If I dyed my upper lip hairs blonde prior to laser hair removal will the hair removal still be effective?

Thank you for your question. You should not dye your facial hair before Laser Hair Removal treatments. Laser Hair Removal works by picking up the melanin (color) in the hair follicle, so if a patient has white or grey hair or even a very light blonde, Laser Hair Removal will not be effective.  

Your treatment will likely not work. Our recommendation is to wait until the hair outgrows the bleach and shave 24-28 hours prior to be treated. The laser targets dark follicles in order to damage them. Bleach usually gets deep enough in the hair follicle to cause a disruption. The laser won't be able to target the hair it it's too light- this could cause pigmentation issues as well, make sure you let your provider know so that they can adjust the settings.

It is not recommended to dye your hair before laser hair removal. Diode, alexandrite and yag lasers work best for hair removal. It will take a series of treatments and some people need treatments to maintain. I recommend getting a formal evaluation with a laser hair removal expert. Best, Dr. Emer

Great question!  Dying your hair blonde can reduce the effectiveness of laser hair removal if the dye lightened the deeper part of the hair.  Laser hair removal targets the pigment in the hair, but needs to target the deeper part of the hair in the hair shaft (bulb) to really "kill" versus damage the hair, leading to permanent removal.  Even if the hair is blond outside of the skin and properly shaved before treatment, it is still possible that some of the dye got into the skin and to the hair shaft and bulb, so it is not worth the risk in wasting a treatment.  I tell my patients that they should not do any bleaching, plucking, threading, waxing or any similar treatment for 6 weeks before treatment and throughout the entire treatment series.  

Hi! It's hard to say if the laser will be effective. The laser goes after the color of the hair, so if the hair got bleach all the way down in the follicle I wouldn't think it would work. However, I would think you could wait a few weeks and go without lightening the hair and it will work just fine as long as your natural hair is dark.
Hope that helps!

When you dye your hair, you are only dying the hair above the skin because hair dyes and bleaches do not penetrate the dermis, inside of the skin. Hair removal lasers target melanin (hair color cells) and some hemoglobin (blood) so the target of the laser is around the hair follicle, below the skin. 
When we do laser hair removal we shave the hair off the skin so that the energy of the laser goes through the epidermis into the dermis where it finds the hair and the melanocytes around the follicle. When the light "finds" these structures, chromophores, it is absorbed and converts to heat damaging the follicle.Thus, there must be color in and around the follicle.  It is unfortunate that we cannot get dyes into the follicle.  If we could, our hair color would last a month longer and we could remove white and blonde hair with hair removal lasers.