So, your clients have been locked away at home for months now, and we all know they have fallen into a number of bad habits. They have desperately been trying to maintain their amazing salon results but without the specialised equipment and topicals they have resorted to the bottom of the barrel. You guessed it…at home skin devices.
From gimmicky at home gadgets, to concoctions of drugstore skin care routines they have potentially reversed all of your hard work. So upon reopening we are certainly going to have a bit of a journey ahead of us to correct these behaviours.
Where do we even start…well some investigation around these at home behaviours is in order. We need to determine the potential skin damage our clients have inflicted and also explain the importance of not pursuing these treatment behaviours, so they don’t conflict with in-salon treatments.
Your clients have probably been, rolling, steaming, sucking, needling, and zapping their skin! This might sound safe and normal in our capable trained hands but in the hands of an amateur with a set of vague poorly written product instructions, damage is inevitable.
Besides the fact that these at home gadgets simply aren’t powerful enough to be effective, they can also leave a client worse off. Let’s rolls through a couple of our ‘favourite’ at home skincare nightmare contraptions:
Facial Cleaning Brushes
You know the fancy flashy looking spinning brush head that is supposed to ‘gently’ exfoliate your epidermis. Well in fact we know that these physical exfoliation tools are certainly not gentle and are in fact creating small micro tears in the skin. With prolonged use they can actually sensitize the skin and significantly break down the skin’s barrier. So be prepared for a lot of red-faced clients entering your doors!
At Home Micro Needling
We all love our in salon micro needling treatments, the results are amazing, and our clients adore it! But in the hands of an untrained individual who is not familiar with skin penetration guidelines and proper tool sterilization it’s scary to think of the potential infections, inflammation and even scarring and pigmentation that can pursue these at home treatments.
Laser Hair Removal Devices
Hair removal is by far one of the most highly missed treatments. Clients are routinely used to their regular 4–6 week visits to your clinic to get their favourite and most results driven treatment. With the inability to come into salon they have of course reverted to other means. We all know they have trolled through the internet for some fandangle ‘hair removal’ gadget. However, as laser wavelengths and energy delivery are so precise and specialised these at-home options do not have nearly enough power or energy to make an impactful reduction in hair. So, we can say for sure that hair removal treatments will be our highest demanded service upon reopening so start thinking about how to manage this overflow.
Blackhead Vacuums
Blackhead VacuumsIn salon dermabrasion and manual extraction can be a very satisfying treatment for our clients, it leaves their skin feeling healthy, smooth, and clear. However, being deprived of this tried-and-true treatment has pushed our clients to the desperation of acquiring at home blackhead vacuums. These apparatuses are extremely dangerous as they use severe suction which can place significant stress on the skin and result in bruising, redness, severe inflammatory responses, broken blood vessels and scarring. These devices only work by sucking out the Sebaceous filaments at the top of the pores and don’t even extract deep enough to reach where the blackheads actually reside. A simple double cleans with a salicylic acid base, a clay-based face mask and topical retinoids are a far more effective means of decongesting pores at home.
LED device
There are so many futurist LED contraptions spamming our client’s social media accounts with influencers boasting about their dramatic results. Contrary to the other technologies mentioned above, at home LED devices don’t pose any significant risks to our clients so their use is one of the less detrimental at home options. However, it is so important to note that the energy generated by these at home masks and handheld lamps is a fraction of the strength of in salon equipment. The energy emitted from these devices therefore will not produce the same quality high impact results clients love for our in-clinic treatments.
So, before you dive straight back into your client’s normal treatment plan it may certainly be worthwhile conducting a brand-new skin consultation. Clients may have completely sensitised and irritated their skin with these at home gadgets and chemistry of concoctions they have formulated. It is certainly going to be important to assess this damage and also other potential changes in the skin before we dive in with our clinic strength treatments.
Also spend some time with your clients going over their at home routines, so you can identify if they are still planning on using at home devices and are electing to use them over your in clinic treatment packages. If that is the case, spending some time going over the efficacy of these at home gadgets is important in ensuring that your clients don’t get swept up in the hype of at home skincare and elect to substitute that for high quality clinic treatments, you provide.
