Yes, you can get laser treatments on your face, and it’s one of the most common cosmetic procedures performed today. Facial laser resurfacing uses focused beams of light energy to remove damaged outer skin, stimulate collagen production, and improve texture, tone, and firmness. The specifics of what laser you’d need, how much downtime to expect, and what risks to watch for depend heavily on your skin concern and skin tone.
What Facial Lasers Actually Do
Laser resurfacing works by directing concentrated light energy into the skin, where it’s absorbed by water in your tissue. That energy either vaporizes the outermost layer of skin (the epidermis) or heats the deeper layer (the dermis) without breaking the surface. In both cases, the goal is the same: destroy old, damaged tissue and trigger your body to produce fresh collagen as it heals. The result is smoother, tighter, more even-toned skin.
The range of concerns facial lasers can address is broad:
- Fine wrinkles, especially around the eyes and mouth
- Acne scars and other atrophic (indented) scars
- Sun damage and age spots
- Uneven skin color or texture
- Mild to moderate skin laxity
Deeper wrinkles and creases are less completely removed by lasers alone, so expectations matter. Lasers excel at surface-level and moderate concerns but aren’t a replacement for surgical lifting in cases of significant sagging.
Types of Facial Lasers
Facial lasers fall into two broad categories: ablative and non-ablative. Ablative lasers physically remove the outer layer of skin. Non-ablative lasers heat the deeper tissue to stimulate collagen without breaking the surface, which means less dramatic results but significantly shorter recovery.
Within those categories, fractional technology has become the most widely preferred approach. Traditional (non-fractionated) lasers treat the entire surface area in their path, while fractional lasers target only a portion of the skin in an evenly distributed pattern, leaving tiny columns of untouched tissue between treated spots. Those untouched columns help the skin heal faster, which reduces both downtime and complications.
CO2 Lasers
CO2 lasers are the most aggressive option. They vaporize tissue at a rate of 20 to 30 micrometers per pulse, with a surrounding heating effect that extends about 100 to 150 micrometers deep. That thermal damage is actually the point: it causes old collagen to contract immediately and stimulates new collagen growth over the following weeks and months. CO2 lasers work best for fine wrinkles, acne scars, and sun damage, but they also come with the longest recovery. When used in fractional mode, CO2 lasers can reach up to 2 millimeters into the tissue, making them effective for deeper scars and more significant skin tightening.
Erbium Lasers
Erbium lasers are also ablative but gentler. They’re absorbed by water in the skin about 16 times more efficiently than CO2 lasers, which actually reduces how deep they penetrate by a factor of ten. The clinical results are similar to CO2 for many concerns, but with less swelling afterward and fewer days of crusting skin during recovery. If you want resurfacing results with a somewhat easier healing process, erbium is often the middle ground.
Non-Ablative Fractional Lasers
These lasers heat the dermis without removing any surface skin. Recovery time is the shortest of all options, and the risk of complications is lower. The tradeoff is that you’ll typically need multiple sessions to achieve results comparable to a single ablative treatment.
What the Procedure Feels Like
Facial laser treatments range from mildly uncomfortable to genuinely painful depending on the type and intensity. For lighter, non-ablative treatments, a topical numbing cream is usually enough. For more aggressive resurfacing, practitioners typically apply a high-strength numbing mixture (often a combination of lidocaine and tetracaine) to the full face before starting. Deeper procedures may also involve nerve blocks targeting specific areas of the face, particularly around the forehead, cheeks, and chin, for more complete pain control.
After the procedure, your skin will feel like a sunburn. Some clinics apply a post-treatment anesthetic spray to reduce pain and swelling in the hours immediately following. Expect the treated area to feel hot, tight, and sensitive for the rest of the day.
Recovery and Downtime
Recovery depends entirely on how aggressive your treatment was. Here’s a general timeline for ablative resurfacing:
Immediately after treatment, your skin will be red, sensitive, and swollen. Redness, itching, and stinging typically last several days, and with deeper treatments the skin may appear raw, ooze a yellow liquid, or even blister. Around days five to seven, the skin becomes dry and begins to peel. New skin underneath will appear pink at first.
Overall healing takes anywhere from 5 to 21 days depending on the condition treated and the laser used. Once the area has healed enough, you can apply makeup to cover the residual pinkness. That underlying redness generally fades in two to three months, though it can persist for six months to a full year in some cases.
Non-ablative treatments have far less downtime. You may be red and slightly puffy for a day or two, but most people return to normal activities quickly.
Risks and Side Effects
Acne breakouts and small white bumps (milia) are common minor side effects that tend to resolve on their own. Prolonged redness, once a frequent problem with older laser technology, is uncommon with modern fractional devices.
More serious but rarer complications include scarring, which occurs in roughly 3.8% of fractional CO2 cases. Herpes simplex virus (cold sores) can reactivate and spread across the entire treated area if you carry the virus and don’t take antiviral medication beforehand. Yeast infections on the skin can also develop, sometimes showing up as persistent redness and itching that’s easy to mistake for normal healing. Contact dermatitis (a skin reaction to post-treatment products) can be tricky to distinguish from infection when the skin is already red and swollen from the procedure itself.
Safety for Darker Skin Tones
If you have a medium to dark complexion (Fitzpatrick skin types IV through VI), laser resurfacing carries a higher risk of pigmentary changes, particularly post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, where treated areas darken as they heal. This has historically made laser treatments risky for people with more melanin in their skin.
However, non-ablative fractional lasers have shown a much better safety profile for darker skin tones. In one retrospective review, patients with skin types IV to VI treated with a 1,550 nm erbium-doped fractional laser experienced post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation in only 4% of treatment sessions, and all but one episode resolved within a month. The key to that low rate was a pre-treatment and post-treatment regimen using a skin-brightening cream to manage pigment production before and after each session.
Preparation and Aftercare
Preparation typically begins weeks before your appointment. Most practitioners recommend strict UV protection (daily sunscreen, avoiding tanning), a topical retinoid to prime the skin for faster healing, and a skin-brightening agent to reduce the risk of discoloration. If you have any history of cold sores, you’ll likely be prescribed an antiviral medication to start before the procedure.
After treatment, the priority shifts to managing inflammation and keeping the skin hydrated. Light moisturizers and broad-spectrum sunscreen are essential. You’ll want to avoid exercise and anything that causes sweating during the initial healing window, as sweat can irritate the raw skin and increase infection risk. Harsh active ingredients like acids or strong retinoids should be avoided until the skin has fully healed.
How Long Results Last
Laser resurfacing stimulates collagen remodeling that continues for months after the procedure, so your results actually improve over time before stabilizing. A single aggressive ablative treatment can produce results lasting several years, since the new collagen and resurfaced skin age from a better starting point. Non-ablative treatments produce more subtle improvements and typically require a series of sessions, sometimes with periodic maintenance treatments to sustain the effect. Sun exposure, smoking, and natural aging will gradually diminish results regardless of the laser type, making ongoing sun protection one of the most important things you can do to preserve your investment.