Ingrown hairs are hairs that curl back or grow sideways into the skin instead of rising up from the surface. They create small, often irritated bumps that can look like pimples, and they’re one of the most common skin complaints tied to hair removal. Anyone can get them, but they’re especially frequent in people with curly or coarse hair.
How Ingrown Hairs Form
There are two distinct ways a hair becomes ingrown, and both start with a sharp tip created by shaving, tweezing, or waxing.
The first is called extrafollicular penetration. After a close shave, the sharp-tipped hair emerges from the follicle and grows downward or parallel to the skin rather than straight out. It pierces back into the skin a few millimeters from the follicle opening, essentially becoming a tiny splinter made of your own hair.
The second is transfollicular penetration. This happens when skin is pulled taut during shaving, or when you shave against the direction of hair growth. The cut hair retracts below the skin’s surface. As it tries to grow back, the sharp tip follows the hair’s natural curve and punctures the inner wall of the follicle before ever reaching the surface. Your immune system treats the embedded hair like a foreign object, triggering redness, swelling, and sometimes pus.
Why Some People Get Them More Often
Hair shape is the biggest factor. A curved hair follicle produces tightly curled hair, which is far more likely to loop back toward the skin after being cut. The sharper the edge left by a razor, the easier it pierces through. This is why ingrown hairs disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic individuals, who tend to have more tightly coiled hair. The condition is so common in these groups that it has its own clinical name, pseudofolliculitis barbae, with prevalence estimated between 45 and 83 percent among African Americans.
Beyond hair type, several habits raise your risk: shaving against the grain, pulling skin tight while shaving, using dull blades, and shaving on dry skin. Tight clothing over freshly shaved areas can also press hairs back toward the surface and redirect their growth.
What They Look and Feel Like
A fresh ingrown hair usually appears as a small, raised bump, often with redness around it. It can look strikingly similar to a pimple, and some develop a visible white or yellow head filled with pus. You might notice a dark line or loop just beneath the skin where the trapped hair sits. The area is often itchy or tender, and scratching or picking at it makes things worse.
Ingrown hairs show up most frequently in areas subjected to regular shaving or waxing: the beard area in men, the bikini line, legs, underarms, and the back of the neck. A single bump that resolves on its own within a week or two is typical. Clusters of bumps that persist for weeks suggest a pattern that warrants changes to your hair removal routine.
Skin Discoloration and Other Complications
For many people, the bump itself isn’t the lasting problem. The inflammation left behind can trigger dark spots on the skin, a process called post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation. In one study of African American and Hispanic patients with chronic ingrown hairs, over 90 percent reported noticeable darkening of the skin at affected sites. These marks can persist for months after the bump itself has healed, especially in deeper skin tones.
Repeated ingrown hairs in the same area can also lead to scarring. In rare cases, chronic irritation contributes to raised, thickened scars. Bacterial infection is another risk, particularly if you dig at the bumps with unclean tools or your fingernails. Signs of infection include increasing pain, warmth, spreading redness, or discharge that turns cloudy or foul-smelling.
How to Prevent Ingrown Hairs
Most prevention comes down to how you remove hair and how you care for the skin around it.
If you shave, always shave in the direction of hair growth, not against it. Use a sharp, clean blade and wet the skin thoroughly beforehand. A moisturizing shaving cream, gel, or foam reduces friction and helps the blade glide without catching hairs and pulling them below the surface. Avoid stretching the skin taut, even though it feels like it gives a closer shave. That closeness is exactly what allows the cut hair to retract and become trapped.
Between shaves, regular exfoliation helps prevent dead skin from sealing over the follicle opening and trapping new growth underneath. There are two chemical exfoliants particularly suited to this:
- Salicylic acid (BHA) is oil-soluble, so it penetrates into the follicle itself and helps clear out the oil and dead skin cells that trap hairs beneath the surface.
- Glycolic acid (AHA) works on the skin’s surface, dissolving the layer of dead cells that can block a hair’s path out of the follicle.
Using one of these a few times per week on areas prone to ingrown hairs can make a noticeable difference. A gentle physical scrub works too, though chemical exfoliants tend to be more consistent and less irritating.
Treating an Existing Ingrown Hair
Most ingrown hairs resolve on their own if you stop shaving the area and let the hair grow out. Warm compresses can soften the skin and help the trapped hair work its way to the surface. If you can see the hair loop sitting just under the skin, you can gently lift the tip using a sterile needle slipped under the loop. The goal is only to free the tip so it can grow outward, not to pluck the hair entirely, which restarts the cycle.
Resist the urge to squeeze, dig, or pick at the bump. This almost always makes the inflammation worse and increases the chance of scarring or infection. If the area is particularly red and swollen, an over-the-counter hydrocortisone cream can calm the inflammation while the hair works itself free.
Long-Term Solutions for Chronic Ingrown Hairs
When ingrown hairs keep coming back despite good shaving habits, the most effective long-term solution is reducing the amount of hair that grows in the problem area. Laser hair removal targets the follicle directly, thinning and eventually stopping regrowth. In a study of people with chronic ingrown hairs, 70 percent of participants saw a 75 percent or greater reduction in ingrown hair bumps after treatment, and 96 percent were able to resume shaving comfortably.
Laser treatment typically requires multiple sessions spaced weeks apart, and it works best on dark hair against lighter skin, though newer laser types have expanded the range of skin tones that respond well. Electrolysis, which destroys individual follicles with an electric current, is another permanent option that works on all hair and skin colors but takes longer since each follicle is treated one at a time.
For people who prefer not to pursue permanent hair removal, simply switching from shaving to clippers or electric trimmers can reduce ingrown hairs significantly. These tools cut hair slightly above the skin’s surface rather than below it, leaving a blunter tip that’s less likely to pierce back through.