In this article (13)
- The short version
- Before your first session: the consultation and patch test
- In the weeks before your appointment
- In the chair: what the appointment feels like
- How each part of your face feels
- Right after: what your face looks like
- The first two weeks at home
- How many sessions your face will need
- What facial laser costs at our Chicago clinic
- Who should wait before booking
- When to start if you live in Chicago
- Finding our clinic in Old Town
- Questions we get about facial laser
From the team at V&P Laser Hair Removal & Skin Care, 1317 N Larrabee St, Old Town, Chicago. Last updated October 17, 2026.
Before anyone books a face appointment with us, they ask the same thing: how much is this going to hurt? It hurts less than waxing your upper lip. It also hurts a little more than you’d expect from something that’s over in 15 minutes.
The short version
Each pulse feels like a warm rubber band snapping against your skin, and a blast of cold from the laser’s cooling spray comes just before it. Your upper lip is the most sensitive part of your face. The skin on your cheeks and forehead is thicker, and most people barely feel it there. A full face takes about 15 to 20 minutes, and lip and chin together take 5 to 10. Afterward your skin looks pink and a little bumpy for an hour or two, and most people go straight back to work.
The rest of this guide covers the consultation, how each part of your face feels, what your skin does in the weeks after and what it costs at our clinic. If you already know you want treatment, our facial laser hair removal page has the service details.
Before your first session: the consultation and patch test
Every first-time client starts with a consultation. It takes about 20 minutes, and we won’t book a treatment until it’s done. We check your skin and hair in good light, go through your medical history and do a patch test. That means we treat a coin-sized spot at the settings we plan to use and watch how your skin reacts. We explain why we never skip it, even when people ask, in our post on what the patch test tells us.
The consultation and patch test are free. We take a $25 deposit to hold your appointment, and it goes toward your first session if you book within 30 days. Our team includes three Family Nurse Practitioners as well as our certified laser technicians. You can read about each provider on our about us page.
At a face consultation we usually spend most of the time on three things.
- Your skin tone. We use the Candela GentleMax Pro Plus. It has two wavelengths: 755 nm Alexandrite for lighter skin and 1064 nm Nd:YAG for darker skin. With one machine we can treat every skin tone, Fitzpatrick types I through VI. Our post on the Nd:YAG and darker skin explains why we’re extra careful on the face.
- Your hair color. The laser is drawn to pigment, so dark hair responds best. Light blonde, red and gray hair have little pigment, and neither does very light peach fuzz, so results there are limited. If laser won’t do much for your hair, we’ll say so at the consult instead of selling you a package. Our guide to blonde, red and gray hair goes into more detail.
- Cold sores. Tell us if you’ve ever had one. Cold sores most often appear on the upper lip, so we plan around them. Sometimes that means an antiviral from your doctor, started 24 to 48 hours before your session. Our post on cold sores and upper lip laser explains how we handle it.
In the weeks before your appointment
Getting your face ready mostly means leaving the hair alone and keeping the sun off your skin.
- Stop waxing, threading, tweezing, bleaching and hair removal creams six weeks before your first session. Pulling hair out by the root disturbs the follicle, and the laser needs the follicle intact. Shaving is fine.
- Stay out of the sun and away from tanning beds, spray tans and self-tanner for two weeks before. Tanned skin soaks up too much of the laser’s energy. If you show up with a fresh tan, we’ll reschedule.
- Stop using prescription creams, like a retinoid, on the area three days before.
- Shave with a clean razor the night before or the morning of.
- Come in with no makeup, moisturizer or sunscreen on the area. If you forget, we have wipes.
The full checklist is on our pre-treatment prep page.
In the chair: what the appointment feels like
First you’ll get protective glasses. Everyone in the room wears them while the laser is on. Your provider cleans and maps the area and sets the laser for your skin and hair. Then they hold the handpiece against your skin and treat the area one pulse at a time.
A split second before each pulse, the machine sprays a burst of cryogen onto your skin. Candela calls this the Dynamic Cooling Device. You feel a quick hit of cold, then the snap. People compare the snap to a rubber band or a warm pinprick. It’s sharp, and it fades fast.
Two things tend to surprise people the first time. One is the smell. The laser vaporizes the hair, which gives off tiny puffs of smoke that smell a bit like sulfur. That’s normal. The other is how quickly it goes. The lasering on an upper lip takes about a minute. A full face takes longer, and a lot of our clients bring AirPods and put on a podcast.
You probably won’t need numbing cream. Most people handle an area as small as the lip or chin fine without it, and numbing gel takes 30 to 60 minutes to start working anyway. If you’re nervous about the pain, mention it at your consultation and we’ll talk through it.
How each part of your face feels
Everyone tolerates pain differently, so take this as a rough guide rather than a promise.
| Area | What to know | Price per session |
|---|---|---|
| Upper lip | The most sensitive spot on the face. The skin is thin, and this is where most people feel the snap the most. | $125 |
| Chin | The hair is often coarse and hormone-driven. It responds well but usually needs the full course of sessions. | $125 |
| Cheeks | Thicker skin. Most clients barely notice it. | $125 |
| Sideburns | A small area and a short session. | $125 |
| Forehead | Thicker skin, so it’s one of the easier areas. It comes with the full face. | Included in full face |
| Front or back of neck | Often booked along with the face, but priced on its own. | $175 |
| Full face | Forehead, cheeks, jawline, chin, upper lip and sideburns in one visit. About 15 to 20 minutes. | $225 |
For a lot of women, the lip and chin are the whole reason they come in. Our lip and chin laser page covers that combination in detail. For men, the most common face requests are shaping the beard line and cleaning up the neckline. If you get razor bumps along your jaw or neck, laser can help with those too, and on darker skin we use the Nd:YAG wavelength for it. Our post on razor bumps and the Nd:YAG goes into the details, and our page on laser hair removal for men lists the other areas we treat.
Right after: what your face looks like
When we finish, your skin will be pink, and you’ll likely see small raised bumps around each hair follicle. It looks like goosebumps that haven’t gone down, and it feels like a mild sunburn. We want to see that, because it means the energy reached the follicle. It usually settles within a few hours. On sensitive skin, the pink can last up to a day.
You can go straight back to work. If you want to cover the redness, mineral makeup is fine the same day.
Call us if you see something other than flat, even redness that’s fading. That includes blisters, a cluster of small bumps along the edge of your lip, skin that looks gray or white, or crusting. These are rare, but we need to see them. Our post on redness after laser and when to call shows you how to tell the difference.
The first two weeks at home
For the first 24 to 48 hours, keep heat away from your face. That means no hot showers, saunas, steam rooms or sweaty workouts. Leave out retinoids, scrubs, peels and harsh cleansers for three days. A thin layer of Vaseline or Aquaphor helps if your skin feels irritated. So does a cool compress, a few minutes at a time.
Sun is the rule we’re strict about. Keep direct sun off your face for at least three days, and wear SPF 50 whenever you go outside between sessions. Your face is the hardest part of your body to keep out of the sun, which is one reason we like starting face treatments in the fall. There’s more on that below.
Within two weeks, about 10 to 15 percent of the treated hair falls out by itself. Let it. You can shave between sessions, but don’t pluck, wax or thread. All the aftercare steps are on our post-treatment care page.
How many sessions your face will need
Hair grows in cycles. The laser only damages follicles that are actively growing on the day you come in, and only part of your facial hair is in that phase at any one time. That’s why we space sessions 4 to 6 weeks apart, so each visit catches a new group of hairs. The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) puts the drop after a first treatment at 10 to 25 percent, so one appointment won’t be enough.
Most faces need 4 to 6 sessions. The chin and upper lip often take 6 to 8, because hormones often drive the hair there. That’s especially true if you have PCOS or a thyroid condition, or if you’re in perimenopause. Hormonal hair still responds to laser, but you’ll need more sessions and some maintenance afterward. The plan is different enough that we wrote separate guides on laser hair removal with PCOS and new chin hair in perimenopause.
After a full series, most clients stay clear for 8 to 12 months and then come back once or twice a year for a touch-up. Whatever grows back is usually finer and lighter, and it grows more slowly. The FDA calls this “permanent hair reduction”. It means a lasting drop in how much hair grows back, not that every hair is gone forever. For an independent overview from dermatologists, the AAD’s laser hair removal FAQ is worth reading.
What facial laser costs at our Chicago clinic
Our prices are all on our website, so you’ll know the number before you walk in. Here’s what the face costs:
| Area | 1 session | 3 sessions | 6 sessions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full face | $225 | $600 | $1,150 |
| Upper lip | $125 | $300 | $550 |
| Chin | $125 | $300 | $550 |
| Cheeks | $125 | $300 | $550 |
| Sideburns | $125 | $300 | $500 |
| Front of neck | $175 | $450 | $850 |
| Back of neck | $175 | $450 | $850 |
Packages lower the price per session, and most people need several sessions anyway. To compare with waxing: if you wax your face every four weeks at $40 to $60 a visit, you spend about $500 to $780 a year, every year. A six-session full-face package costs about the same as one and a half to two years of waxing. After that you only need the occasional touch-up. If you thread instead, see our threading vs. laser cost comparison. Every other area is on our full Chicago price list.
Who should wait before booking
- You’re pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Wait until after.
- You’ve had a tan, a sunburn or self-tanner on your face in the last two weeks.
- You have a cold sore, or you can feel the tingle along your lip that means one is coming.
- You’ve taken Accutane in the last six months.
- You’ve had Botox or filler in the area in the last two weeks.
If you take other medications, our post on medications and how long to wait lists the ones that change our timing. If anything in your history makes laser a bad idea, we’ll tell you at the consultation, and you won’t pay anything.
When to start if you live in Chicago
Your face gets more sun than any other area you could treat, so timing matters more for your face than for your legs. In summer, one weekend at North Avenue Beach can push your next session back two weeks. In January and February, forced-air heat dries out skin so much that redness can take days to settle instead of hours.
September through November is the easiest time to start. There’s less sun, the air isn’t bone-dry yet, and you can get several sessions done before the worst of winter. If you’re starting in winter, run a humidifier in your bedroom (aim for 40 to 50 percent humidity) and use a richer, fragrance-free moisturizer. Our post on laser hair removal near the Red Line explains how Chicago’s seasons and apartment heating affect recovery.
Finding our clinic in Old Town
V&P Laser Hair Removal & Skin Care is at 1317 N Larrabee St, Chicago, IL 60610, in Old Town on the Near North Side. It’s a short walk from the Sedgwick Brown Line stop and the North/Clybourn Red Line stop. Clients come to us from Lincoln Park, the Gold Coast, River North, West Town, the West Loop and the South Loop, and most are within about a ten-minute drive. We also see clients from Oak Park and Cicero. If you’re nearby, our page on laser hair removal in Lincoln Park covers that neighborhood.
- Hours: Monday to Saturday, 8 AM to 8 PM, by appointment only. We can’t take walk-ins.
- Phone: (252) 557-7113
- Languages: English, Romanian and Russian
Questions we get about facial laser
Does laser hair removal on the face hurt?
A little. Each pulse feels like a warm rubber band snap, with a cold spray just before it. The upper lip is the most sensitive spot. Cheeks and forehead are easier. Most people don’t need numbing cream on the face.
How long does a facial laser appointment take?
A full face takes about 15 to 20 minutes and lip and chin together take 5 to 10. Your first visit takes longer because it starts with a 20-minute consultation and patch test.
Can I wear makeup after facial laser hair removal?
Yes. Mineral makeup is fine the same day if you need it. Just don’t wear any makeup on the treatment area when you come in.
Does laser work on gray hair or peach fuzz on the face?
Not well. The laser targets pigment, so gray, light blonde, red and very light fine hair don’t absorb enough energy to be damaged. We’ll tell you at the consultation if your hair is unlikely to respond.
Is facial laser safe for dark skin?
Yes, with the right wavelength. The 1064 nm Nd:YAG setting on our GentleMax Pro Plus is made for darker skin, Fitzpatrick types IV to VI. We do a patch test first on every skin tone.
When will I see results?
Some hair falls out within two weeks of your first session. Most faces need 4 to 6 sessions spaced 4 to 6 weeks apart, and the chin and upper lip often need 6 to 8.
Where can I get facial laser hair removal near me in Chicago?
We’re at 1317 N Larrabee St in Old Town, Chicago, IL 60610. We’re open Monday to Saturday, 8 AM to 8 PM, by appointment. Call (252) 557-7113 or book a free consultation online.
If you’re tired of shaving, waxing or threading your face, book a free consultation or call (252) 557-7113. We’ll look at your skin and hair and do a patch test. Then you’ll get a written plan with a real price before you commit to anything.
