"Will I Regret Epilating My (Forearm) Arm Hair?" I Epilate, Here's What I Think

If you've never epilated before, it can be nerve wracking trying to imagine what it'd be like to do it.

In your head, a lot of things could probably go wrong...

You could start, not be able to handle the pain, and so stop midway through and have a "patch" of hair missing, while the rest is still there.

You could hate the way your arms look after you epilate them - what if there are red marks or your arms look weird just after you've taken the hair off with an epilator?

You could hate the way the hair grows back in after you've epilated it. Could it grow back in thicker or with a lot of ingrown hairs?

I'm here to let you know that all these fears are actually just not based in reality, so I'm going to knock off one at a time, explaining why, while some might happen, it's not a problem at all and how you can deal with things.

Reasons Why You May Regret Epilating Your Arms and Why They’re Not Actually a Problem (i.e. How to Remedy Any Problems With Epilating Your Arm)

Reason 1: You can't handle the pain of epilating.

Here's what I'd say if you're squeamish about pain but want to be able to epilate your arms, especially your forearms where the hair is thicker/coarser and you aren't sure if you'd be able to epilate all of them.

Use my favourite technique (you can find all of them including this one here) to reducing pain when you're starting out epilating: shave the spots you want to epilate first and then start epilating immediately and every day after.

See, epilators can pull out wee little hairs that waxing could never. Sometimes you'll manage to pull out hairs with an epilator just after shaving, sometimes you won't.

But your hair grows in at different times, so if you shave your arms and then epilate every day after, you'll manage to pull out what you can when some of the hairs are grown enough, and because you'll be epilating a lot less hairs, the pain will be so much more manageable.

Reason 2: You can't handle the pain of epilating and stop using the epilator on your arms part of the way through.

Want to try epilating but are worried you'll stop part of the way through?

Have a backup technique just in case. If you wax, this is a no-brainer; plan to wax if you just can't epilate.

If you shave your arm hair (rare, but some people do!) or Nair it off, you can totally do this if epilating is just too much for you to do.

Just keep shaving or using hair removal creams to get rid of your hair regularly to hide any new hairs and the small bit of patch that you epilated away and no one will be any wiser!

Or, you can use the technique I mentioned in reason #1 and take advantage of you shaving to be able to continue epilating, but with significantly less pain.

I think it works out really well, and after the first 2-3 times you've epilated the same body part, you should feel a lot less pain.

But definitely check out my article here that includes pain reduction techniques and try them all if you think this may be a problem.

Reason 3: You hate the way your arms look immediately after you epilate them.

Right after you epilate, you're almost certainly going to get a bunch of little red bumps that look something like a rash on your arm.

It's not a rash, it's not anything that will stay for a long length of time either.

It's just because, when you yank your hair out from the root, the surrounding part looks pinkish for a little while.

If you have lighter skin, this is going to be way more obvious than if you have darker skin or a tan.

You may not even be able to see it or notice it at all if you've not got pale skin.

But if you think the sight of it might bother you, just make sure not to epilate unless you'll be home or will be covering up your skin with long sleeves for the next few hours - or even better, epilate at night so your skin has a chance to calm down by morning and not look red/inflamed.

It's really that simple. After you epilate, it'll look a lot like after you waxed.

You're able to pull out shorter hairs than if you waxed, too, so this is even better aesthetically if you happened to have some really short hairs.

Reason 4: You could hate the way the hair grows back in on your arms after you've epilated it.

Personally, I don't think this is really possible.

In my opinion, the way hair grows back after epilating is essentially the way hair grows back after waxing, except you get a lot more ingrown hairs with epilating.

But ingrown hairs when you're using an epilator are so easy to get rid of - just exfoliate and moisturize after you epilate and they're no longer a problem! Yes, it truly is that simple, they're really not a big deal.

Could your arm hair grow back thicker if you epilate? Absolutely not.

I've heard that epilating over the years will make less hairs grow back. That if you do it for long enough, it's actually a form of permanent hair removal.

While I don't have any proof of this because the FDA and the American Medical Association don't list tweezer epilation (this type of epilation) as a form of long-term permanent hair removal, from personal experience with relatives who have epilated for a long time, it seems possible to me that this is the case.

It obviously doesn't work as well as laser hair removal because you have to epilate quite a lot more to see the results, but I feel the results do come, and over time you will not only have fewer hairs, but your hairs will grow in finer.

I hope this article answered any/all questions you might have had about epilating your arms.

I personally prefer this method of hair removal for absolutely everywhere I remove hair, so absolutely I would use it for any part of my arm (I even do my armpits and "down there" with it, those are trickier/hurt more, but it's still way better than waxing to me).

Give it a go! It's definitely worth the risk. Epilating is way better than waxing.

I think for me, it goes: laser, epilating, waxing in terms of the first, second, and third best forms of hair removal.

But since laser is so stinkin' expensive, epilating gets first place for me.