I had an appointment with a lovely electrologist in Boston today for removing my underarm hair. She said that I would need weekly treatments of 1 hour ($75/h) for at least one year, coming to roughly $4000 total.
She also said that I have an “average” amount of hair which she found surprising for my ethnicity.
Is this normal pricing for this area? I was expecting 1500 - 2000 (and even that would have been a stretch for me, financially… I definitely can’t afford 4K).
Edited to add: I counted 20 - 26 hairs/cm^2. If that means anything to you.
The reason I ask is so I can figure out whether I should shop around - I’m certainly not trying to dis her or anything. Maybe her work is like the unaffordable mercedes, but I might be able to find a nice honda that is good enough for me.
There are many reasons why what she said might be true for having work done with her, but would not be true for work done with others. If you were doing underarms with me, for instance, you would not be seeing me every week, and you would not spend $4,000 on the total job. In fact, if you had that much to spend, you would be looking for other places to work on, like your legs, bikini line, or some facial work.
I have never reached the $4,000 mark for underarms and I don’t need to do weekly treatments for one year. Doing a first full clearance can be done in a marathon session or one hour weekly treatments until you are cleared. This does not translate into one hour a week for one year. After the first, full clearance, you can go a couple weeks between treatments and it spreads out from there after the first six months.
If you have dark, dense, thick hair, I would get laser 4-6 sessions and then follow up with electrolysis for total removal.
I have cleared underarms in one hour on a first treatment of virgin hairs. It would usually take 2 - 3 hours to do both to first clearance, and then after that, less time once every 3 to 8 weeks.
of course, this information is only one’s experience with me. Results with other electrologists will vary.
And now you know why my pat answer to the L.A.S.E.R. question is: “If you can afford to gamble, give it a try, but I would not advise my mother to have it done.” (even if I was going to be the one doing it)
Albaloo i’ve had some terrible burns on legs with laser but that was becuase it was the wrong laser for my skin colour. I have since then had laser treatrment on my legs and on my under arms and my skin has been fine and the hair has gone. So whilst I understand your concerns I wouldn’t write laser off completely.
But it’s up to you and I hope you find a faster/cheaper electrologist to work on your underarms. $4000 sounds just too expensive even to a bystander like me. Not to mention the hours required each session and just having to put aside time to keep going back.
I totally agree with thereish. I would highly suggest that you seek a good laser specialist with the correct laser for your skin type. It shouldn’t cost more than $600 over a period of a year to eighteen months.
Read the Laser FAQ’s and that should answer all your questions.