Skin Needling Red Flags: Red Light Therapy On the Same Day

If you follow a lot of salons on social media, this one may come as a surprise! It's also a little controversial and I'm expecting to get a bit of hate or pushback from the beauty industry about it. But at the end of the day, I want to make sure you as a client are well-informed about the skin treatments you receive, even if that means upsetting some people.

Often salons and clinics will advertise these two services together, offering Skin Needling followed immediately by Red Light Therapy to calm the skin afterwards.

Here's why that's a major red flag to me as a skin therapist.

Both skin needling and red light therapy are amazing treatments on their own, offering a host of benefits. But done together, you're throwing away your hard-earned money.

The purpose of skin needling is to create a controlled wound healing response within the skin, which can treat many different skin concerns: acne, scarring, rosacea, pigmentation, ageing, and more.

This healing response begins with inflammation. The redness after a session isn't a side-effect to be managed, it's a critical part of the process. Post-needling, your skin produces growth factors, stem cells create new healthy skin cells, and cells that were damaged get cleared away, all while collagen production increases.

That means that anything we do to reduce inflammation, calm the skin, or speed up wound healing (red light does all of the above) is actively working against your results because your skin is no longer going through it's normal healing response in the way it needs to.

Skin needling is expensive (and it absolutely should be if performed correctly - cheap skin needling means corners are being cut, and that's another major red flag) so be cautious about who you go to for treatment!

And if you see skin needling and red light therapy packaged together as a "deal," run.

That provider either doesn't know what they're doing or they're just trying to make quick money off you. Either way, you're not getting what you're paying for.

If you live in Newcastle and you're curious about skin needling, or you want a little help or guidance on your skin journey, please reach out! You can message The Black Rabbit skin clinic on social media, send us an email, or book yourself in online for a Skin Discovery Facial.