Hygiene How-To: Lash Treatments

Ruth Atkins, Salon System expert, breaks down each component your lash treatment to ensure ultimate hygiene…

The Client 

After preparing the client onto a freshly papered couch with fresh towels, sanitise your hands using an isopropanol-based hand sanitiser or chlorhexidine gluconate solution, which is an antimicrobial agent. Thoroughly rinse hands if using this and dry with a disposable paper towel. Following this, cleanse the client’s eye area thoroughly with an oil free eye-make up remover, dispensing any soiled cotton wool and cotton buds immediately into a lined, covered bin which has a foot lever. This ensures that there needn’t be any contact with your hands. I’d recommend disposable mascara wands for combing through the lashes; these are competitively priced and widely available in your local hair and beauty wholesalers.

Once the lashes, eyes and upper cheek area are thoroughly cleansed and dry, under eye patches need to be applied to ensure the lower lashes are out of the way. Use a gel patch to do this, as this way the lower lashes are kept out of the way securely but gently. Only at this stage, open the gel patches from their sealed packet; opening before they are needed means they can pick up dust or salon debris which can compromise the sticking efficiency and cleanliness. Avoid using micro-pore tape for this as it can unnecessarily and painfully pull out the lower lashes and you want to make the treatment as comfortable as possible, to encourage your client to return time after time. After the treatment is finished, the first thing she will want to do is touch the lashes but discourage her to do so unless you give her some hand sanitiser first.

“You want to make the treatment as comfortable as possible, to encourage your client to return time after time.”

Your Protection

I always wear disposable blue nitrile medical gloves and a face mask once I’m ready to begin lash application on a client. If you’re using lashes that are organised in different lengths and are sticky, they adhere better to your gloves. Choose your gloves carefully; vinyl and latex gloves are available in all sorts of sizes, colours, powdered and un-powdered. As you might be working very close to the face I feel a disposable mask adds professionalism – there’s nothing worse than breathing over your client.

Your Tweezers

Regardless of tweezer shape, straight, x type or arched, make sure you have several spares and that they are good quality stainless steel as these can be repeatedly sterilised without degradation. Cheap metal tweezers will rust and can harbour germs. Sterile spares are always handy to have to hand in case any glue happens to get on the tweezers by mistake – you don’t want to be spending time cleaning tweezers during the treatment time. Sterilize tweezers using various methods of choice, for example autoclave or solutions, such as Barbicide, and use a fresh set per client. Barbicide is Alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride.

“As you might be working very close to the face I feel a disposable mask adds professionalism – there’s nothing worse than breathing over your client.”

Your Glue

Glue rings are a great way to ensure you are working on a clean, bacteria free, disposable surface for each client. By wearing the ring on the middle finger, it stays upright and won’t twist or droop during a treatment, preventing the glue dropping onto the client by accident. One of the main safety protocols for a lash treatment is ensuring that the top of the glue nozzle doesn’t come into direct contact with the glue ring when you dispense your glue into it, as this keeps your glue completely free of any infected area. Also return its lid immediately to ensure as little air as possible gets inside the bottle. During lash application, gently stoke away any accumulative glue droplets using wooden cocktail sticks. Again, these are really cheap to buy and are disposable.

Once finished, dispose of all waste, clean your tweezers with glue remover before sterilising again and return any unused lashes back to their sealed packets.

Salon System’s line of lash products are available from wholesalers nationwide.