilator. You see, the hair has different growth cycle and not all come back at the same time. So when you will epilate, having less hair will result in less pain and that way you can build your pain tolerance and it won't hurt as much.

I've been using the epilator for nearly a year now and if you ask me if it will ever be a painless procedure I will say no, but the pain will become more bearable over time. Now while it still hurts when I'm epilating, the pain doesn't bother me that much anymore. Though a great factor when it comes to pain is your pain tolerance, obviously the greater your tolerance is the less painful it will be. 

- I can't stress enough how important is to exfoliate especially if you get ingrown hair even with shaving. Personally I don't think that you need to exfoliate only before you actually epilate; what I do and what I would suggest is to use loofah when you shower and maybe 2 or 3 times a week use a good body scrub. 

- While when you are waxing you want the hair to kinda long when epilating you want exactly the opposite. Not only it will be less painful but you also minimize the chance of having to go over the same area multiple times because the epilator couldn't remove the hair and instead cut it. 

- When you will start epilating I would suggest you doing it at least the night before you want to flaunt your legs or whichever area you epilate. Epilating will most likely cause some redness, specially the first few times, so by doing it a night before your skin will have time to calm down. As for me, now I can epilate whenever I want, even right before I go out because the redness is pretty much minimal and barely noticeable. Actually I find that waxing causes more redness that epilating, which I guess makes sense since you are pulling skin too not only hair. 

- Two last tips. I find it important to hold my skin taunt when epilating because not only it hurts less but also I think that doing this kinda lifts the hair so it's easier for the epilator to catch them. Lastly, don't forget to moisturize after you are done with epilating. If you have sensitive skin I would opt for a fragrance free moisturize to avoid any further irritation.  

So those are the tips I could think of and believe that are useful for someone who is looking into starting epilating. I believe that epilating is more effective because you don't need to wait that long before you can epilate again and also cheaper because you will pay once and it will last you for at least a year. Let me know in the comments below if you epilate and which epilator you use. Till next time, love Anna.