Expect heat. Most people describe the treatment itself as tolerable with numbing cream, and the hours afterwards as feeling like a moderate sunburn.
Redness is immediate. Some swelling is normal, and it tends to show most around the eyes.
Redness continues, and the skin usually feels tight and dry. Swelling, if you have it, is often at its most noticeable the morning after.
Sciton's own guidance allows makeup at about 24 hours. Many clinics tell people to wait until the shedding phase is over. That is a real disagreement between reasonable sources, so follow the instructions your own provider gave you.
This is the stage people are not expecting.
The skin develops a bronzed, speckled appearance — fine dark dots across the treated area — and it feels distinctly like sandpaper.
Those specks are MENDs, microscopic epidermal necrotic debris. Each one is a tiny column of treated tissue carrying pigment up and out through the skin. They are the mechanism by which the laser lightens brown spots.
They are supposed to be there. They are not a burn, and they are not damage.
The specks begin to slough away. The texture gradually smooths out and the bronzed look fades.
Do not exfoliate or scrub to speed this up. Letting the debris shed on its own schedule is the whole point — physically removing it early risks irritation and uneven results.
In published studies of this type of laser, the outer layer of skin is fully regenerated by day seven. Most people are looking at normal skin, often brighter, by about the end of the first week.
Some residual pinkness can linger a little longer, and that is unremarkable.
Brown spots continue to fade after the shedding finishes. The clearest improvement in surface pigment is generally visible around a month after treatment.
Most protocols involve a series of three or more sessions, spaced a few weeks apart.
Most of what is on a laser aftercare sheet — exact timings for makeup, exercise, showering, exfoliation — comes from clinical practice rather than from trials. Sources genuinely disagree, which is why two clinics will give you different numbers.
The exception is sun protection, and it is not a minor one. In the one published study of this laser, the researchers attributed a fading of results by three months partly to summer sun exposure. If you follow one instruction, follow that one.
If you get cold sores, tell your provider before booking. Laser can reactivate the virus, and antiviral medication started in advance is the standard precaution — cold sore reactivation occurred in 0.6% of one large series of non-ablative fractional treatments.