Texture & scarring
Fractional Resurfacing
Non-ablative fractional laser for atrophic acne scarring and sun-damaged texture. The most effective thing we do, and the one with real downtime.
- Price
- £750 a session
- Appointment
- 70 minutes including numbing
- Sessions
- Three, ten weeks apart
- Downtime
- Five to seven days. Day two is the worst of it.
Three sessions is the honest expectation. £2,250 for a full course.
Fractional resurfacing works by injuring the skin on purpose, in thousands of narrow columns, leaving the tissue between them untouched so healing runs from the sides inward. The untreated bridges are the whole trick: they are why this heals in a week rather than a month, and why we can go deep enough to matter.
Why ice-pick scars are quoted separately
Not all atrophic scars answer to the same tool. Rolling and shallow boxcar scars remodel well with fractional energy. Ice-pick scars — the narrow, deep ones — do not, and treating them with laser alone produces a face that is smoother everywhere except the places you actually mind.
Those are treated first with TCA CROSS at £190 a session, and the resurfacing course starts afterwards. If your consultation photographs show a mixed pattern, the protocol will say so and the quote will have two lines on it.
The week afterwards
Day one: tight, hot, like strong sunburn. You will be given a barrier ointment and told to leave it alone. Day two: swelling peaks, particularly under the eyes. This is the day people message us. Days three to five: bronzing, then a fine sandpaper texture as the micro-columns shed. Day six or seven: presentable, slightly pink, easily covered.
Collagen remodelling continues for about four months after the final session, so the result at week six is not the result.
What three sessions actually achieve
On the rig, a full course typically improves scar depth by something like half. Half is a great deal — it is the difference between scarring you notice in every mirror and scarring you find when you look for it. It is not erasure, and anyone showing you a before-and-after that suggests otherwise has changed the lighting between the two frames.