How to Prevent Razor Burn

Razor burn, shaving bumps, and ingrown hairs.  If you have been shaving for any substantial amount of time you have probably suffered from one or more of these conditions.  All of them are related, all of them are preventable to some degree, and all of them can absolutely ruin your day/week/month/year (if you’re overly dramatic like me).  Before we get into prevention though, it might be useful to highlight the differences in these irritations.

First off, there are only two conditions listed above.  Ingrown hairs and shaving bumps are the same thing.  Razor burn though, that’s something totally different.  We’ll look at razor burn today and tackle ingrown hairs in a separate post later this week. 

Razor burn is an unsightly, irritating condition that usually occurs after you shave your legs, armpits, or other body parts.  If you have sensitive skin, use dull blades, or utilize an improper shaving technique you greatly increase your chances of razor burn.  Symptoms of razor burn can include redness of the skin, bumps, a stinging sensation, or sensitivity. 

Razor burn is an unsightly, irritating condition that usually occurs after you shave your legs, armpits, or other body parts.  If you have sensitive skin, use dull blades, or utilize an improper shaving technique you greatly increase your chances of razor burn.  Symptoms of razor burn can include redness of the skin, bumps, a stinging sensation, or sensitivity. 

Most of us have had this happen at some point before and while it sucks, it is treatable.  What’s really happening here is that your skin and hair follicles are upset with you.  If you shave with a worn-out razor (typically one used more than 7 times according to leading dermatologists) you are ripping your partially cut hair out of the follicle, not slicing it cleanly (which causes much less irritation). 

Not to worry though.  Razor burn will typically go away with some time as your skin calms down.  To speed the process though, you can utilize either a cocoa butter cream or an aloe vera based moisturizer to help soothe the skin (our blades utilize aloe strips for just this purpose… just saying).  It’s also wise to let the area calm down before shaving it again.  If the skin is really red you can use a cold compress as well to speed along the healing.

Preventing razor burn is quite easy.  It’s not foolproof, but if you follow this you should hopefully see a reduction in the symptoms and frequency of occurrence. 

First things first.  Clean your skin before shaving.  One thing that will be very helpful here that few people do is exfoliating the area you are about to shave.  This will provide a smooth surface for the blade (save the hairs) and thus result in a smoother shave. 

Also, make sure to be nice and wet for at least two minutes prior to shaving (and other things I hear).  This ensures the hair is nice and pliable and ready to be cut without much fuss.  We could go into hair rigidity discussions here but I’ll save that for another day.

Next, make sure you are using a sharp blade.  I can’t stress this enough.  A sharp blade ensures a clean cut without any ‘grabbing’ or ‘tearing’ of the hair.  This will mean much less stress on the hair follicle and your skin will thank you as well since you are not scraping it with a dulled mangled mess of metal.

Now it’s time to shave.  Follow the direction of the hair.  For your armpits, this is generally away from the crease (thanks to my good friend who grew out her armpit hair so we could test this!).  For your lady bits, this is generally inward toward your private bits.  Finally, for your legs, there is much more variation in the directionality of hair growth but for me, my hair tends to grow downward toward the ground (so shaving upward, like we all do) is not the best way to do things.

Okay, you’re done shaving so that’s it right?  Not exactly.  Usually, we dry ourselves rather harshly by rubbing the towel on our legs etc. 

 

DON’T RUB!

via GIPHY

 

DAB.

 

via GIPHY

 

Dabbing prevents further friction from irritating the skin and leaves a bit of moisture on the body to continue to calm the shaved skin. 

Finally, moisturize.  I know most of you do this already but especially for shaved areas, this is important.  You want something that contains emollients, glycerine, cocoa butter, or aloe.  All of these ingredients have calming properties and will help to soothe your skin.

So there you have it, how to prevent razor burn and should you get it anyway, a few ways to help alleviate some of the symptoms.  We will tackle shaving bumps or ingrown hairs next.  These tend to be worse than shaving burn since they last much longer and can be quite unsightly.  Not to worry though, we’re here to help!

 

 

The Rose's Razors Team