Fitzpatrick Skin Type Chart: Which Fitzpatrick Skin Are Suitable For IPL?

All skin is dif­fer­ent. Your own skin will react dif­fer­ently to some­one else’s and par­tic­u­larly in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments and within its reac­tion to heat and light. After all, that’s why some of us may need a higher fac­tor of sun loca­tion whilst on vacation.

Fam­ily his­tory, eth­nic­ity and geo­graph­i­cal fac­tors will all have influ­ences on your skin type, but it’s cru­cial to know just what skin type you have, in order to effec­tively pro­tect it over the years.

In regards to the likes of IPL treat­ments for hair removal, there are cer­tain skin types which are more suited for these reasons.

Firstly, you need to deter­mine what your skin type is.

One way of doing so is through the Fitz­patrick Skin Type Chart Scale, which is a clas­si­fi­ca­tion of skin types based on how they response to UV light.

It cat­e­gorises skin types as a num­ber between 1 and 6, with a cor­re­spond­ing col­oration of skin, and how it may char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally react to sun exposure.

• Type 1: White or very fair. Freck­les. Always burns, never tans.
• Type 2: White or fair. Usu­ally burns, tans with difficulty.
• Type 3: Beige. Some­times receives mild burn­ing but grad­u­ally tans.
• Type 4: Beige with a brown tint. Skin often described as ‘Mediter­ranean Cau­casian’. Rarely burns and tans with ease.
• Type 5: Dark brown. Very rarely brown and tans easily.
• Type 6: Black. Never burns and tans very easily.

Fitzpatrick Skin Type Chart

VISS IPL works most effec­tively on nat­u­rally dark-blond, brown and black hair, but not for those with nat­u­rally red, grey or light blond hair. In addi­tion, it is not suit­able for very dark skin tones.

With this in mind, to get the best results in a safe way, IPL treat­ments are ideal for you if you are a Type 3, 4 or 5 on the Fitz­patrick Skin Type Scale.

Of course, the scale is only to be used as a guide­line. It may be the case that you can use IPL but at a lesser inten­sity. For any ques­tions or to dis­cuss your suit­abil­ity, please feel free to get in touch so you too can enjoy home hair removal.