I hear this ALL the time from clients who are concerned with the frequency of their waxing visits, or the fact that they seem to be sprouting more hair in new places! So then, does shaving or waxing make your hair grow back quicker?
Removing Hair by Tweezing or Waxing
Firstly, let’s talk about the removal of hair by tweezing or waxing. When we tweeze or wax we remove the hair follicle from the root. This means that an entirely new hair must grow back in its place and so this will take longer. New hairs start off with a fine tip and grow slightly thicker at the bottom. When these hairs grow back above the skins surface they often feel softer or thinner. In some cases, the hairs matrix is damaged enough to basically cause the hairs to give up growing all together! This is often the case on clients who have been waxing for years and years.
Removing Hair by Shaving or Deplitatory Cream
When we shave or use a hair removal cream, we are only removing the part of the hair that sticks out above the surface of the skin. This means we basically leave half the hair behind, which is rooted into the skin and the hairs appear to grow back quicker and will often look slightly thicker, or feel more like stubble, as we have sliced off or removed the top finer part of the hair.
So does shaving or waxing make your hair grow back quicker? Waxing, shaving, tweezing or any form of hair depilation does NOT make the hairs grow back quicker or thicker. In all of the hair removal methods discussed above, we are dealing with the SAME HAIR follicle. Therefore, if you want a longer lasting result, opt for waxing.
For more information or to book an appointment, contact Claire at Luminescence Beauty Therapies in Balwyn.
Hi I agree that shaved hair doesn’t actually grow much thicker and not at all if shaving once or a few times, but I’m curious on how does hair know when to stop growing? If you trim the hair under your arm, how does the root of the hair know that the end has been cut and that it is time to grow again? We should only see growing the few hair which recently shed and are not fully grown.
The hair doesn’t actually know it has been cut when a person shaves, but the hair is continuously growing at all times, it never stops! The only time a new hair doesn’t form is when the matrix or the base of the hair follicle is damaged so much (from constant removal through waxing) that a new hair cannot begin to grow. Hope this helps!
Hi, sorry for my late reply, but I couldn’t find this site back, I hope you don’t mind, now it’s on my favourites :). Thanks for your explanation Claire, yeah, the hair continuously grows, in a sense, you mean the follicle is always active, I might be wrong but maybe the rate is not constant as we know hair stops growing beyond a length and apparently I read it enters a resting phase as anagen ends. It makes sense as, dunno, maybe hair would grow long like nails otherwise, while if a hair, with say 1cm length gets cut, well it “needs” to grow again and it does, it seems, of the length that has been cut. If uncut hair grew as much as if we cut it, it would be potentialy twice as long or more, which doesn’t mean it gets thicker or longer but it just stops again if we let it reach that length again, that’s what I meant and my doubt :).
For example before I start shaving a new zone of my body for the first time, most of hair was at a similar length and not growing beyond that, of course with a few shorter recently shed hair, after I shaved, instead most of hair starts to grow back again in a few days, as expected of course, which we shave again as long as we want it smooth.
Warmest regards