by Brie Leach

1. How Long Does It Last?

It completely depends on your skin and lifestyle. Things like sun exposure, exfoliation from serums, bleaching creams, scrubs, etc, tanning beds, your body's metabolic rate and skin's cell turnover all play a roll in the longevity of your brows.

6 months - there will be enough fading that it will no longer be at it's best, however you will still have great brows. If you're into a super strong brow game you can get a touchup now to get them back to 100%. Otherwise, you can totally get away with several more months of looking just fine.

12 months - you're getting to the point where you are penciling them in every day. There's still an outline of faint pigment where the microblading used to be, but it is not dark enough to look like real hair.

18 to 36 months - every bit of pigment is gone. You are back to how you were before getting microblading done.

2. Will I Lose Hair?

Your hair will not come out during the treatment. However, your technician might tweeze out hairs (that do not fall inside the agreed upon shape) to help facilitate the microblading process, enhance your results and your before and after photos.

3. Will I Need A Second Appointment A Month Later?

There are cases where it's not necessary. If your brows have a decent framework and you're only looking to patch holes, or if you have nothing and are not looking for perfect symmetry or filled out brows, you can get away with just doing one. Once healed, you're going to have way better brows than when you started, that's for sure.

BUT, your technician is not familiar with your skin and typically needs a second appointment to make any color or technique adjustments to give you the best results possible. It's also really difficult to get the shape and symmetry exactly perfect on the first appointment. The goal of the first go-around is not perfection, building perfect brows is a process. The second appointment also doubles the amount of microbladed hair strokes, giving you the hair density of real, natural brows that can't be achieved from just one appointment.

4. Can I Get Them Wet?

This is one of the most debated topics. The fact that there has not been a definitive answer on this, must mean that neither is wrong or right. Yes, water is where bacteria can populate, but you also need water to clean your brows of any populated bacteria before it gets infected, so therein lies the debate.

We tell our clients to wait until the next day to wash them, and use a gentle, chemical free cleanser. Afterwards, do not towel-dry them, instead, you can dab with a clean paper towel or better yet let them air dry. Then follow with your aftercare ointment. *Also, it's good to use an ointment that has bacteria-fighting ingredients, versus the A+D barrier ointment that comes free with your appointment. The aftercare formula we created HERE too is a barrier ointment but also has ingredients that nourish, protect and aid in healing. It's worth it to have the added benefits, it's like brow insurance.

5. Will My Brows Look Crazy While Healing?

You will most likely be hyper-aware and overly-critical of them during the healing process. We get this a lot. But we're also customers of microblading too and have been through it several times ourselves. It feels dramatic, but to the outside world you look totally fine and no one even notices. Give it at least 9 days before calling your technician freaking out, trust us.

6. Can I Work Out While They're Healing?

Some studios will give you a hard no on this, but we have plenty of clients who are fitness fans who went about their normal routines and haven't complained about pigment-loss. Salt is said to cause problems, so we do advise against 'profuse' sweating due to heated workouts, saunas, hot tubs, etc. So just don't do that kind of stuff and you should be fine.

6 Questions About Microblading Answered