How To Prevent Ingrown Hairs, Post-Tweeze

In the world of hair removal, few side effects are as pesky as ingrown hair. All you want is a bit of smooth skin, but an errant hair decides to circle back in your skin, creating a blemish. Chances are, you want to avoid these irritations as much as possible. So does tweezing prevent ingrown hairs, or is it no different than waxing or shaving?

To start, it is helpful to understand the basics of ingrown hair. According to Mayo Clinic, an ingrown hair is an inflamed, sometimes painful bump on the skin that appears when a removed hair grows back. Although they are generally not signs of any health concerns, ingrown hairs can become uncomfortably embedded in the skin or cause pustules to break out. (There is a whole array of ingrown hair removal videos on YouTube if you're into that sort of thing, and they are grody.)

With that in mind, are some hair removal methods less likely to cause ingrown hair? It is hard to say. As explained in Healthline, ingrown hairs can result from waxing, shaving, and tweezing, so it's difficult to tell whether one removal method is kinder than others. Most likely, it will vary from person to person.

That said, there are a few tweezing tips you can use to make ingrown hairs less likely to occur. Using properly aligned tweezers, grasping the hair as close to the root as possible, and plucking it in the direction of the hair growth will produce the best results, according to Hair Free. Doing your best to avoid any skin irritation and pulling the hair out in one go are also crucial.

If you're really serious about preventing these annoying bumps, then there are some ways to make ingrown hair less likely to happen with any hair removal technique. According to Bustle, to prevent ingrown hair, you should exfoliate skin regularly, avoid wearing tight clothing, and refrain from picking at the ingrown hair. (Easier said than done, right?.) By following these steps, and perhaps investing in a sturdy set of tweezers, your ingrown hairs might become a thing of the past.