In the past, outdated hair transplantation methods required most patients to shave their heads fully to ensure easy access to the follicles. However a minimally invasive technique called Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) reduces the need to shave your whole head of hair.
Hair transplants using traditional ‘plugs’ also meant that transplanted hair might not have looked natural or left patients with visible scarring or abrasions on their skin that could take weeks to heal, something we appreciate many clients are concerned about.
During your initial consultation, our talented hair transplant surgeons will discuss all the options with you, including a comprehensive evaluation of your hair loss or the problems you are experiencing. They will also explain how a hair transplant works and whether it is the best possible treatment for you.
We can share extensive reviews from our valued clients to give you insights into their experiences of hair transplantation, along with detailed before-and-after and follow-up pictures to illustrate what the recovery process looks like and how this will affect your appearance.
Key Takeaways
- Many people assume a hair transplant means shaving their heads entirely, but modern, advanced hair transplantation techniques often make this unnecessary.
- An experienced surgeon will always offer a confidential consultation to assess the target area for hair transplantation and advise whether there is likely to be any need to shave some sections of hair.
- For more extensive hair loss transplants, and where a client would prefer not to shave any hair at all, our surgeons may be able to offer a customised unshaven hair transplant, noting that in some scenarios, this may increase the time required to complete the procedure.
Understanding the Contrast Between Shaven and Unshaven Hair Transplants
The pain-free, walk-in/walk-out FUE hair transplant approach we’ve mentioned is a preferable way to achieve a permanent, natural hair transplant over older conventional procedures.
Outdated techniques required significant shaving to remove existing healthy hairs that would have altered your appearance for a longer recovery period.
Skilled, accredited, and licensed hair transplant surgeons working within our Care Quality Commission-regulated clinics can offer cutting-edge treatments and procedures that align with your requirements, including innovative FUE transplants for clients who may have been unsuited to other methods of hair transplantation.
Depending on the hair transplant site and your preferences, we may recommend shaving the area where the healthy donor follicles will be extracted. This expedites the procedure and ensures your time in the clinic on the day of your transplant is kept to a minimum.
However, there are also options such as a mild trim to the hair to ensure the follicles are accessible, but without shaving hair entirely, which many clients may feel impedes their ability to return to work and social activities quickly.
Case studies first began to explore the option of non-shave FUE hair transplants ten years ago, ensuring that today, sector-leading hair transplant surgeons have ample experience with this type of procedure. [1]
Techniques to Reduce or Eliminate Shaving Pre-Hair Transplant
There are several potential resolutions. As always, this will depend on the surgeons’ evaluation of your hair loss, availability and access to donor follicles, and the nature and size of the hair transplant area. These could include:
- Using light-touch shaving or a fade to ensure donor follicles are easy to extract using a microscopic tool and that your hair remains thick and full in healthy areas.
- Opting for partial shave techniques to ensure the donor area is clean and easy to access, but leaving the surrounding hairs longer, which can be styled or brushed to conceal the transplant donor extraction site.
- Avoiding shaving altogether, extracting and implanting grafts between existing longer hair. This option is suited to some types of hair transplants, but it does mean that the duration of the procedure is likely to be longer.
The big advantage of a FUE hair transplant without shaving is that the results are discreet, and you can resume your usual schedule quickly without any indication that you have undergone a hair transplant. The drawback is the time required to complete this delicate and sensitive procedure, which may mean that for more extensive hair loss, a hair transplant could not be completed in this way within one appointment.
Standard clinical approaches mean that shaving the donor hairs to around two mm is sufficient to ensure the surgeon can see the angle of follicle growth without needing to shave the hair completely. [2]
For most KSL Clinic clients, the right answer is to customise your hair transplant and to discuss every aspect with you beforehand to ensure you are happy to proceed and have complete control over how the transplant is handled.
What to Expect in Terms of Appearance After a Hair Transplant
As a multiskilled network of hair transplant clinics, we have performed thousands of procedures on clients of every age and gender with diverse hair loss concerns or issues with their natural hair growth pattern.
This experience enables us to show you precisely how a hair transplant looks at both the donor and transplantation sites, including immediately after the hair transplant procedure has been completed.
Days one to four should, ideally, be used to focus on resting and recovery, giving your transplanted follicles time to begin healing. The area may remain red, with some residual swelling and soreness common. Note that the donor area will recover very quickly due to the microscopic size of the scratches made – this will usually be fully healed in just a few days.
After one week after your hair transplant, your scalp and skin may remain delicate, with tiny areas of scabbing – this is all part of the healing process, and following aftercare guidance and keeping the area moist is essential, which also soothes your skin and prevents irritation.
If you have had a no-shave transplant, or the hair at the donor site has been lightly trimmed to facilitate access, this hair will have already begun to regrow, and the initial redness should have all but disappeared by this point. After a week, you can also have the donor area re-blended while sticking to light trims around the rest of the scalp and taking extra care near the transplant area.
‘Our primary goal is to ensure that every client has a positive, comfortable experience and achieves the hair transplantation outcomes they have dreamed of – whether they wish to correct a receding hairline, replenish hair loss at the crown, improve their facial hair or eyebrows, or manage hair loss linked to an underlying condition.’
KSL Clinic is a highly regarded hair transplant specialist with outstanding quality equipment, facilities, and techniques. We would never suggest that shaving large areas of hair is unavoidable for a client for whom this would be problematic or cause discomfort with their appearance.
My advice for any client worried about needing to shave sections of their hair is to contact their nearest KSL Clinic to arrange a private, obligation-free consultation with our accomplished surgeons. We can show you pictures of real-world clients to demonstrate the results we can achieve and show you how a hair transplant will look from day one onward.’
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Looking for a consultation about hair transplant? Book a free consultation with us today to see what we can do for you.
A Timeline of the FUE Hair Transplant Process
Through our knowledge hub, you’ll find a series of detailed guides, complete with images, that clarify what to expect throughout your FUE transplant.
More details about the FUE transplant procedure are also available through the KSL Clinic pages, but in short, this includes:
- The application of a high-quality anaesthetic to ensure your transplant is pain-free and that you can return home once the procedure is finished without needing to stay with us overnight.
- Harvesting healthy donor follicles from the agreed area one at a time using a specialist tool called a Micro Punch, which creates minuscule scratches around one mm across.
- Grading, sorting, and analysing each follicle, checking that the density, texture, and colour fit perfectly into the mapped-out transplant area.
- Reimplanting those graded follicles, again creating tiny scratches at each site, and creating a bespoke transplant where the hairs will grow in a uniform, natural direction.
- Applying gentle bandaging and recommending treatments, medications and creams to use during each stage of recovery to ensure you are confident you have all the information you need to take great care of your transplant from day one.
Adhering to the transplant recovery advice is very important since your new follicles must be looked after and protected from contaminants, pollution, and direct sunlight for a few days to allow them to ‘bed in’ as your skin heals.
Those instructions include avoiding high-pressure showers and hot sunlight for the first two weeks, especially if you have a hair transplant during the summer.
Rest assured that all of these details are discussed in greater specificity during your consultation, and KSL Clinic is always on hand throughout recovery if you have any questions or would like to pop in for a review to check that your transplant is healing well.
Prospective hair transplant clients are also advised to arrange a convenient time to meet our expert surgical team. They can address your concerns and provide independent recommendations, enabling you to make informed decisions about the right course of action.
Shaving During Hair Transplantation: Frequently Asked Questions
Do I Need to Shave My Head to Have a Hair Transplant?
In this guide, we’ve discussed the various techniques for achieving a permanent, youthful hairline without needing to shave extensive sections of your head. Much depends on the location of the transplant and the availability of healthy donor hairs, which are often extracted from discreet areas to the side or back of the scalp.
However, it would be uncommon to suggest that you shave your whole head or that extensive shaving is the only way to achieve the outcome you are looking for. KSL Clinic can use light-touch trimming to give the surgeon the right access to verify the suitability of each donor hair before extraction without needing to shave the area close to the skin.
We can also suggest resolutions that involve shaving small, hidden areas that will be easily concealed by longer hair growing around the donor area. This means you can return to your routine after the initial healing period with no signs that you have had a hair transplant.
What Can I Expect After a Hair Transplant?
On the day of your transplant, we’ll apply careful bandages to the area of the transplant and recommend medications and creams that can assist with healing. When you remove the bandages, the area may look inflamed and red, which will begin to subside quickly.
The first two weeks are pivotal. We’ll provide detailed guidance about things like swimming, exercising, and drinking alcohol, ensuring the follicles are protected from contaminants and grow nicely as your skin recovers.
From two weeks after your hair transplant, your healing process will have continued, and swelling will have gone down – residual redness in the transplant area is normal, and provided you are not experiencing any serious pain, this is simply part of recovery.
Why Do Hair Transplants Sometimes Involve Shaving Sections of Your Hair?
Shaving isn’t intended to have a detrimental impact on your appearance. Still, it means that the surgeon has full access to the area where they are planning to extract donor follicles or implant those healthy follicles. There are many common misconceptions about what this might involve:
- Hair transplant surgeons do not shave the transplant area – the location where you’d like the transplanted follicles to replace lost or thinning hair.
- Neither will we suggest shaving the top of your head or any sections that would be highly visible and difficult to conceal.
However, shaving small areas close to the donor hairs can make it much faster to complete the transplant since the surgeon can see clearly which follicles match the density and texture of the planned transplant without working around longer existing hair.
The right approach is usually to ensure that any trimming is minimal and never exceeds that which is absolutely necessary, checking that there is sufficient hair growth around the area to conceal the shorter hair. We can also suggest a fade, where a broader area is trimmed to a consistent length, regrowing within a few days of your transplant.
