Permanent Makeup

No. All four of these fade, and each one fades in its own way. Microblading, lip blush and scalp pigmentation put pigment into the skin, and skin renews itself constantly, so the cells holding that pigment get replaced and the result softens and lightens rather than staying crisp. Microblading colour holds for up to about three years depending on the pigment, though your skin type moves that a long way: oilier skin holds fine strokes poorly and can fade them in weeks rather than years. Lip blush and scalp pigmentation go the same general way, through skin turnover and pigment breaking down, but nobody can give you an honest figure for how long either one holds. What is clear about scalp pigmentation is that it fades faster over a scar than over ordinary pattern thinning. Where any of them lands in its range depends more on the skin it is in than on the pigment: sebaceous skin holds pigment poorly, and fine strokes in it can go in a matter of weeks. Eyelash extensions don't fade at all in that sense. Each fibre sits on a natural lash that's already growing, shedding and regrowing on a cycle of its own, so an extension disappears when the lash under it sheds, not because the fibre has faded. That's why extensions get infills rather than touch-ups. The one thing that holds across all four: none of them is a one-time, permanent change.

If your skin isn't very oily, you're most likely a good candidate. Dry to normal skin holds fine pigment strokes crisply for longer, where oily skin spreads the pigment slightly as it settles and blurs the hair-stroke effect faster. A few things are worth raising before you book. Active acne or any active skin condition on or near the brow is a reason to wait until it clears, because broken or inflamed skin takes pigment unpredictably and makes the healing harder to read. A history of keloid scarring, where your skin heals with raised, thickened tissue, is worth mentioning too, since anything that breaks the skin's surface raises the same question. Blood-thinning medication, prescribed or over the counter, increases bruising and makes the strokes harder to place cleanly, so bring it up at consultation rather than on the day. Pregnancy is usually a reason to put pigment and tattoo work off, as a precaution: there's no specific evidence of harm, but there's no strong evidence either way and this isn't a procedure anyone needs. None of this rules you out for good. Most of it is about timing. Skin that's inflamed now, or a course of blood thinners you're currently on, can make microblading a bad idea this month and a perfectly reasonable one later, and working out which of those you're looking at is what the consultation is for. The same principle covers scalp pigmentation: pigment goes into skin that is healthy right now, so an active flare of psoriasis or eczema across the area is a reason to settle that first.

Three of them describe how many fibres go onto each of your own lashes, and the fourth is a different service altogether. Classic is the simplest: one extension on one natural lash, which keeps you closest to your own lash line, just longer, darker and more defined. Volume is the densest: several very fine extensions fanned onto a single natural lash, for a fuller look than one fibre can give. That's the one to look at if your lashes are naturally sparse and you want density rather than length. Hybrid sits between them, mixing single fibres and fans across the lash line, so parts of the eye read natural and parts read fuller. All three are standard terms across the lash industry rather than anything one clinic invented, and which suits you comes down to how much natural lash there is to work with and how far from your own look you want to go. Lift is the lash lift, and it is the one that adds nothing: your own lashes are curled upward, and no fibre is attached to them. Because there is nothing added, there is nothing to shed when a lash reaches the end of its cycle, so a lift has no infill appointment behind it the way extensions do; it grows out with your own lash instead. That is the real division on this menu. Extensions build on what is there, and the look holds for as long as you keep replacing the fibres your own lashes take with them. A lift changes the angle of the lash you already have, which is why it reads as more length and a more open eye without any of it being added. If you are choosing between the two, the question worth asking yourself is whether you want more lash than you have, or the lash you have shown to better effect.

Microblading is the one with a clear timeline. For the first day or two the brows need to stay clean and dry, not soaked or scrubbed. Around day three to five the skin sheds as the early inflammation settles, and it can itch. By day seven to ten a noticeable amount of the colour you started with has gone, which is why the included touch-up comes after that fading rather than before it. No comparable timeline is documented for lip blush or scalp pigmentation, so there is no honest one to give for either. What all three have in common is that the colour in the first week is not the result. Fresh pigment sits in and just beneath the outer layer of skin and is read through that layer, so it looks darker, sharper and often warmer than it will once the layer has shed and the pigment underneath has settled. How much pigment skin holds on to varies from person to person, and retention in microblading is incomplete by design rather than by accident, which is what the touch-up is scheduled around. Skin type changes the outcome as well: oilier skin tends to hold a softer, less crisp line than drier skin, because the pigment diffuses slightly more in it. Scalp pigmentation is the one built across sessions rather than healed in one go: three appointments about a week apart, each laying more density than the last, so what you see after the first is not what the finished coverage looks like.

Two, and both belong to tattooing a lip rather than to the other three services on this page. The first is a reaction to the pigment itself. Lip pigment can set off an allergic or lichenoid reaction, a delayed inflammatory response in the skin, and lip tattoos are named specifically in the clinical literature on cosmetic tattooing for it. Delayed is the word that matters: it can appear well after the appointment rather than during the healing days, so a clean first week doesn't rule it out. The second is the herpes simplex virus. Needle work is trauma to the lip, and trauma is one of the things that wakes the virus in anyone who carries it, which brings on a cold sore afterwards, whether or not you've ever had a visible one. If you get cold sores, or you're not sure whether you have, say so at the consultation rather than on the day, because it is the sort of thing that is easier to plan around in advance. Pregnancy and breastfeeding are usually reasons to wait before any pigment work, and uncontrolled diabetes is worth mentioning too, since it affects how any wound heals. Both risks are documented for cosmetic lip tattooing wherever it is done, and neither applies to microblading, eyelash extensions or scalp pigmentation, because none of those involves tattooing the lip.

Cost depends on which service you're having and, for eyelash extensions, which style. What moves the total is the amount of work involved: a full brow rather than a touch-up, a classic set rather than a denser volume set, or the number of sessions a scalp pigmentation result takes. Eyelash extensions differ from the three pigment services: they are the only one of the four that needs ongoing appointments to stay looking the way it did on day one, because your own lashes shed on their own cycle and take the extensions with them. None of these is a fixed number that applies to everyone, so a figure quoted before anyone has looked at you would be a guess rather than a quote. The complimentary consultation at either Lucie Mé clinic is where that assessment happens and where the cost for your specific service gets discussed. Someone weighing microblading against lip blush, or a classic set against a volume set, is looking at genuinely different price points. The differences sit in the work itself rather than anywhere else. A classic lash set places one extension on one natural lash; a volume set fans several very fine extensions onto each one, so there is more to apply and it takes longer. Scalp pigmentation is built across three sessions about a week apart rather than delivered at full density in a single visit. A full brow is a different job from a touch-up on an existing one.