Laser and the sun

What the calendar is actually asking

Read the guidance as a shape rather than as a list and it gets easier to plan around. Every session carries roughly six weeks of sun avoidance in front of it and six weeks of daily sunscreen behind it, and the next session follows four to six weeks after the last.

So the sessions are not the commitment. The months around them are. Two sessions, with their run-up and their aftercare, is most of a season — and that holds whether the course turns out to be short or long.

Why that lands differently here

Six weeks out of the sun is a small thing to ask in November and a large one in July. The salon is a few minutes from the Mar Menor and its clients are on this coast, so avoiding sun exposure is not the background instruction it might be somewhere colder. It is the thing that decides when a course is comfortable to run.

That is the whole reason this page exists. The guidance is the same everywhere; what it costs you is not.

If it is already summer

Waxing carries no equivalent rule. The published guidance is to stay off sunburnt or very sensitive skin, and to skip it entirely while taking isotretinoin or within six months of it — but there is no six-week window either side to plan around, which makes it the treatment that does not fight the calendar.

The two are priced closely enough that the choice is rarely about money. The laser and waxing guide on this site puts the same eight areas side by side at the salon’s current prices.

Facials have the same problem, in reverse

Resurfacing treatments ask for sunscreen and no sun afterwards as well — at least a week after microneedling, and considerably longer after a deep peel. The sensible order is therefore to book resurfacing away from a beach holiday rather than in the week before one, which is the opposite of how most people plan it.

Which of the salon’s facials resurface and which do not is a question for the consultation.

Sources

This is general guidance about the treatment, published by the bodies listed below. It is not Frada’s own advice for your case — what applies to your skin and your hair is settled at the consultation.

• American Academy of Dermatology — Laser hair removal: preparation
• American Academy of Dermatology — Laser hair removal: FAQs
• NHS — Laser hair removal
• Hair removal using an 800-nm diode laser: treatment intervals of 45, 60 and 90 days
• American Academy of Dermatology — Hair removal: how to wax
• American Academy of Dermatology — Chemical peels: FAQs
• American Academy of Dermatology — Microneedling