Female facial hair is something that all women have. Whether it be peach fuzz or coarser hairs, there’s no need to be embarrassed or worried. It may surprise you how common a problem this is: around 18 million American women reported that they were more worried about facial hair than their finances, and that 80% of them would give up sex and chocolate for 30 days if it meant never having to deal with it again!
Many different methods of facial hair removal for women are available for the upper lip, chin hair or jawline and there are many factors to consider when deciding which facial epilator is the best for you.
Why do I have facial hair?
First of all, everybody has facial hair and it’s nothing to be embarassed about. Though of course we understand being self-conscious about it. That’s why we’ve written this article to help you understand facial hair, how to get rid of it, and how to maintain a smooth complexion.
There are 2 different types of hair that women have on their bodies: vellus hair and terminal hair. Vellus hair is the thin, light type of hair. Ladies normally get it on their face, back, and chest. The troublesome type is the terminal hair. This is coarser and darker, and found on your head, arms, legs, underarms and bikini line. Sometimes women get terminal hair where there is vellus hair, and its understandable to want to get rid of it.
How to get rid of facial hair?
Its common for many women to simply shave. But as they soon discover, this isn’t a very effective course of action. First of all shaving only cuts the hair where it leaves the skin. This means that it very quickly turns into stubble, something we definitely don’t want anywhere near our face. There are however some options like the Panasonic Facial Trimmer that works great on peach fuzz.
Other methods include depilatory cream, which also damage the skin and aren’t very effective on thicker hairs, and waxing/plucking.
Natural hair removal remedies are also an option.
Removing the hair from the root is really the only way to go about this, which is why waxing and plucking are viable options. Unfortunately, waxing can get quite expensive and plucking can take forever.
Luckily, epilating is arguably the most effective and yet affordable option. A decent face epilator can vanquish unwanted hairs in a matter of minutes. Facial epilator devices take the hair out by the root, leaving you smooth for weeks at a time. They also cause the hairs to grow back finer, as the root is damaged in the epilation process. You won’t even have to buy new razors or waxing strips, making this by far the best option for removing facial hair.
What should I look for in a facial epilator?
The first question to ask yourself when looking for an epilator for face use is whether you want an epilator that can do both your body and your face, or one that is dedicated to epiliating facial hair. Before we look at both types it should be mentioned that only the Braun Face is built for eyebrows. If you want to remove hair from your eyebrows either this epilator or tweezers are still the most effective method. Anywhere else including your upper lip, chin, and sideburns are fair game for any epilator.
A dedicated facial epilator can be a good idea for many reasons. Regular epilators are often bulky and hard to navigate around smaller areas. They also have much wider heads with which to epilate, meaning its difficult to choose a small area to work on. Some body epilators come with a ‘facial cap’, intended to solve both of these problems. The cap covers up most of the tweezers, giving you a small head size to epilate with. We feel like it depends on the epilator whether it’s effective or not.
With a facial epilator you won’t be able to use it anywhere else on your body due to its size, but it will be unbeatable for facial hair removal. These epilators are small in size meaning you can safely and precisely get to any part of your face with ease. They will also be much more sensitive for your skin, saving you from the potential irritation you might experience with a full body epilator.
Keep reading to see which full body epilators work well as an epilator for face.
Full Body Epilators
This is the option for you if you want a one device grooming solution. Epilators in general are fantastic for hair removal all over your body. Check out our Epilator Reviews or The Definitive Guide to Epilators for some ideas. We feel that there are some general epilators that work really well everywhere, including when you use them as a facial epilator.
There are a number of things to look out for in an epilator if you want to be able to use it as a face epilator:
- Head Surface Area – When selecting an epilator for face use, you want to look for a model that has a smaller head. This will allow you to move across your skin far easier, and will make the likelihood of pinching your skin much much lower. These problems are often solved through the use of a ‘facial cap’.
- Tweezers Inside the Head – Another important aspect of your epilator should be that the tweezers are located inside the head, as opposed to on the outside. Again, if they are on the outside it is much easier for you to pinch the skin.
- Wet & Dry Models – Most people feel that epilating your face can be a daunting task. If the pain is what scares you, it might be a good idea to get a wet epilator. This means it can be used when wet as well as dry. Water on the skin or on the epilator aids in helping reduce pain.
- 2-Speeds – Another pain reducing feature is the ability to reduce the speed of the epilator. A lot of modern epilators have this function allowing for both efficient epilation and more gentle epilation.
Now that we know all this, let’s have a look at the best epilators for face use.
Our Recommended Best Facial Epilator
Braun Face 810
The Braun Face is the world’s first epilator and face cleanser. It is also the only choice when it comes to specially designed facial epilators. The head of this device is nice and slim, fitting perfectly between your eyebrows. It is lightweight and easy to maneuver with. The 10 openings are less enough to be suited for all skin types no matter how sensitive, but also powerful enough to pick up the lightest of hairs.
A feature we especially enjoyed about the Braun Face was its direction switching head. This allows you to always epilate against the grain of hair growth, which is very important for effective hair removal. It also means you can epilate from either side of your face, and makes it easy whether you’re left or right handed!
With the addition of a gentle oscillating facial cleansing brush, this device has become a staple of our daily routine. The facial brush is wonderful at getting rid of impurities and make-up and leaving skin in perfect shape for a base of fresh make-up. The Braun Face makes it quick and easy to keep your face smooth at all times.
Emjoi AP-9L Epi Slim
The Emjoi Epi Slim is our favourite choice for epilating facial hair. It is an epilator specially designed to deal with hair in more sensitive areas of your body. Its slim design makes it amazingly easy to control and thus perfect for more delicate epilation. If you want to get rid of peach fuzz or even coarser hairs, the smaller head size and lesser amount of tweezers on this device make it very suited. As it is designed for this kind of epilation, it won’t be able to take care of larger surface areas such as legs or arms.
The Epi Slim is one of the cheaper epilators on the market, which makes it all the more attractive. It runs on AA batteries and is the ideal epilator to take with you when traveling. The only downside to this model is that it is dry only, but epilating is more effective with dry hair anyway and with only 9 tweezers its one of the least painful epilators we know of.
For dedicated facial epilation, A Smooth Life highly recommends the Emjoi Epi Slim. It is cheap, easy to use and works wonderfully on your face and other sensitive areas.
Braun Silk-epil 7681
When it comes to all-rounders, the Braun Silk-epil 7681 is pretty much unbeatable. This epilator comes with 5 attachments and is by far the best selling epilator out at the moment. Not only is it a great body epilator, it works just as well for facial epilation. With the included ‘facial cap’, the head is reduced to a size that makes epilating your face trouble-free. For those worrying about the size of the epilator, it’s not as big as other epilators and so is easily maneuverable around both your body and face.
The Silk-epil 7681 is a wet & dry epilator. This means it can be used in the shower, with the warm water making the epilation far less painful. It takes an hour to charge and then lasts for around 40 minutes.
For whole body epilation including facial epilation, we absolutely recommend the Braun Silk-epil 7681. Its a little pricer than most but is great for the whole body and will last you a long time.
Epicare Facial Hair Remover
The Epicare Facial Hair Remover is more of a manual epilation device. The technique is also known as threading. If you want a smaller, more discreet and noiseless way of removing facial hair, this is probably your best bet.
How it works: bend the spring and place it as close to your face as you can, then twist the small handles to catch hair between the spring’s gaps.
It’s cheap and simple, but takes a little more patience than other methods.
Tips for Facial Epilation
When epilating facial hair, we have a couple of tips to keep in mind to make sure you get the most out of your product.
- Read the “What should I look for in a facial epilator?” section above to make sure you have the best kind of epilator for facial epilation!
- Test the skin on your face for epilation. Its never a good idea to jump right in with these things. If you’ve never epilated before, try it out on your hand and get used to the sensation. Then you can move onto your face, but before you do the whole thing check to see how your skin reacts. Some people get red marks or rashes.
- Trim your hair to 2-3mm first! It’s much more effective to epilate when the hair is of a similar length and is a bit shorter.
- We think that your upper lip is the most difficult place to epilate on your face due to its small surface area. For best results, run the epilator opposite to the direction the hair grows.
Hopefully this post was helpful! Don’t forget to check out our Epilator Guide.
