Affordable At-Home Facial Treatment: LED Lights Therapy

LED light therapy is famous for its ability to help your skin with acne, wrinkles, fine lines, and wound healing. In-office treatment usually costs around $25–$85 per session. Worry not, you can save your money and get this all-in-one therapy by yourself at home!

What is LED light therapy?

Light-emitting diode (LED) light therapy is a noninvasive skin therapy that utilizes different wavelengths of LED light. It was first used by NASA to help in treating wounds and it continues to develop until now it’s safe for market use.

LED light therapy doesn’t contain dangerous ultraviolet light that can harm your skin. They rely on low-level light therapy (LLLT) that doesn’t heat up your skin’s tissue. They are skin-safe lights that could target different concerns of your skin.

How does LED light therapy work?

The different light spectrum used in LED light therapy has different benefits for your skin. Our skin cells react differently if exposed to certain wavelengths of light. That means that LED light therapy delivers specific skincare benefits by penetrating the light into the skin at different depths, depending on the specific wavelength.

LED light benefits

Each of the light colors penetrates into the skin at different depths. The most widely used lights in LED light therapy are the red and blue lights.

• Red light: encourages the fibroblasts on your epidermis to stimulate collagen production. An increase in collagen production will strengthen your skin’s tissue and lift your saggy skin. This way, the red light can help in reducing signs of aging such as wrinkles and fine lines.
• Blue light: controls sebaceous glands (oil glands) to produce less oil, helping your skin prevent the appearance of acne pimples, or breakouts. Blue light can also kill the bacteria that causes acne known as Cutibacterium acnes.
• Near-infrared (NIR) light: the invisible light that penetrates deepest, into your tissues, muscles, joints, and even your bone. Near-infrared light is used to help repair your muscle tissues, where it promotes wound healing and anti-aging as well.

Not only for your face, LED light is also suitable to be used on your neck, hands, and chest. However, not every problem can be solved by a single therapy. LED light therapy would not be the solution if you are seeking a treatment for blackheads, whiteheads, and cysts.

Who should not use LED light therapy?

Some skins are not safe to get an LED light therapy in some conditions. Such as skin cancer, eye sensitivity, and also those who take medication that increases sensitivity to sunlight.

Is at-home LED light therapy safe?

You might have seen people on social media wearing this device while doing other things like reading a book. Well, we can say that LED light devices are generally safe even for regular use. It doesn’t emit harmful light, has no downtime, and it’s safe for all skin types. However, you have to protect your eyes while using it. LED light therapy can damage your eyes if you use it without any shield for a long time. Neutrogena’s Light Therapy Acne Mask was recalled due to their concern for the safety of customers with certain eye conditions or sensitive eyes. If you do not want to risk getting your eyes exposed to the light during the whole therapy session, you can always get the wand-shaped ones!

How to use at-home LED light therapy

It depends on every device you get. Regarding the concerns on eye sensitivity I’ve mentioned in the last part, I personally recommend you to use the wand stick-shaped LED light device. Even if the at-home devices are less strong than the in-office devices. The wand stick-shaped ones are hand-held and may be less convenient than the LED masks, though. Besides the inconvenience, you can use the hand-held LED light device for other parts of your body like your neck and hand easier! However, you have to hold it around 6 to 12 inches far from your face for about 10–20 minutes.

Some hand-held LED light devices you can easily use are FOREO UFO range products (they have cute shapes haha) and TheraFace PRO!