Are Safety Razors Good for Sensitive Skin?

Safety razors have a hell of a lot going for them.

They’ve flown back into trend and are now the weapon of choice for shavers everywhere.

The advantages of safety razors are numerous:

• They’re cheap to use and save you loads of money compared to disposable and cartridge razors.
• They’re the ethical choice; helping prevent millions of disposable razors from ending up in landfill each year.
• They provide a close, accurate shave that is great for sensitive skin.

Here, we want to focus on this last point; are safety razors good for sensitive skin?

Safety Razors and Sensitive Skin

Let’s start off by saying that the disposable or cartridge razor that you could be currently using is pretty bad for sensitive skin.

Why?

Because it likely has an excessive amount of blades.

Modern disposable and cartridge razors have tons of blades; 4 blades, 5, 6?! We’ve lost count to be honest.

You’ve got to ask yourself, why all the blades?!

We’re not cutting a tree down here, we’re cutting a human hair.

Hairs are 0.05mm thick on average. Even the thickest hairs are just 0.12mm or thereabouts.

The reason modern razors have so many razors is for marketing purposes, and competition. It gives the main brands something to market to the consumer, a feature that can be compared with other brands to distinguish their products as different or better.

In reality, you really don’t need all these blades, and they may even damage your skin.

Why Disposable Razors are Bad for Your Skin

When a razor blade moves over the skin and cuts a hair, it does make some contact with your skin. This is inevitable. For genuinely smooth skin, hairs have to be cut as close to the surface of the skin as possible.

This contact causes friction between the razor and your skin. This is one of the main causes of irritation, razor burn, in-grown hairs and other shaving-related skin conditions.

In essence, then, when you add more blades, you’re just adding more friction and contact. Those blades aren’t required for cutting hairs – a single razor blade can do that just fine.

Instead, multiple blades just increase the rubbing and contact between the blades and you.

This gets even worse when the blades lose their sharpness.

A blunted multi-blade razor will become ineffective and you’ll probably have to aggressively pull it back and forth to shave.

We’ve all been there!

Of course, these issues are much intensified for those who suffer from sensitive skin too. Shaving can be a real problem, causing acne outbreaks, extreme redness and itching, soreness, and more.

Safety Razors For Sensitive Skin

Safety razors do offer hope.

Instead of using multiple razors, safety razors use just one single ultra-sharp standard razor blade. This is more than sufficient for cutting hairs.

With just one blade, a safety razor has minimal contact with your skin, vastly reducing the chance of razor burn and other skin issues.

Yes, you do have to practice a bit to properly use a safety razor (we have a guide here), but honestly, it’s pretty easy and it’s like riding a bike – you need to learn once and only once.

From then on, you can go forth and enjoy the wonderful benefits of a safety razor!

Other Things to Consider For Sensitive Skin

If you suffer from sensitive skin, then preparing properly for your shave is very important.

• Always wash thoroughly pre-shave, use warm soapy water
• Make sure you’re using a high-quality shaving soap or cream
• Be careful when shaving, learn how to shave with your grain
• Make sure you clean your face well after before adding a quality shaving balm and addition moisturiser if required
• Re-moisturise an hour later