How Combination Brows Heal: Why the Strokes and Shading Fade Differently?

This is the unforgiving reality the uninitiated has no idea of until you've booked. A combination brow is not one treatment healing at one pace. It is two techniques residing in the same brow, healed by the same skin, on drastically different schedules.

That is why the healing looks more abnormal than it does with powder brows or microblading in isolation, and why people go in search of the Best Combination Brows Birmingham has to offer without ever being told what actually takes place in the fortnight afterwards. The hair strokes and the shaded areas act as completely two different procedures, because in all the ways that count, they are.

In fact two techniques, two depths.

A hair stroke is a single, fine line cut into with a controlled hand and loaded with a small amount of pigment. A tiny amount of product is used and the pigment sits in a very fine, carefully weighed down deposit. But shading is different.

It is a soft, diffuse layer of colour applied to an area, generally the tail and body of the brow built up over a large space. A thicker deposit, applied more broadly, settled at a somewhat different depth. Same skin, same appointment, two different physical deposits. Healing views them just the same.

Why do strokes disappear more quickly?

Less pigment means less to hold on to. In healing your skin pushes some pigment out, clouds the rest, and a very thin line has far less allowance for that loss than a shaded area.

You will generally see this by around weeks three to five. The value of the shading remains consistent and the strokes appear softer lighter sometimes feathery. In the outer tail, where there are frequently many fine strokes, one or two can disappear altogether.

This is quite normal. This is the one of the most common reasons that people get in touch with their artist in the period between the first appointment and the top-up.

What it looks like week by week first week.

Week One:- The whole design still looks so vivid and the edges of the pigment are extremely sharp, a little bit too sharp in fact. Both techniques are delivering maximum intensity. Second week.

Week Two:- The skin begins flaking off the color, and the brow takes on a very light, almost colorless, state. Both parts appear to be fading very gently. There is nothing to worry about at this point.

Week Three to Five:- Colour is gradually coming back, and the variation in the depth of the stroke becomes obvious. The contour gets filled in more fully until the final tone becomes almost fully visible again. The marks return less forcefully and are not as clearly defined as they were the very first day.

Week One:- The top-up! This is when your technician will work to get the marks right and fill in any of the shadows that might have faded with time.

Why the top-up is even more important for combination brows?

With brows done with a single technique, the touch-up is more like a refinement and the correction of details. A combo brow being rebalanced through a touch-up in essence a restoration of the structural equilibrium of the different areas, as the technician will be adjusting two different ways of pigment retention which each have their own time of fading.

A lack of a touch-up will not result in you having slightly light brows. You'll have shading that held up and strokes that did not, which will look like an eyebrow with a powdery appearance and some very strange areas of the skin without color, completely not meeting what a hybrid eyebrow should look like.

What affects the gap between them

What causes the difference between one and the other shading and strokes? The oil production of the skin leads to the difference being more pronounced, i.e. the skin type which gets a combination brow with more shading less strokes will most probably be an oilier skin and as the oily skin blurs the fine strokes more quickly and at the same time it lifts them more quickly whereas the shading being somewhat deeper and not so affected will last longer.

Sunlight, peeling agents and retinol all speed up the loss of pigment in stroke ahead of shading loss. The same is true for picking one's skin during the flaking phase which usually leads to an uneven distribution of pigment and very often the strokes are completely washed out.

Frequently asked questions

Why have my hair strokes faded but the shading has not?

Strokes hold less pigment and healing removes color more proportionately from them. It usually appears in weeks 3 to 5 and is dealt with by the 6-week-top up.

Is it normal for some strokes to disappear completely?

In fact, mainly those at the brow tail where strokes are the finest. The artist will re-create them during the top-up.

Do combination brows heal differently from powder brows?

Powder brows heal at the same rate whereas combination brows have two healing rates because strokes and shading are different pigment deposits.

Does oily skin make the difference worse?

Mostly. Oil lifts and blurs fine strokes a lot quicker than it affects shaded areas.

When do combination brows look their best?

After the 6-week-top up has healed which means it is weeks ten to twelve from your first appointment approximately.

Can I skip the top-up if the shading looks fine?

No. The shading looking fine while the strokes have faded is why the top-up was made.