It's all about physics

Thank you for your question.

I'm going to answer this in simple terms so hopefully no one reading this will get confused. The targets of our laser treatments (the melanin of the hair bulb, the hemoglobin of blood cells, the water in our skin layers) absorb energy at certain wavelengths of light. When the target absorbs this wavelength energy, heat is produced and the target (and the surrounding tissue in some cases) is destroyed.

Lasers use an specific infrared wavelength to provide that energy to the target. In the case of hair removal, the wavelengths of the infrared light usually fall around 700-1100 nanometers (nm). For example, alexandrite lasers use 755nm, diode lasers use 800nm, and Nd:YAG lasers use 1064nm. All of these will target the melanin in the hair and cause it to heat up and destroy the hair bulb.

Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) does not use a specific wavelength, but rather a range of wavelengths (e.g. 600-1200nm) to target the hair melanin.

Both of these treatments target hair efficiently and effectively, and in the same exact theoretical way. You can feel confident going with an IPL or a dedicated wavelength laser for hair removal.

Hope that explains it!

We do not use IPL for laser hair removal as there are better laser choices that lead to better results with a lower incidence of side effects. 

The main difference between IPL and lasers is that lasers use one specific type of light and IPL uses many types of light. This means that IPL cannot achieve the same peak energies because of the risk of side effects. In fact, in recent research, IPL treatments done on low settings can actually lead to hair growth.

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