Can shaving facial hair cause acne around the shaven area?

Shaving hair especially manually may irritate the hair follicles, causing inflammation known as folliculitis that appears as small swollen and tender bumps that look like acne. Technically, folliculitis is not considered acne per se, as the inflammation is centred around the hair follicles only, while in acne, the inflammation is centred around the pilosebaceous (oil) glands.

Folliculitis refers to a skin condition in which hair follicles become inflamed, commonly due to a bacterial or fungal infection. Folliculitis may present with small red bumps or whitish pimples around hair follicles.

You can prevent folliculitis as a result of shaving or minimise its symptoms:

• Shave less often.
• Wash your face with clean and warm water and antibacterial facewash before you shave.
• Use a clean towel and gently brush the areas to be shaved in a circular motion to raise embedded hairs.
• Use shaving lotion.
• Use clean and sharp blades.
• Rinse the blades with clean water after every stroke.
• Apply after-shave moisturiser.

Ditto as Dr Chin has mentioned, but another piece of advice too:

1. Change your blades regularly as recommended by the razor brands guidelines. Saving a bit of money is not worth the recurrent folliculitis.

2. Use shavers with fewer blades. The media today advertises newer shavers with up to 5 blades, and this increasing number of blades merely increases additional trauma to your skin. 1 to 2 blades are typically sufficient.

3. Prep your hair prior to shaving by warming them up - you can either apply a warm towel over it for several minutes or shave immediately after a hot shower. This reduces the resistance of shaving and reduces the friction that can cause nicks in the skin.

I suffered such folliculitis for many years and now personally prefer the use of single blade safety razor shavers, and use each side of the safety razor only twice before changing to a new blade. Fewer nicks, less trauma, less folliculitis.