I have personal experience with laser. My experience was not good and I felt as if I had been ripped off. Some gals that I have talked with had just the opposite experience and eagerly recommend laser, so "your mileage my vary." To be fair, I should point out that I am not a medical professional nor do I have any sort of professional credentials with hair removal. What I have to say has to do with my own personal experiences as well as a lot of research - so please take whatever I write with a big grain of salt.

So much of laser's effectiveness has to do with how deep your hair is, how dark your hair is, how light your skin is, what laser technology is used and how skilled the technicians are with that technology.

"Skill" is a lot more important than you might first think. There is more to using a laser other than pressing a button. Things need to be customized to your own particular skin situation. A person with a lot of fast growing thick black hair may require a different approach from someone with thin light-colored hair and pale skin. You should have more confidence with a professional with lots of experience than someone who just started and had little or no training.

Although there are differences in laser technology, none are truly "lasers" but rather, they are high-intensity lights. Some equipment varies the frequency with the idea that you can better target the hair. Some equipment uses one kind of technology to generate the light while others use something else... Some use a cooling spray... Some use mirrors to "recycle" the energy... Regardless of the details, the concept is pretty much the same: use energy from the light to burn away the hair and the structures that produce the hair.

You need to destroy the structure at the base of the hair - called the papilla - or else the hair will regrow. If you have a lot of deep set hair, the papilla will be far away from the surface of the skin and therefore require more energy to destroy. Similarly, if your hair follicles are twisted, there may be a lot of things between the skin surface and the papilla. The more energy used, the greater the risks are of damaging more than just the hair. Of course, I am over-simplifying things, but I hope that you get the point.

When the energy is given off by the laser equipment, that energy will be absorbed more by things that the dark rather than things that are light. This is the reason why people wear light colors in the summer and why roofs of houses are usually black in the northern states while white in the southern states. Ideally, if you have really black hair and very pale skin, the process works the best. Unfortunately, many people with dark hair will not have light skin. When you have dark skin, the skin itself absorbs the energy and the skin may get damaged. In general, that is not good. If having light skin is better, this implies that you should avoid the sun for several weeks beforehand so that you have no tan at all. When I did laser, the technicians strongly recommended wearing sunscreen every day between treatments.

It should be noted that laser will not work on blonde, white, or grey hair. There is a product that can be used to dye the hair dark, but a doctor friend of mine who performs laser (who is also a tranny) tried it on himself and found it disappointing.

You should keep in mind that hair grows in cycles. How suceptable a given hair is to destruction varies from stage to stage. In the "resting stage" the hair has shed and and is hard to kill. When it leaves this phase in the cycle, it will start growing again. When the hair is in this "groing phase" it is most easily destroyed. It is because of this growth cycle that any hair removal process needs to be performed over time. Depending upon where the hair is on your body, the rate of growth and the length of each phase of the cycle will vary. You should expect at least five or six treatments over as many months.

When starting laser, you might wish to have them shoot several test spots using different settings on each spot. Of course, I feel that they should not charge you for these few tests, or if they do, it should be only a nominal charge. This way, they can see which setting is best for your personal situation rather than you paying them to learn your face. You might wish to ask the place doing the work if they offer any sort of guarantee of success. You should find out how they "measure success" and for how long they will honor that guarantee. Obviously, if a place stands behind its work then the more confidence you should have with them.

Unfortunately, there are no simple answers. Every person is different, so you need to consider things based upon your individual situation. I went through six treatments of laser on my neck and, six weeks after the last treatment, had most (if not all) of the hair return. I ended up going with "traditional" electrolysis and have been quite pleased. Some friends of mine started with laser to get the bulk of the hair destroyed and then followed up with traditional electroysis to eliminate the white and grey hairs as well as any other hair that the laser wasn't able to take out. Several gals who wanted body hair removed have done with laser and have been quite pleased. It seems that beard hair is harder to kill off than other body hair, although I have not read any studies to support this conjecture.