Does Epilating Cause Strawberry Legs? My Skin Is Light & Kind of See-Through, Help!

I've seen a number of people ask whether epilating will cause strawberry legs, or express concern after epilating that they still have strawberry legs after epilating.

First let me mention that epilating shouldn't cause strawberry legs, but the issue is different people mean different things when they say "strawberry legs."

Basically the term is not at all a technical term, so whether epilating causes strawberry legs really depends on which type you mean when you refer to your legs being strawberry legs.

If you're asking about the more drastic/very visible form - which is folliculitis - no, epilating does not cause this.

If you're asking about strawberry legs as in, the much less drastic, but somewhat visible "I have very light skin and can sometimes see redness and dark hairs through my skin," then yes, epilating does still lead to strawberry legs, but there are plenty of ways of minimizing this.

I'm going to get into these topics in depth below.

Two Types of Strawberry Legs: Epilating Does Not Cause One, Still a Little Visible With the Other and How to Remedy It

Epilating Does Not Cause Folliculitis, Which Some Call Strawberry Legs

Okay so right off the bat, I've said it before, will say it again surely, epilating does not cause folliculitis.

If you struggle because you're not 100% certain what that means, essentially it's what happens when your hair follicles become inflamed.

Causes include things like having a specific strain of bacteria, skin irritation, a blockage of your follicles, or maybe some irritant like a medication or chemical that didn't react well with your body in or on your system, leading to a rash-like look.

Aesthetically, sometimes it's just a bunch of red spots, sometimes it starts out as white or yellow spots and changes to be pink or red, sometimes it looks like raised bumps that have white heads with pink or red toned bases...

Folliculitis looks different and is caused by different things, but that's the gist when you're talking about folliculitis.

Folliculitis definitely doesn't go away super quickly, it takes at least a week or two to my knowledge, so it's better not to have it altogether.

Luckily, epilating doesn't cause folliculitis, but actually serves to prevent it or reduce your chances of getting it in comparison to other hair removal methods.

When you epilate, for the first hour or two after you epilate, you actually will get something that maybe at first glance looks like folliculitis or strawberry legs, it's not, and do not freak out if you immediately see this.

I repeat, when you epilate do not freak out if your skin looks like it broke out in a rash immediately after epilating.

It's not likely to be a rash. Not at all, and it still happens to me to this day when I epilate. Expect it, and when it happens, don't sweat it.

Basically it's just redness that happens for a short while after you epilate, a couple hours is all it's lasted for me, and it absolutely disappears for me every single time.

The moral of the story when it comes to this redness, however: don't epilate right before going out.

In fact, if you can epilate the night before doing something, even better, as it gives your skin time to chill out after you've literally pulled out a slew of hairs straight from the root.

When it comes to folliculitis specifically, epilating should actually help with this not hurt it if you're prone to it or you've used other forms of hair removal that have given you it. It absolutely shouldn't cause it.

Then there's that other thing people call "strawberry legs" which is much, much more mild and basically just an aesthetic thing that's visually much less drastic than any sort of rash or folliculitis...

If You Have Very Light, Somewhat See-Through Skin, You May Get What Some Call “Strawberry Legs”

I've seen people say they have really, really light skin (me too, in areas I haven't got a tan) and stress out about the fact that their light skin means they are essentially see-through and you can see all the dark-pigmented hairs underneath their light skin, as well as any redness they may have, and so call this "strawberry legs."

Is it possible that when you epilate this type of strawberry leg won't go away with epilating?

In my experience, yes. If I'm epilating, I still have this type of strawberry legs when hairs grow back and they're not yet long enough for the epilator to catch.

Basically I can still see them as well as any redness through my skin, which is super pale, pasty white in areas I haven't tanned.

Do you have to live with this? Sort of.

Basically epilating is way better than waxing insofar as it's able to get out way shorter hairs than waxing is.

You can try to grab whatever you can on the daily if you're worried about the look of those darker hairs under your skin, you might be surprised to see the epilator catching a whole lot more extremely short looking hairs than you imagined.

You can also exfoliate regularly and moisturize whenever you're done epilating, as these two things will help your skin look a whole lot better if you're prone to this type of strawberry legs by helping you get out any ingrown hairs and increasing chances your epilator will grab those teeny tiny hairs through the exfoliation process.

Moisturizing will help your legs have less of a red/pink look as it will help your skin be less irritated after epilating.

The hydration also helps your skin look better in general.

So while you can't get rid of this type of strawberry leg entirely, there are ways you can manage it and reduce it to the point where you're hopefully not bothered by the look, all while epilating.

And if worst comes to worst and you just can't handle it, you can always try a self-tanner if that's something you're interested in, because darker skin absolutely hides the imperfections and makes it difficult to see even quite dark tiny skins, let alone lighter shades of hair or longer hairs that are light in colour.

All in all, epilating is one of the best methods of hair removal you can use no matter what version of "strawberry legs" you think you might get.

If folliculitis, it will actually help prevent the strawberry legs.

If you just mean you have light skin and are worried about seeing redness or little hairs through your skin because it's so pale, epilating is still better than shaving and waxing and using hair creams because an epilator is able to pull out hairs from the root even when they are much shorter than is necessary when you're waxing.