Candidacy · 5 min read
Sun damage or rosacea?
What IPL can fix, and what it will make worse.
Lumecca is the fastest treatment we run for pigment and redness — and the one with the strictest rules about when you can have it.
Intense pulsed light does two quite different jobs with the same device: it breaks up pigment, and it collapses the small vessels that cause visible redness. Most people arrive asking about one and turn out to have both. The reason this guide exists is not to explain the mechanism, though — it is because IPL is the treatment where timing and skin typing matter more than anything else on our menu, and where getting them wrong causes real harm rather than a disappointing result.
The short answer
For brown spots, freckling and general sun damage, Lumecca produces the most visible change per session of anything we offer — often something worth seeing after one. For diffuse redness and visible capillaries, it works but takes a course. It cannot be performed on tanned or recently sun-exposed skin under any circumstances, and it is not the right tool for texture, lines or laxity. If your skin is currently any shade darker than its winter baseline, the honest answer is to come back in autumn.
Two targets, one device
The light is absorbed by dark material in the skin. Where that material is melanin clustered in a sun spot, the spot absorbs the energy, darkens sharply over the following days, then lifts away as the skin turns over. Where it is haemoglobin in a small dilated vessel, the vessel absorbs the energy and collapses, and the redness above it fades over the weeks that follow.
That same absorption is why a tan is disqualifying. Tanned skin is full of melanin everywhere, not just in the spots you want treated, so the energy is absorbed across the whole treated area rather than by the target. The result is burns and pigment change rather than clearance.
What it treats well, and what it does not
Responds well
Wrong tool
Pigment
Sun spots, freckling, uneven tone
Melasma — often worsens with IPL
Vascular
Rosacea flushing, broken capillaries
Larger varicose vessels
Texture
Modest secondary improvement
Scarring, deep lines — use microneedling
Laxity
None
Use Forma or Morpheus8
Sessions
1–3 for pigment
3–6 for diffuse redness
Session length
Under 30 min
—
Downtime
1–3 days of darkening then flaking
—
Season
Autumn and winter
Not on tanned or exposed skin
The melasma problem
Melasma looks like sun damage and behaves nothing like it. It is a hormonally driven, heat-sensitive pigmentation that frequently darkens in response to IPL rather than clearing. Treating melasma as though it were sun damage is one of the most common ways to make someone's pigmentation permanently worse, and it happens most often where nobody examined the pattern closely before switching the machine on.
We look for it specifically: symmetry across the cheeks, upper lip and forehead, a history that tracks with pregnancy or hormonal contraception, and a tendency to darken in heat. If that is the picture, we will not treat you with IPL, and we will say so at consultation rather than after a session has made it worse.
What the days afterwards look like
Treated spots darken noticeably within hours — this is expected, and it is the treatment working.
Over three to seven days they take on a coffee-ground texture and flake away. Do not pick them.
Vascular areas may look slightly more flushed for a day before settling.
Makeup is fine the next day; heat, saunas and hot workouts are not, for forty-eight hours.
Daily sun protection is a condition of treatment, not a suggestion — unprotected exposure afterwards can bring the pigment straight back.
Not suitable if
You are tanned, sunburnt, or have had meaningful sun exposure in the last two to four weeks; you use sunbeds or fake tan; you are pregnant; you have active infection or open lesions in the area; you have a history of cold sores in the treatment area without antiviral cover; you are taking a photosensitising medication, including certain antibiotics and isotretinoin within the past six months. Deeper skin tones carry a higher risk of pigment change with IPL and are often better served by a different treatment entirely — we will tell you that rather than treat conservatively and hope.
Sequencing it with everything else
Lumecca sits early in a plan, because clearing pigment and redness changes what the remaining concerns actually look like. A common order is IPL first for tone, then a peel or microneedling course for texture once the skin has settled — never in the same fortnight. A HydraFacial before an IPL session is fine and pleasant; a peel before one is not, and we space them by weeks rather than days.
Also asked
For discrete sun spots, often you will see meaningful change after one. For diffuse redness or widespread damage, plan three to six spaced three to four weeks apart.
A brief snap per pulse with cooling, and the whole session is under thirty minutes. Most people find it easier than they expected.
No — and not just because of the flaking. Treated skin is more vulnerable to sun for weeks afterwards. Book it for when you get back.
That is exactly what the consultation is for. Do not guess, and do not let anyone treat you without examining the pattern first.
The treated ones are cleared. New ones form with new sun exposure, which is why daily protection is the whole maintenance plan.
Treatments in this guide
Written by the practice and reviewed by a practitioner before publication. General information, not medical advice — what applies to you is settled in person, at consultation.