Two lasers
in one device.
Everywhere you read that this device works on skin types I to VI. What is rarely added is why: there are two different wavelengths in it, and your skin type decides which of the two you get.
That is not a detail for technicians. It is the difference between a good treatment and a burn.
How do you hit a hair root without hitting the skin around it?
The laser aims at pigment: it absorbs the light, heats up and damages the root. That only works if the root absorbs more than the skin around it. If there is pigment in the top layer too, it absorbs along, and then the whole set-up no longer holds.
That is what the second wavelength is for.
Which laser do you get?
Choose your skin type and you see which of the two is used, how deep it goes and why it is the right one for you.
Choose your skin type
The Fitzpatrick scale is about how your skin responds to sun, not about how it looks. If you are not sure, it is established at the intake.
Light to medium
There is little pigment in the top layer to absorb on the way, so the 755 reaches the root. That is also why it is the stronger of the two here.
Schematic. The proportions are not accurate to the millimetre.
With skin type III we work with
755 nm
Alexandrite
Still enough difference between skin and hair root. The setting is more cautious than with type I, though, and the test patch is not a formality here.
755 nm
Alexandrite
Very strongly absorbed by pigment
On light skin this is the stronger of the two. The hair root absorbs almost everything and the skin around it barely anything, so less energy is needed for the same effect.
The other sideIf there is pigment in the top layer of the skin as well, it absorbs along. So this wavelength is not the right choice on dark skin.
1064 nm
Nd:YAG
Absorbed far less by pigment
The light largely passes the top layer and goes deeper. So this is the safe choice on skin with a lot of its own pigment, and also the better one for deep-lying hair roots.
The other sideLess absorption means less yield per pulse. More energy is needed, and that feels firmer than the alexandrite.
The cooling
belongs with the pulse.
Just before every laser pulse a coolant goes onto the skin. That protects the top layer at the moment the energy passes through it, and it makes the treatment more bearable.
So laser hair removal feels like a short tap with something cold around it and not like a burning point. Without that cooling, the energy the root needs would put too much strain on the skin above it.
What you will feel
A short tap with something cold around it, repeated across the area. Exactly how it feels differs per place: on a shin it is sharper than on a thigh, because there is less in between.
What it
costs you.
This page is about the device. Which areas there are, what a session costs and how many sessions go into a programme is on the treatment page. There you work it out yourself, per area, without an amount being held back until the desk.