Kayla Young
Sometimes when you want to grow out your hair, you end up with awkward sideburns. If you want to put your hair in a ponytail or pull it behind your ears, these sideburns can become a weird focal point.
You may have heard horror stories of how epilation is one of the most painful ways to remove hair. But it’s not that bad and well worth the effort.
Does epilating sideburns work?
Using an epilator to get rid of pesky recurring sideburns is a good solution. It doesn’t require the precision and overall cost of waxing and it also lasts a lot longer than shaving.
But you’ll need to know what you’re doing! Here’s a detailed guide to epilating sideburns.
Contents
Epilating Sideburns
The first thing that you’ll need to make sure of is that your skin’s prepared for the epilation procedure.
Failing to adequately prepare your skin will result in either acne or ingrown hairs. And that’s certainly not what you want after you’re done removing some stubborn hairs that simply won’t go away!
However, before even that, you’ll need to select the right epilator for your needs.
How to Pick the Right Epilator
If this is your first time using an epilator, you may not be aware that there are many different types available, and any old one may not work well for your sideburns. We’ve put together a detailed list of the best epilators around, but here are a few items to consider.
If you intend to epilate facial hair like sideburns, you’ll have to be sure that the machine is small and maneuverable enough to do the job you need it to.
Using a larger epilator on your sideburns may result in you pulling some hairs that you didn’t intend to. And since they take longer to regrow than they do after shaving, this can be a problem.
Also, if you want to make epilation a less painful experience, get your hands on a waterproof epilator that can be used while your skin’s wet or even in the shower.
Preparing Your Face for Epilation
Before you decide to take the epilator to your sideburns, you’re going to need to do some prep work.
Along with making the process a little less painful, this will ensure that you don’t experience any unfortunate breakouts after you’re done epilating away your sideburns.
First, you’ll need to wash your face using either a face wash or a cleanser to get rid of dirt and built-up oil on your skin.
For users with long hair, make sure that your hair is tied back or well out of the way of your sideburns.
You need to make sure longer hairs don’t end up getting sucked into the machine while you’re working. Ouch!
Trim Your Sideburns First
While some epilators may be able to suck in an errant long hair or two, this isn’t what they were designed to do.
Longer hairs will result in a longer chance of the hair breaking instead of being pulled out by the root, which is what makes epilation so effective.
For this reason, you’ll need to trim your sideburns first.
Most epilators will work well on hair that’s about half a millimeter long.
Be sure to trim down your sideburns using an electric shaver with a guard or with trimming scissors. Don’t stress too much about differences of 0.1mm, since that likely won’t make a huge difference. Just make sure your hair isn’t too long.
Start Epilating
Now you’re ready to start epilating your sideburns, giving yourself a clear face that can last. Make sure that your epilator is either plugged in or fully charged, depending on the kind of machine you have.
You can then turn it on and start working it over your sideburns, but pay attention to the direction!
You will want to smoothly move the epilator over your hair, following the direction that it grows in.
Failing to follow the direction that your hair grows in runs the risk of breaking the hair in the middle of the strand instead of pulling it up by the root, at which point you may as well be shaving.
Working on sideburns with an epilator can be relatively tricky. You’ll have to maintain your distance from your hairline. If you get too close to your actual hair, then you run the risk of sucking some of it into the epilator.
Also, be sure to maintain a natural flow from what remains of your sideburns into your hair.
Finally, make sure that you don’t apply too much pressure to the epilator as you work it over your skin, just smoothly move it along.
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