Frequently asked questions

A day spa performs treatments that do not break the skin or deliver medical-strength energy into it: massage, facials, waxing. A med spa performs some treatments that are medicine — injections, prescription-strength peels, medical lasers — which means there is a medical director, a medical history, a consultation and a consent process, and it means some people are turned away. If somewhere is offering injectables with no consultation and no medical oversight, that is the thing to worry about rather than the price.

Because they are not evidence. Every set you have seen was selected from a much larger pile, the second picture is usually taken in different light at a different angle, and often the person is wearing makeup in one and not in the other. Even an entirely honest pair shows you what happened to somebody else. We would rather tell you in writing what a treatment typically changes, how long it lasts, how many sessions it takes and how often people are disappointed. /results-and-expectations.html sets that out in full.

Yes — in the room, once you are a client and it is relevant to your consent. What we will not do is put manufacturers' names in our advertising, and this website names none. Aesthetic marketing runs on brand names because they let a clinic borrow authority it has not earned, and because they encourage you to shop for a product rather than for the person holding the syringe. The person holding the syringe matters more.

It varies far more by treatment than by person. Wrinkle-relaxing injections are a few seconds of a sharp scratch. Fillers are uncomfortable and are done with numbing cream and usually an anaesthetic mixed into the product. Laser hair reduction feels like an elastic band snapping against the skin. Microneedling and medium peels are genuinely uncomfortable for a few minutes. We tell you honestly which category you are in, and you can stop at any point, including halfway through.

Sometimes, but not by default, and never for a first injectable treatment unless you arrived expecting that and have already thought it over. The reason is simple: it is very hard to change your mind while lying down with somebody standing over you holding a syringe. Skin treatments and laser sessions are often done the same day once you have consented, and a laser course starts with a test patch rather than a full treatment in any case.

Some of it, with the right settings and the right device, and some of it needs real caution. Light-based treatment carries a higher risk of burns and long-lasting pigment change on richer skin, and a great deal of the laser industry was built and tested around pale skin. That is exactly why we test patch, why we start at conservative settings, and why we will decline a treatment rather than take a chance with it. Ask for Marcus if this is your question — it is most of what he does.

Not for cosmetic injectable treatment, ever, and not for anything cosmetic without a parent present and a conversation about why. Some medical skin treatment for acne is reasonable in a younger person and we will consider it with a parent, often after a dermatologist has been involved. Cosmetic work on a face that is still changing is not something we will do.

You telephone the number on your written plan, at any hour, and you speak to the clinician who treated you rather than to a call centre. Bruising and swelling are managed with reassurance and time. Lumps are assessed and usually resolved. The rare filler emergency — a blocked vessel, which shows itself as severe pain, white or mottled skin, or a change in vision — is treated as an emergency here, and we hold what is needed to reverse it on site. Nobody is charged for the management of a complication we caused.

No injectables, no lasers, and no medium or deep peels. This is not because they are known to be dangerous — for most of them there is simply no evidence either way, because those studies are not done on pregnant people, and no cosmetic benefit justifies an unknown. Gentle facials and some topical treatment are fine, and we are happy to look after your skin through a pregnancy and pick up the rest afterwards.

Wrinkle-relaxing injections, roughly three to four months at first and occasionally longer with repetition. Fillers, six to eighteen months depending on the product and where it is placed. Laser hair reduction is a permanent reduction rather than a permanent removal, and most people want a maintenance session once or twice a year. Skin quality from peels and microneedling is maintained rather than fixed — stop, and it drifts back across a year or two. Anybody quoting you one number for all of this is guessing.

No. Not blocks of six, not an annual membership, not a points scheme on injectables. Prepaying puts your money in our till before anybody knows whether the treatment suits you, and a loyalty scheme attached to a medical treatment is a reason to have more of it that has nothing to do with your face. You pay per treatment, at the price on /pricing.html, and if you stop coming nobody will telephone you about it.

Yes, at the normal consultation fee, and you will get a straight answer including the possibility that it was done perfectly well and simply is not what you hoped for. We will not run down another clinician's work in order to sell you ours. Sometimes the honest answer is to wait for it to wear off, which costs nothing and is what we advise more often than people expect.