Shaving Does Not Make Your Hair Grow Back Thicker or Faster

Today I found out shaving does not make your hair grow back thicker, stronger, faster, or any other “er”.  In fact, contrary to what parents the world over tend to tell their kids when their kids start shaving, it has been proven by numerous studies going all the way back to the 1920s that shaving has absolutely no effect whatsoever on your hair growth rate.

Hair growth is controlled by hair follicles found just underneath the skin.  These follicles are not in any way affected by shaving.  Only the outer part of your hair that is already dead is getting cut.   The follicles underneath that determine thickness/color/growth rate remain completely unaffected by your shaving or not shaving.

How long back this myth has been widely thought to be true nobody knows; although, according to the New York Times, the myth has been popularly believed for at least 50 years.

One of the reasons people seem to believe this (beside just because their parents told them so) is that after they shave their hair and it starts to grow back, it seems much coarser or thicker even though it is not.  If it were, inevitably everyone who shaves on a regular basis would eventually be covered in pencil-thick or bigger hair sprouting out of their bodies from every place they shave.

In fact, the reason behind this extra coarse feeling hair has nothing to do with it actually being thicker or anything of the sort.  To see why it would feel coarser, think about holding a thin, long tree branch.  When it is long, it will be somewhat flexible, allowing you to bend it a bit with little effort.  However, if you cut that tree branch down to a few inches, you will no longer be able to bend it easily or possibly at all; it will suddenly seem much stiffer or stronger.  The same type of thing is going on with your hair when you shave.

Gilette, the best a cat can getSome people also think it looks darker when it is growing back.  This again is false and in fact why people believe this is a bigger mystery than the previously mentioned myth.  If it were true, after a certain number of shaves, everybody’s hair would be black.  There really is no reason to think it is getting darker, as once again, the hair follicles underneath your skin determine hair color and they are completely unaffected by shaving.  It’s possible that people believe this, because, when they first start shaving, the hair tends to be quite a bit lighter than years later as they grow to adult hood.  So perhaps they think this because through their pubescent years the hair darkens a bit naturally and so they think it’s because of the shaving when in fact the two have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

As far as the growth rate misconception, this more or less comes to the same thing.  The hair follicles underneath the skin control it, so cutting away dead hair, isn’t going to do anything.  People again likely think this one is true because when they first start shaving when they are young, their hair doesn’t grow that fast.  Then as they become an adult, it grows much faster than it did when it first started popping up on their bodies.  So they might misconstrue this to have been caused by shaving (and probably just like the previous one, backed up likely by their parents at some point when they first started shaving telling them that shaving will make their hair grow back thicker/darker/faster).  But in the end, this line of reasoning is kind of like thinking the sun comes up every day because your alarm goes off every day around the time it comes up.

Now with waxing it is possible to affect the thickness and other aspects of hair regrowth.  However, it will never be the case that the hair will grow back thicker/darker/faster.  In fact, by waxing you are damaging the hair follicles underneath the skin; over time as you wax more and more, the hair will grow back less and less and even sometimes will get lighter colored and thinner.  So though waxing, unlike shaving, actually does affect your hair growth, it more or less affects it in the opposite way most people think shaving does.

Bonus Hair Fact:

  • Many people believe that brushing your hair is good for it “Got to get your one hundred strokes a night in.”  In fact, it is actually quite bad for your hair.  It pulls out healthy hair that wasn’t yet ready to come out, possibly damaging hair follicles in the process; it also breaks healthy hair and scratches your scalp.  Because of this, it’s actually best to keep hair brushing to a minimum.
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  • Hair appears courser when it grows back after you shave because it is blunt instead of tapered like a new strand of hair would be when it grows in. Your hair grows in cycles, so at any given time some hairs are shorter than others which makes the hair appear thinner and lighter. Hair can also appear lighter if you don’t shave because as each hair comes in it emerges as a dark hair in the midst of other sun-bleached hairs. If you do shave, all the hairs emerge at once and you notice they look darker before any of them have a chance to be bleached.

    • This is a load of crap….because I found this article trying to find an article of the reason since I have shaved my pubic area for years now my pubic hair is spreading down my legs my bikini line is getting farther and farther down the inner part of my thigh and my best girlfriend has had the same issue (we talk about everything) explain that??? And I use to have light peach fuzz mustache and now since I have shaved it I have a black thicker mustache. So why is my pubic/bikini line spreading farther down my leg???? It’s aggravating…

      • Hey, sorry, I feel for you, but you shouldn’t be self conscious about it. It’s probably you are very young, because it’s very common for adult women having to shave their whole leg up to bikini line so it sounds like your hair spreading situation is pretty normal among women, regardless of their shaving habits.
        In all cases one starts to shave if one becomes hairy in some unwanted places, but they just started to get hairy when one start shaving, then they keep getting hairy, not the opposite.
        The same could have happened to your mustache and if you read carefully the comment you replied to, it clearly explains the reason of your impression, it probably heighten the fact your upper lip hair was going to thicken.
        You can still shave it regularly without worries, but if it bothers you you could still wax or bleach it. Or maybe let it grow back to discover it was not really that coarser once the hair fully grows out. Bye and good luck.

      • hey try a pumice stone…circular motion in the shower hot water with soap gentle but firm overtime if you do full research the hair follicles become damages overtime and at least weakens them as well as removing ….its effective!!

      • as well eat soy drink , spearmint tea, and lemon juice lightens the hair colour

      • Hair growth in women gets heavier as they age due to hormonal changes, that’s why granny has a moustache & you won’t see her in a bikini. It could also be an due to an underlying medical condition such as pcos or just genetic predisposition. If you’ve been removing hair since your early teens then you’ve never actually known what your hair patterns are, they don’t settle down until your early 20’s. Stop worrying about it, just about every other woman has same or similar problems. If they say they don’t then they’re either lying or had laser removal

  • From personal experiance I find that hair does grow back quicker the more you shave it.
    As a woman it’s socially unexceptable to have hairy legs, so in the summer I have to shave them more often. Every day actually and I feel I need to because by the end of the day its already grown back to a point when it’s visible.
    But during the winter when it’s cold and I deem it unnesisary to shave because I would not be caught dead outside at -5 degrees without at least two lairs of clotheing covering them I shave less. Yet when i do shave, As I did two days ago, after two days past the hair has not grown back to anywhere near as much as it would after 24 hours during the summer.

    At first I was thinking maybe that’s is just the patern of hair growth during different seasons, But if that were the case would hair not grow quicker in winter to match the droping temperature?

    All the other women I know agree that they shave more in the summer than they do in winter, so i find this hard to beleive. I do however agree that it does not grow back thicker or darker.

    BTW: please over look whatever spelling mistakes I have made. It’s not my strongest point :\

  • dont be fooled people.Hair grows darker and coarser after shaving. im talking from experince.

    • Daven Hiskey

      @mimmi: Sorry, but every single scientifically done study on this subject shows the opposite, that hair doesn’t grow back any different than before you shaved (unless you wax, in that case you can damage the follicles and the hair will grow back lighter and finer, in that case). Once again, if hair actually grew back darker and coarser, eventually everyone would have porcupine-like black quills growing out of wherever they shave regularly.

      • At my first job, I constantly rubbed the hair off a certain section of my inner forearms. It came back darker. Years later, I still have those dark sections of hair.

        • Hi, it’s interesting, rubbed how?
          I knew that constand rubbing damages the follicles rather than stimulating them. Could it be late male based androgenization of hair. (By late I mean past 25, past the period after which one should be fully developed)

  • @jaja hair grows faster when its warmer out. Fact

  • Scientific studies or not, I once wanted to shave my chest as a teenager and ran my razor across my chest.. then changed my mind (go figure) and decided i’ll keep the hair.

    The right side of my chest now definitely has more hair on it in the place where I shaved it, but JUST, not a lot.

  • Ok I am an adult, who started shaving my stomach as an adult and it was lightly colored and thin, now it is thick and there is a lot more, also as an experiment I shaved one leg and the leg that was shaved grow more hair and it was thicker it is about an inch longer than my other leg

  • well my mum never let me shave my legs coz there wasnt any hair and she was right, i wanted to get rid of my arm hair i only had a lil bit so when i was in the shower i decided to shave my arms and legs and they became darker thicker and ewww as and now i have to wax like every week coz im hairy i should of listened my mum when i was 12 now im 20 and hair is pissing me off srsly.. self experiment

  • Dude, I’m not sure if you even read the article. They explained when you are younger (i.e. 12) your hair grows slower and is likely finer and lighter. This is called “vellous hair”, like we have all over our body. As hormones kick in, it becomes courser and darker in certain places, called “terminal hair”. Hair will never grow back thicker or darker from shaving, but it may feel that way because it has a blunt end or look thicker because the ends are blunt not tapered like an untouched hair and it will stay this way unless you reset it. The only way to “reset” that hair to normal is to wax it off ensuring you pull out the entire follicle and it will grow back with a fine tapered end like before.

    It likely would have grown back thicker and darker anyway, regardless of shaving. This is a good article, you guys should read it all and actually understand it.

  • as a black woman, i started to shave around 18. i shaved both legs, but only up to the knees. guess what? the bottom half of my legs have DARKER and THICKER hair.

  • All of you that say you have had these personal experiences that disprove science are morons. You obviously know nothing about the human body or hair growth. You need to educate yourselves. No kidding your hair grows darker and coarser on the lower half of your legs. Do some research about hair follicles and how they differ on different parts of your body. No kidding you have to shave more in the summer. Again, research. Don’t spread your ignorance and try to validate each others moronic ideas.

  • My hair grows back normal, i believe people are different then others

  • Lili, I know several people who have never shaved in their lives, who have heaps of hair below their knees and next to none above them.

  • Sadly, at a certain age a woman stops needing to shave the legs as much… and starts needing to shave the chin – and even women on hormone replacement mention it!

    On the other hand, as a teen I was involved in an auto accident and spent months with one leg in a cast. I suppose the dark, thick hair on that leg was the result of little interaction with socks, hose, etc., and perhaps sunlight? It was certainly an unpleasant surprise to see it and of course, I couldn’t wait to get home and shave it off.

  • I beg to differ on this, I started shaving my “snail trail” in adulthood (I’m a woman) because it was ever so slightly darker than the hair surrounding it and that bugged me, now it is BLACK and as thick as mens facial hair, and not just on the part where my snail trail was, but all around that area because I haven’t exactly been precise with the razor, and anywhere I accidently shave around there gets darker and thicker, and due to that I keep shaving it until it becomes DARK and BLACK and THICK like what men grow on their faces. Explain that all you “ermahgerd science” people. Science is not necessarily fact, a lot of it works on theory, so you don’t have to believe without a doubt everything a scientific study says.

    • also your one personal experience is not fact. science is much more qualifyed than your single misfortune of being hairy in one place.

    • Ok i wouldn’t disqualify your experience as the other one below you did, but couldn’t it be that your belly hair started to bug you at one point because it was actually getting hairier on its own?
      And wouldn’t you need to let it all grow out completely until your hair is replaced to determine more objetively if it really got much more thicker since you shaved and not maybe just a little bit more, as I said above. You might be fooled by the blunt tip :).

  • When hair is shaved off, a layer or two of skin is removed with the unwanted hair. Imagine a tree trunk that is cut at ground level: more tree is exposed as earth is removed during the cutting process. The tree grows back, but appears “thicker” than before because the removed earth stays removed. As far as the darker color, the damaged skin has been pulled away from the hair follicles, like your gums pull back from damaged teeth. The “crater” formed around each hair follicle is filled with dust, dirt, sweat, etc. that slowly stains the regrowing hair. Hopefully this makes sense… thanks for letting me contribute.

  • I shaved my arm hair, and have been for about a year now. I knew I should let it grow out so I did for a month or two, but nothing happened. I noticed in two or three days it grew out a centemeter and completely stopped growing. I couldn’t stand it and shaved it all off- again. It just stood straight up and made no progress whatsoever, but I did notice it got darker because I spend a lot of time in the sun and I had it almost blond, but then it became thicker and more like the roots of my hair once I had shaved it. I do not recommend shaving it because the regrowth is terrible.

    • Yeah it’s just that some people can’t bear the regrowth, as it can be a real hassle. It was thicker like the roots because only the root finishes growing once you shave, and that’s why it didn’t grow back as long as it originally was, stubble only grows it’s MaxLengh minus the ShavedLength.

  • ok joolia if were all morons explain 3 hairs coming out of each pore…. this is stupid telling young ppl this isn’t true is ridiculous… did a razor company make this?? my kids will never touch a razor

    • That’s a good point, I also experienced bifid double hair around my nipples since shaving, I’m not sure i had those even before. But it’s strange, how could cutting a hair make another hair come out. Could it be the result of shaving very near to the follicle?

  • Even if these studies have been done…scientific studies are NOT absolute. If they were people would not continue to get noble prizes proving a previous thesis wrong. There would be no need to doctors to continue studying so much. New discoveries are hardly NEW discoveries…they are a realization that the old idea was wrong and it changes rapidly. I’m talking from personal experience; once I found I had too much of an accumulation of hair around my belly button and i shaved it…the NEXT set of hair that grew back was twice as thick…im not talking about coarseness…the hair there before was significantly thinner, and I know this because I left back hair directly around it and can compare. Another time i shaved off a little more of the old hair and same result it grew back to the thickness of the previous shaves set. It never got thicker or darker after that. But one thing science hasn’t changed over the years is that coincidence isn’t realistic.

    • But how would it be possible, it is simpli cutting a hair that bears no message to the root. It could be that it just lost its tapered end, so the lower end is thicker. And maybe you didn’t shave the hair around it, because it actuall was not the same as the hair you shaved and that was because you shaved that area and not that other one around it.

  • this person wants you to be a hairy monkey dont listen

    • Hi, if your experience said so to you I deeply respect it.
      As a male, it’s true that wherever I started shaving in my face hair become thicker, but I was a teen it was already becoming dark, though still fuzzy and that’s why I shaved them. The last thing I shaved was my neck which also got dark hair, but when I was shaving my mustache, my neck hair was almost non existing, then I didn’t shave it, and even if I did, I think it wouldn’t have had any effect. When I did it was already in the process of thickening.
      I think it depends on whether you believe the hair knows when it gets cut or not.
      For example, let’s say you shave a hair which stopped growing being fully grown. Do you think it, having realized being cut, would start growing back to it’s full length again.
      In this case you would believe shaving stimulates dormant follicles.

  • I hate to disappoint as I should be saying the complete opposite having worked for Gillette for many years, but shave a lighter hair 8 out of 10 times it will come back darker..there is no science to back it up currently but it is a fact..period.

    • Hi, so isn’t it just the hair which has grown back with the tip as thick as the base, being the tip of the newly grown base what used to be the base of the unshaven hair?
      Or people realizing they have to shave when the hair is already getting thick on their own.
      Have you experimented it taking these factors into account?

    • A Disgruntled Brit

      If there’s no science to back it up, it’s not a fact…

      • Well if it was true that the follicle got actually bigger and actually because of shaving it would be a fact for him, but usually “personal experience” about this prove to be flawed at its very base. In the case of Ronaldo it was not even experience, but alleged “common sense” about something he sense true (shaving lighter hair gets it darker), which has been proven wrong.

  • this woman is crazy I shaved the light baby hairs on the back of my neck and it came back bloody hairier she wants you to become a gorilla don’t listen to this woman she will destroy you now I have to keep shaving it off every 2-3 weeks

    • Hi az, be this true or your impression, I’m sorry for you. Hey don’t feel like a beast, women have hair as well, it’s normal, don’t let the media make yourself self conscious ;).
      First of all how old were you when you shaved and why you did it? in the adolescence the extra hair starts as peachfuzz, in this case it’s normal that if you shave, the hair behind it is thicker and darker, coarser, longer and faster growing,
      It might be your impression as well because even baby hairs have a thicker shaft than how fine is their tip.
      You might simply let them grow back and shed.

  • I can say for a fact that hair growth increases after you start shaving. Atleast in my case with my legs. And this is not over long periods but between when I was 34 and 38 and is ongoing. At first I noticed only 1 follicle sprouting. After a few shaves I noticed two follicles began to sprout at each location. Now after a few more shaves most of the areas have three follicle bunches. Unfortunately I don’t have photos to show the progression. But believe me it is true. And the length of each strand increased as well. So yes, shaving my legs has increased hair growth and the speed.

    • Cool. It that is true, it might be possible that shaving has some sort of influence, besides being scientifically absurd.
      But before pronouncing, I need a few more datas?
      Why did you shave, if its because you felt like it or because your legs were getting hairier would make the difference.
      And also, are you still shaving? Hair seems thicker after you shave, though it shouldn’t get longer actually. The double hair is also a mystery.

  • you people are SOOOO DUMBBBBB. Of course shaving doesn’t make your hair thicker, It only makes it shorter.

  • I went to school for hair.
    It is written in our school text books that the hair on our bodies is vellus hair. Fine, non pigmented hair that is lacking a medula. (some people dont have medulas. Blondes are typical of not having medulas at all) We develop this hair in childhood and cannot reproduce it. So, if we shave off this vellus hair; normal hair, our adult hair (not so baby soft hair) grows back in its place. which can in turn be slightly darker pigmented.. and considering if your hair type is the type to contain a medulla, it may or may not in fact grow back a little bit thicker.. but if that be the fact, not by much at all…

    • Thanks for your contribution Heather :).
      Gee, I’ve never seen it this way, as I thought childhood vellus hair simply fall off eventually, and both us males and females eventually grow darker hair, like on our arms and armpits, even before shaving. Rather i’d say that it’s why we shave in first place, same for the beard, the fuzz starts first to be come longer and pigmented and eventually turn out terminal, even in those who don’t shave.
      Dunno if you maybe talk about the peach fuzzy hair we might have in our upper arm, or between stomach and chest, very soft and fine, but well that hair cycles and sheds like the rest of our hair. If we shave a spot and it comes back really darker, it means that the hair below it was darker any way, and once shed it eventually becomes actually darker on its own. Different is if you are talking about the illusion given by the blunt end of hair which loses its tapered end.

  • Then, can you explain why my stomach hair become thicker and darker after shaving, i shaved at 14 and now i’m 17.. Don’t tell me , it’s because you’re growing up and becoming mature and stuff.. Cuz i already did my test when i just shaved the middle of my stomach and left the right hand side as a control.. i can totally see the difference with my eyes.. Something happened with my arms.. i shaved my forearms and left the upperarms and OmG the difference is so obvious… The shaved looks darker and thicker and feels thicker and stiffer.. I guess my eyes and fingers which touch the hairs won’t fool me..

    • Hi there, personal experiences are welcome and add to the general knowledge about the matter :).
      Now I’m don’t gonna questioning the reality of our experiences, but our perception of them. To determine it, I have to ask a few questions: are you male or female?
      Are you still shaving now? How long did you stop shaving, also?
      It counts because to determine if hair has really grown back thicker, stubble is not really relevant and all the old hair needs to be shed.
      About the control zones for shaving tests, they need to respect symmetry, aka an analog zone of the other side of our body to be compared with the other.
      You shaved the center of your stomach and the lower arm, which are statistically hairier than more off center zones and the upper arm. I didn’t really shave and my upper arm hair is thinner naturally, for example.
      I’m afraid you have to repeat the test by shaving either arm.
      Stubble, as the article says, feels thicker because of the blunt end.

  • The author of this article is one of the 95% brainwashed sheep in this world. They just blindly follow along based on what so called public scientific experts, researchers and Dr’s say. Well most of them are lied to, or paid off to tell the public what they want them to hear! There is a simple cure for acne, for cancer, for unwanted hair etc. BUT it will never be released because the greedy pig world leaders would lose to much money. Shaving in fact does interfere with blood vessels down to the skins outer surface which does provoke hair to GROW BACK THICKER WHEN YOU SHAVE IT!!

    • Of course it makes sense, if hair really grew back thicker, there could really be an interest in saying it doesn’t, making people shaving because it’s easier, and voilà razor sales increased :).
      If there were really an easy cure for cancer, maybe hair loss and unwanted hair (cause they seem related), I’d be really interested to hear it, but mind that many alternative cures proved themselves being a scam.
      Also how does shaving permanently interferes with blood vessels? Even Rogaine has a temporary effect so if any, this shaving effect would even more temporary.

  • Who made those “scientific” studies? A shaving producs corporation? This is total bullshit… anyone with a decent experience knows that hair *does* grow faster and thicker in the regions where it is shaved. And this makes quite a lot of sense, as we evolved to have hair on us, that will protect us from cold weather and what not, when we cut it, the body reacts to remedy the unprotected area as quickly as possible. So the cells in that region being used the most, they develop the most, like any other part of the body, this is common sense…

    • I know it’s easy to be fooled, because the only body reaction is growing the hair back by the length that has been cut. What used to be the base of the hair thickest visible part before shaving, becomes the tip as the hair starts to grow back, but it’s the same hair, not actually thicker.
      As for growing back faster, well maybe you mean sooner, that would be correct. First off of course the shorter is a hair, the faster it seems to grow, because there’s much more visible difference from 0 to 1mm than from 10 to 12 mm. Moreover, before shaving most hair is fully grown and doesn’t have to grow, some hair are recently shed and are shorter (we don’t shed them all at once, too), but are hardly noticed among fully grown hair.

  • I shaved my legs when I was like 15 and now I stopped shaving and my leg hair are fine. The reason why people might feel that their hair is darker and coarser could be after shaving, you revealed new and lighter skin at the area you shave and this might lead to illusions that your hair are dark and more. If shaving can cause your hair to be darker and hairy. Everyone should go and shave their head. So even after sometimes, blonds will have black hair. If blonds really do have black hair after shaving their hair on their scalp a few times, would it be that they are “genetically changed ” and their future kids will have black hair too?

    • My doubts are about hairy moles, the skin there is altered and so are the follicles? Can shaving lead to an ever so slightly alteration of a similar nature, but of course of much lesser extent, like thickened skin – slightly thicker hair.
      Strangely there is an isolated claim of the dermatologist Jody Levine saying that shaving hair do thicken hair!
      “• Shaving myths: One of the most controversial arguments in the wax vs. shave debate is that shaving makes your hair grow back more quickly and thicker. And guess what? It’s true, according to Dr. Levine. “That is true that after you shave the hair does grow back thicker,” she told us. “It’s [also] true if you shave and then wax, waxing is going to hurt more because the hairs are thicker and you get two hairs growing out of one follicle sometimes. So I do like sticking to one method.” The lesson? Plan your waxing sessions accordingly if you don’t like to shave. ”
      The only dermatologist I could find saying this so far.
      If she wants to chime in, she is welcome of course, for a further insight on the reasons.

  • Forgot the source

  • i am a boy of 17 years old and i have hair on my legs quite more than my friends and i don’t like it.i wish to shave the hair off but i’m afraid by the consequences in the future i think that i might face, like more hair than now or should be shaving very regularly in order to keep it looking clean. someone please reply me who had a personal experience

    • Hi Sherlock, well no, your leg hair should remain the same, if not for the blunt tips and the increased rigidity which is just a physical aspect of shortening anything, even a bamboo cane is “softer” and more flexible if it’s longer and rigid if shorter. A fretted cello string can go from C3 to F5 if fretted low enough because of this phenomenon. Ok the hair won’t taper much by growing back, but it will soon shed off and the hair will be back from scratch with its original tip.
      Mind that at your age I started to get a blacker fuzz on my neck and adam apple, which I eventually had to shave. The hair did soon actually become thicker and similar to the rest of my beard, but just because I was growing up, not because I shaved. If the same happens to you, it’s likely for the same reason.
      Now I’m close to 30, but no personal experience on shaving the leg hair. If I’ll do it, I’ll let you know.

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