How To Tweeze Eyebrows Painlessly

Whether you always tweeze your own brows, or only touch-up in between professional shaping appointments, you've probably found that it can be a little painful. Especially when plucking those hairs closer to the eyes — I'll admit I've teared up on occasion. But there are some ways to tweeze eyebrows without pain. Because you should be able to shape your brows without the cringing or intense blinking.

Before you get to it though, there are some things to keep in mind to prevent over-tweezing. It's so easy to get caught up in this up-close-and-personal hair-removal process and take things too far. And tweezing too much will only increase the amount, or at least duration, of pain you're experiencing. So to keep it to a minimum, trace over the hairs you actually want to remove with a highlighting pencil before you get started. This will help you maintain perspective of what hairs you actually wanted to tweeze when you were looking at yourself from a normal distance. Also make sure to measure how long your brows should be so as to not over-tweeze the gap between them or the tail-end of either. Once you know exactly which hairs need to be removed, here are five ways to make tweezing your brows a little less painful.

1. Take A Hot Shower

The hot water from a shower will help open up your follicles so it will be easier and therefore less painful to pluck your brows. If you don't have time for a shower, or forgot to tweeze right after one, try holding a hot washcloth over your brows for a minute before proceeding. Just make sure that your eyebrows are dry before plucking though, as they may be harder to tweeze while wet.

2. Use Ice

Ice can be used before or after tweezing to help control pain, but don't use it directly after a hot shower, as it will just make your follicles close back up. Holding ice against your brows for a short amount of time before tweezing will slightly numb the area so that you won't experience as much pain. Or if you prefer, holding ice against your brows for a short amount of time after tweezing will help reduce some of the pain from the inflammation.

3. Use Sharp Tweezers

Using a new pair of tweezers, or tweezers that are freshly sharpened will help reduce pain. This is because sharp tweezers can more easily grab each hair so that there is no unnecessary slipping, and you won't have to try to tweeze the same hair twice (which totally hurts worse than just tweezing it out the first time).

4. Hold Skin Taut

Holding the skin taut and plucking quickly will also help reduce the chances of your tweezers slipping, and having to re-tweeze the same hair.

5. Tweeze In The Direction Of Hair Growth

One more thing you can do to prevent re-tweezing (it really is the most painful part of tweezing), is to grab each hair at the base and pull it in the direction it goes. By pinching a hair higher up or pulling in the opposite direction, you run the risk of the hair breaking, and needing to tweeze again to remove the root.

And of course, the more consistently you tweeze your brows, the less painful it will naturally become over time as your skin gets used to the sensation. Happy plucking!

Images: Miki Hayes (3); PublicDomainPictures, Wounds_and_Cracks, cojul/Pixabay