Before You Thread Your Eyebrows at Home, Here’s Why an Expert Cautions Against It

Between eyebrow appointments, it can be tempting to touch up your brows at home. A few too many stray hairs pop up out of place and before you know it, you’re staring into a magnified mirror reassessing your entire brow shape. Sure, tweezing and waxing have their own risks, but of all of the ways to maintain your eyebrows, threading is probably the last one you want to attempt at home.

You can find DIY tutorials for just about anything on the internet – threading your eyebrows included – but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea. We will always encourage experimentation with beauty and becoming your own at-home pro, but there are some skills that are better left for the experts. Here’s why.

What to Do Instead of Threading Your Eyebrows at Home – and Why

“Threading requires a very precise technique that your everyday at-home user may not be familiar with or may not know how to do, this would require a lot of YouTube searching to learn and master,” said international brow stylist Melanie Marris.

If you go to a professional for eyebrow threading, you will most likely hold the skin taut while they maneuver the string. Because it requires both hands to move the thread back and forth, you’re down a pair of hands to hold the skin, as well. “At times, you will be blocking your vision when maneuvering the string around the brow and creating your shape,” said Marris. “If you do not get the hair out properly with the string, you risk snapping the hair.”

Instead, she recommends tweezing, which similarly to threading, plucks the hair from the root. “Tweezing the hair out using tweezers is a much more simple and easy alternative,” said Marris, just refrain from doing it too often. “One big tweeze every two-to-three weeks or three-to-four week is always much better for the hair cycle.” That means not reaching for the tweezers when a single hair comes through.

How to Avoid Going Overboard on Maintenance

Her biggest tip for making sure you don’t overdo it: a brow pencil. “Using a brow pencil as your guide will save your life,” said Marris. “I always recommend to slightly overdraw your brow – a scary look, I know – to ensure that you do not go anywhere inside that line.”