Patients research the device. Almost nobody researches the fortnight afterwards, and that fortnight is where a good number of disappointing results are actually made.
Days one to three
Expect redness and swelling like a strong sunburn, worst on the morning after rather than on the day. The skin is a barrier with holes in it, which is exactly the point — it is how the treatment works — and it means anything applied to it gets in.
So: a bland emollient and nothing else. No acids, no retinoids, no vitamin C, no exfoliant, nothing with fragrance, and no “healing” serum that has not come from the office. The single most common self-inflicted injury after a laser is an active ingredient applied to broken skin.
Days three to seven
Peeling. This is the part people interfere with, and interfering with it is how peels and lasers leave marks.
Flaking skin that is lifting at the edge is attached underneath. Pulling it takes living tissue with it and leaves a pale or dark patch that lasts considerably longer than the peel would have. Let it come off in the shower in its own time.
Makeup can usually go back on once the skin is no longer broken, around day three to five.
Not all lasers ask the same of you
“Laser” covers a range of recoveries, and the one you are having decides how much of the above applies.
A non-ablative fractional treatment leaves the surface intact and works underneath it. Expect a day or two of redness and roughness, makeup within a day or so, and several sessions to reach the result.
An ablative fractional treatment removes columns of surface tissue. More downtime, more aftercare, and more change per session — this is the one the week-long instructions were written for.
Vascular and pigment-specific lasers target a colour rather than resurfacing. Pigment lifts and darkens before it flakes away over a week or so, which is expected and routinely mistaken for the treatment having gone wrong.
If you are not sure which you had, call and ask. The aftercare differs enough to matter.
The month, not the fortnight
Sunscreen is not aftercare advice here. It is part of the treatment.
Freshly resurfaced skin makes pigment readily, and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation after a laser is overwhelmingly a sun exposure problem rather than a device problem. SPF 50, every day, reapplied, for at least a month — and a hat, because reapplication on a real day rarely happens the way it does in the instructions.
This matters more, not less, in deeper skin tones, where the pigment response is stronger and takes longer to settle.
When to call
Spreading redness, pain that is increasing rather than easing after day three, yellow crusting, or a fever. None of those are expected and all of them want a phone call the same day rather than a message at the weekend.
And the last one: do not judge the result in week one. Resurfacing looks worse before it looks better, and the skin that emerges at three to four weeks is the skin that was being treated for. The full before-and-after instructions for every procedure are set out on their own page.