Hi guys,

Today I have a review of an awesome product, the Philips Lumea Advanced!

I started using it early October 2016 and I first thought it would take months before seeing results and that's why I first wanted to do only a first impression article. But as you can guess, I got results much faster than anticipated and that's why I'll go directly into a more details review of the Lumea Advanced. I also wanted to have this review up on the blog before the holidays because sincerely, this would make a perfect Xmas present.

Before I start the review, I want to say that I received this device from the Swiss PR agency that works for Philips but this review is made of my 100% honest opinion as always.

Who should not use the Philips Lumea?

if you have dark skin

if you are pregnant or breast feeding as the device was not tested on pregnant and beast feeding women

if have a skin disease or disorder (you can ask the sale assistant to give you an exhaustive list) in the area to be treated

if your skin is sensitive to light and easily develops a rash or an allergic reaction or if you are taking photosensitising agents or medications

if you have infections, eczema, bruns, inflammation, lesions in the area to be treated

if you have diabetes, lupus erythematodes, porphyria or congestive heart disease

if you have any bleeding disorder.

Don't use it around the eyes and near eyebrows, on nipples, aerolas, inside of nostrils and ears, vagina, anus. Men must not use it on the scrotum and face. Don't use it near anything artificial like silicone implants, pacemakers, etc. Don't use it on moles, freckles, large veins, darker pigmentation areas, scars.

Consult the instruction booklet for more info.

Philips Lumea uses Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) technology, one of the most effective methods to continuously prevent hair regrowth. The device can be used at home.

Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) devices produce high energy light source via a flash-lamp. Pulses of light (typically wavelengths between 500 nm and 1200 nm) are applied to the skin and absorbed by the hair roots. The light energy is transferred to target cells (the pigment-rich area of the hair follicles). The light energy is then converted to heat energy which damages and disrupts the architecture of the targeted cells. This results in selective photothermolysis of the hair follicles. Light skin and dark hair is the ideal target for IPL because it targets brown pigment.
IPL can reduce hair growth, most effectively in darker, coarser hair. Without going into details, IPL is different from laser hair removal that works at a specific wavelength and can therefore target more precisely the melanin in hair follicles and can be adapted to your skin and hair type. If you want to know more about IPL and lasers for hair removal, there is a great general review of these techniques here.

image source

Before you use the Lumea, you should pretreat your skin be removing hairs on the surface of your skin. This allows the light to be absorbed by the hair parts below the skin surface to ensure effective treatment. According to Philips, you can either shave, short-trim, epilate or wax. To be honest, I don't really understand why you can epilate or wax before using the Lumea. To my understanding only shaving should be possible. That's why although I never shave I decided to switch to shaving my legs instead of waxing.

For extra safety, the Lumea is equipped with a skin tone sensor (that measures the skin tone). If it detects a skin tone that is too dark for treatment, the device automatically disabless, i.e. it doesn't emit pulses when you press the button.

There are 5 different light intensities that you can chose according to your skin type. I use 4/5 because I have almost white skin and very dark hair.

To start using it, press the device onto your skin to ensure skin contact. The device then automatically peforms a skin tone analysis and the flash light lights up white to indicate you can proceed with the treatment and flash. When I press the button to flash, I typically feel a warm sensation because of the flash, but it's not painful at all (if it is there is a problem), this is just a slightly warm sensation. It is stated that you should not flash the same skin area twice as it doesn't improve the effectiveness of the treatment but it can increase the risk of skin reactions. Because it's not very easy to know if you have already flashed a specific area, I must admit I have flashed the same area and didn't experience any issues.
You can use it for legs, arms, armpits, toes, binkini area, upper lip, chin, and sideburns.

Body attachement (for legs) and precision attachement (for armpits, bikini area, upper lip for example)

Background info about me

I have fair skin (almost white), very dark hair, and I'm hairy. Yes, I admit this last point. My hair has always bothered me a lot and on top of that, my skin tends to be sensitive and doesn't like waxing or other hair removal techniques very much, understand: it gets red easily and my legs never seem to be perfectly smooth no matter what I try. I think I've tried almost every form of hair removal out there: shaving, waxing, epilating, sugaring, depilatory creams, you name it, but I've never found a technique that gives me the results I want. I’ve thought about in-salon laser hair removal but I always prefer do-it-at-home stuff so when I initially heard about the Philips Lumea I was really excited! But as it's quite expensive and didn't know if it really worked, I didn't get it when it was first released and I was waiting for more reviews to come out. Finally this fall, I got the chance to get the device and try it! :D

Using the Lumea

Using the device is actually easier than what I thought and the treatment is fast. For example for a half-leg it takes max 5 minutes, about 10 min for a whole leg, and about 1 min for the armpits. As you just have to flash the skin, it's not a messy activity (contrarily to waxing for example) and that's also why I find that a Lumea treatment session is fast.

The results

You need to be consistant to see results. There is an initial phase where you should use the Lumea once every 2 weeks for 4-5 weeks. Then you can do "touch-ups" every 4-8 weeks.

I started using the Lumea on October 2nd, 2016 and up to now, I've used it once every 2 weeks. I used it on my left leg and didn't use it on my right leg to have a control. I also decided to shave my legs instead of waxing.

After the first session, I didn't notice anything and I had to wait for the 3rd session to see first results. At that time, 2 days after the treatment, although I couldn't really see any differences, when I touched my legs my treated leg felt smoother while on my right leg I could feel some hair starting to grow at the skin surface. During the 4th session, I deliberately went over the same area more than once (Philips advices not to do this) because I'm a bit silly sometimes and I had the impression that more was better (this is apparently not the case and you're not supposed to do this but yeah, I just couldn't help it).

After the 4th session I could already see a significant difference between both legs and to be honest I didn't expect to see such drastic results after only 4 sessions! I was impressed! On my treated leg, I had areas where no hair was growing again and there were still a few patches where some hair was growing. After the fifth sesion, I couldn't believe my eyes because about 3-5 days post treatment, there was almost no hair growing on my treated leg while my right leg was not very pleasant to look at. On the treated leg, there were about 2 patches where hair was still growing but it was very scarce and hair was fine.

I did this graph for the fun if you don't want to read everything (the scale is approxmiative, just for illustration)

To summarize it took me only 4 sessions to start seeing significant results. Honestly I was impressed as I said because I didn't expect to have such important results and that fast. Initially I thought that it would require at least a few months before seeing something interesting. I've also always heard that IPL treatment would not permanently prevent hair re-growth but rather slow it. For me at the moment, according to the results obtained on my left leg, I have the impression that hair is not growing back or if it is, it is at a much slower rate. What I can say with confidence is that after 5 treatments, the rate of hair growth has significantly (!) decreased.

Now I will try treating my other leg and see how things go. Because I'll start from the begining for the right leg, I think I will keep treating my left leg also once every 2 weeks and do both legs at the same time. I've also just started using it on my armpits and bikini line but as I've just started so no results for the moment. I will probably do an update in a few months to tell you if I'm still happy with it but so far, I'm more than happy with it and I think this is a great investment.

The results I described here are my personal experience, with my skin type, hair type and hair condition and I guess you will get different results if you have a different skin and hair type (fine or thick hair, dark or lighter hair, very hair or slightly hairy, etc).

And you, have you already tried IPL and if yes, please tell me what kind of results you achieved!

Purchase Info

You can purchase the Philips Lumea at Manor.ch here for 399 CHF or on Amazon here.




*PR sample*