How long do results last?

There are three clocks, not one

Almost everything done in a cosmetic clinic falls into one of three categories, and each holds for a different length of time.

• Surface and skin quality. Tone, texture, congestion, dullness, superficial pigment. This is the fastest to change and the fastest to drift back, because the skin is turning over continuously. Think weeks to a few months.
• Collagen remodelling. Tightening, scar remodelling, thickening of the dermis. This is slow to appear and slow to leave. It usually takes three to six months to show and then holds for a year or more.
• Structural change. Volume and support. This is measured in years rather than months, and it sits underneath everything else.

Most disappointment comes from expecting one clock and getting another. Someone treats surface pigment and wonders why the jawline has not changed. Someone has a tightening treatment and checks the mirror at two weeks.

Device by device, roughly

These are general ranges rather than promises. Results with any device depend heavily on the clinic and the provider, because the same machine in two sets of hands produces two different outcomes. Settings, assessment and sequencing matter more than the badge on the front of the device.

LED, Healite II

Cumulative and supportive rather than dramatic. Used as a course alongside other treatment, most often to settle inflammation and support healing. Effects are ongoing while the course runs.

Microneedling, SkinPen

The collagen response builds over about three months after a course, typically of three or four sessions. Many people revisit somewhere between six and twelve months, depending on what is being maintained.

Chemical peels

Surface renewal, so the change is real but on the fastest clock. Peels do their best work in courses and in seasonal rhythms rather than as one-off events.

Pico laser

Where pigment is cleared, it can stay cleared for a long time. What brings it back is usually sun exposure and hormonal drivers rather than the treatment wearing off. Melasma is the exception and is managed rather than cured.

Alma HarmonyXL

Similar picture for vascular marks and sun damage. Treated lesions tend to stay treated. New ones arrive if the cause has not changed.

Morpheus8, Forma and MiniFX

Radiofrequency remodelling, so firmly on the collagen clock. The change builds over three to six months and commonly holds in the range of twelve to eighteen months before people consider reassessing.

Sofwave

Another tightening treatment on the same slow clock, usually reviewed at around a year.

Hydrafacial

Immediate and short-lived by design. It is a maintenance rhythm rather than a structural intervention.

Rejuran

Course-based and aimed at skin quality, with the benefit accruing across the course rather than arriving in one session.

Why “how long does it last” is the wrong first question

It is a reasonable question about a single treatment. It is the wrong question about a face, because a face is not holding still while you wait to see how long something lasts. Ageing continues underneath whatever was done.

The more useful question is what order things should happen in, and what you are going to do at the end of the first year. Treating in the wrong order is the most common reason people spend a lot and feel they got very little. Tightening something that has lost volume does not read as tighter. Resurfacing skin that is inflamed makes the inflammation the story.

What you are actually buying, when it is done properly, is a sequence and a review date.

What a plan actually contains

A treatment plan that is worth the name is not a list of what is available. It is a small number of decisions written down, in an order, with a date attached.

• A baseline. 3D imaging at the start, so that a year later the comparison is against a measurement rather than a memory. Memory is unreliable about faces, including your own.
• An order of operations. What is done first, what is done only after the first thing has settled, and what is deliberately not being done yet.
• What happens at home. The parts of the result that depend on sun exposure, actives and consistency rather than on anything that happens in the clinic.
• A review date. The point at which the plan is checked against the baseline and either continued, changed or stopped.

The last one is the part most plans are missing, and it is the part that decides whether the money spent in year one is still working for you in year three.

The annual review

Once a year we re-image against your baseline and look at what actually changed, rather than what was supposed to change. Sometimes that means continuing. Sometimes it means the plan was wrong and the honest answer is to change direction. Occasionally it means doing nothing for a while, which is a legitimate outcome and one we would rather reach on purpose than by drift.

Reassessing is also how maintenance stops being a subscription. Repeating a treatment because twelve months have passed is a booking. Repeating it because the imaging says the thing you were treating has moved is a decision.

Where results genuinely vary

Two people can have the same treatment on the same device in the same week and get different results. That is not a flaw in the technology. The variables that matter are mostly upstream of the machine.

• The assessment. Whether the thing being treated was correctly identified in the first place.
• The provider. Settings, technique and knowing when not to treat.
• The sequence. Whether the treatment was done at the right point relative to everything else.
• Your biology. Skin type, age, healing, hormones and how much sun you have already had.
• What happens between sessions. Photoprotection and consistency at home do more work than most people expect.

Related reading

• Comparing devicesMorpheus8 or SofwaveTwo good devices working at different depths, and why the clinic matters more than the machine.
• Comparing devicesPico or IPL for pigmentationWhy identifying the type of pigment matters more than choosing the laser.
• ConsultationsA second opinionFor plans that were quoted elsewhere, and for results that did not go the way you expected.