Think about it, most likely everyone you know owns a pair of tweezers and certainly everyone you have ever laid eyes on has either used a pair or had a pair has used on them.
This is not surprising since this small portable handheld instrument is one of the most versatile and popular tools for beauty, grooming and First Aid. We use tweezers most commonly for grooming (plucking fine hairs, eyebrows, upper lips, ear hair), first-aid (removing splinters, ingrown hairs, stingers) but we also use them picking up small parts such as screws for the hinges of your eyeglasses or small parts when working a model cars. But there is a wide variety and what tweezers you choose depends on the given application.
For our purposes today we are going to bring clarity to five of the most popular tweezers that cover approximately 99% of all applications.
When understanding tweezers there are four tips, no wait, four points, no wait, four attributes to consider:
- Nose or Tip Shape- using either term to describe the business end of the tweezers
- Size-generally refers to the overall length of the tweezers and heft
- Material-Pros and Cons
- Comfort & Style-How does it feel in your hand and basically color
Let’s start with the business end of the tweezers, referred to as the tip or nose, after all this is where the bulk of the differences lie:
Pointed Tip Tweezers- Proceed with caution, the pointed tip is extremely sharp and works best for plucking small, fine hairs (ingrown hairs) under the right circumstances. Great lighting, a steady hand and keen vision are just some of what is necessary. Of course most important might be experience; for safety reasons these tweezers are best left to the professional licensed esthetician. This is a difficult DIY tweezers.
Straight Tip Tweezers-The straight tip tweezers is a great all-purpose tweezers and in my opinion a little under rated. Its broad tip is great for plucking multiple hairs in a single motion without much worry about collateral damage that you might encounter with a pointed tip. The straight broad tip works well when looking for stray hairs by feel (Feeling & Stealing) as well. Good starter tweezers.
Slant Nose Tweezers-The slant nose is the most popular style of tip and combines the benefits from both the pointed tip tweezers and straight tip tweezers making this a truly versatile instrument. The pointed tip allows you to accurately pluck individual fine hairs and also gives you the speed of removing multiple hairs. Less precision than a pointed tip tweezers, but can cover more area while being more forgiving. Great all purpose tweezers for beginners and lifelong users. Great for eyebrow work, plucking hair on the upper lip and applying false eyelashes.
Slant/Point Combination Tweezers- This is a great combination of pointed tweezers and slant tip tweezers. The Slant/Point Combination Tweezers is excellent for removing splinters, ingrown hairs and precision eyebrow work. This is for the more experienced user.
Round Tip Tweezers-The Round Tip Tweezers is a great all-purpose tweezers. Without any sharp edges it is the most forgiving tweezers. Sometimes referred to as “Safety Tweezers” because of it’s rounded tip, these tweezers work well for confidently removing multiple hairs at once anywhere but is a particularly useful grooming instrument for men who need to clean up hair in and around their ears and ridding their uni-brow. A great men’s tweezers and a favorite for girlfriends to steal, I mean borrow.
Size- There is two primary elements to consider when looking at tweezers size? The first being your hand size and how a tweezers fits into them? Can you hold the tweezers with comfort, control and confidence? Generally speaking, comparing identical tweezers big and small, you guessed it, bigger hands look for bigger tweezers and smaller hands look for slightly smaller tweezers. But there are exceptions and has to do with where the “sweet spot” is on the handle? This is the area on the tweezers handle where your two or more fingers are positioned for the greatest leverage/power/control when completing the squeezing action. This could be close to the tip or closer to the midpoint of the tweezers. The width of the handle also plays a role in this decision.
Material-Stainless steel is the material of choice; possessing both durability and resistance to corrosion is critical in a wet bathroom with hard surfaces that wont break a fall.
Comfort & Style-Tweezers come in many different finishes that feel different to the user. Whether the finish is brushed, polished, etched, ribbed or painted stainless steel they all provide a little different feeling in your hand. If all the stars align, I am sure you will not only find a tweezers that feel good to the touch, but also tweezers that reflect your personal style.
There you have it, just about everything you need to know about tweezers but were afraid to ask. Speaking of afraid, let me take a moment to reinforce there is nothing to be afraid of when plucking. In fact I will give you a few parting tips to make your next tweezing experience a better one. First, prior to plucking, take a warm shower. This will open your pores so hair can be removed more easily. Next, clean your tweezers of hairs between each hair you pluck. This will prevent hair build up in the tip of the tweezers allowing the tweezers to continue to operate properly by applying equal pressure to both sides of the hair.