Ingrown hair and growing it out

[hypermatt]

I have rather curly hair (mixed half white/black), and I get horrible ingrown hairs. Switching to a double edge razor and following a lot of the tips on this forum has helped but I'm still not satisfied. I went to the barber for a straight edge cut and same deal. He told me that I should grow my beard out and just use a beard trimmer to prevent new ingrown hairs. I got a norelco beard trimmer and it never cuts my hair, not sure If it doesn't get long enough or what. Anyone have a suggestion of a trimmer I can use? OR Does this technique even work?

[HBK42581]

I have rather curly hair (mixed half white/black), and I get horrible ingrown hairs. Switching to a double edge razor and following a lot of the tips on this forum has helped but I'm still not satisfied. I went to the barber for a straight edge cut and same deal. He told me that I should grow my beard out and just use a beard trimmer to prevent new ingrown hairs. I got a norelco beard trimmer and it never cuts my hair, not sure If it doesn't get long enough or what. Anyone have a suggestion of a trimmer I can use? OR Does this technique even work?

How long do you let it get? My hair isn't very curly but if I let it grow out for about a week, I'll take a trimmer to it before I go to the razor. Just gets me a better shave and reduces the chance of ingrowns for me. Map out the beard growth pattern on your face and neck too and make sure you're shaving in the right direction. Although, with the curly hair I'm not 100 percent sure on how much that will help but it should at least help a little bit.

[ScottS]

Are you sure they're real ingrown hairs, and not shaving bumps? Ingrowns happen when you cut hairs off below the surface, and shaving bumps happen when you let your beard grow too long-- the sharp ends loop back and poke you in the face. The course of action for the latter is to shave every day.

[RJ]

ScottS, you gave the most succinct explanation of my problem that I have read yet. I get ingrowns also, but if I don't shave a couple of days, it is 10 times worse. I guess these are shaving bumps and it makes sense because many times when I am fiddling with my tweezers I notice that the hair is inbedded on both ends.

Anyway, since I switched to the DE and started poking out the ingrowns (or shave bumps), my face is much clearer. However, I have been shaving everyday. Still, hypermatt, if you don't have a sharp set of tweezers, get one.

[hypermatt]

Yea they would be razor bumps instead, after about 3 days they grow back into the skin. I'm guessing thats to short of a period to start using the beard trimmer. I've tried using tweezers before but most of the time I can't seem to extract the hairs, where did you get your tweezers?

[paperpundit]

Tweezers aren't a bad idea...but another trick you might try is a toothbrush. Buy a cheap, soft toothbrush, and brush your face against the grain. Most times it'll pull the hairs out of the skin. Then shave.

All the best,

[jrgroucho]

I'll second the toothbrush idea. Since switching to DE razors, I have suffered very few, but in the transition period I used the toothbrush technique very effectively.

--
Jeremy

[sebell]

Use a DE or straight razor, shave everyday
1 pass WTG (be very careful to shave with
the grain only!). An injector or a straight may
be better than a DE in this case.

Continue this for a few weeks, and you should
find that your irritation goes away. If you feel
like adding an XTG pass for a really close
shave at this point you can, but only if you find
that you can do so without irritation.


- Scott

[ScottS]

Yea they would be razor bumps instead, after about 3 days they grow back into the skin. I'm guessing thats to short of a period to start using the beard trimmer. I've tried using tweezers before but most of the time I can't seem to extract the hairs, where did you get your tweezers?

If they're really shaving bumps, shaving gently every day should be your ticket to bumpless skin