High Maintenance to Be Low Maintenance: The Two Skin Treatments I Did Before Summer
If you’ve watched any of my High Maintenance series, you know the whole point is usually this: do a little more upfront so daily life can feel easier later.
Most Sundays, that applies to clothes. Tailoring. Outfit formulas. Buying fewer things that work harder.
This time, it’s skin.
This spring, I decided to do two treatments — IPL and Morpheus8 — with one very specific goal: I want my summer skin routine to be almost nonexistent. I want to wake up, put on SPF, and leave the house without feeling like I need tinted moisturizer, concealer, or a bunch of products layered on top of each other.
Not “perfect” skin. Just lower maintenance skin.
So this is the full recap of what I did, why I chose these treatments specifically, and the honest cost/tradeoff conversation I had with myself before committing.
Treatment #1: IPL
IPL stands for Intense Pulsed Light, but the easiest way to think about it is: targeted light treatment for discoloration.
It’s commonly used for:
Sun damage
Redness
Uneven skin tone
Brown spots
Broken capillaries
Basically all the little things that make your skin look less even, even when your skin itself is healthy.
For me, this treatment was the “surface level cleanup.”
My goal wasn’t dramatic transformation. I just wanted to stop feeling like I needed to correct my skin every day with makeup.
Because honestly, once summer hits, I become extremely lazy about makeup. I do not want to be spot concealing around my nose or blending tinted moisturizer when it’s 90 degrees outside.
The actual session was fast. Definitely not relaxing, but manageable. The sensation feels like tiny rubber band snaps mixed with heat. Afterward, my skin looked a little red for a few hours, and then over the next several days some pigmentation got darker before flaking off.
That part is important because if you’ve never done IPL before, the “it gets darker first” phase can feel alarming unless someone warns you.
But once everything healed, my skin tone already looked more even with nothing on it.
Which was the whole point.
Treatment #2: Morpheus8
Morpheus8 is a combination of microneedling and radiofrequency.
So instead of just treating what you see on the surface, it works deeper underneath the skin to stimulate collagen and improve texture and firmness over time.
This one is much more of a long game.
IPL was me wanting quicker payoff heading into summer. Morpheus8 was me thinking more about future skin quality.
The easiest comparison I can make is strength training.
When you start lifting, you usually don’t see dramatic results immediately. But a few months later, you’re incredibly glad you started when you did.
That’s how I think about treatments like this.
The value isn’t in waking up the next morning transformed. It’s in gradually building better structure underneath the surface over time.
The treatment itself is definitely more intense than IPL. Numbing cream helps a lot, but it still feels like something is happening. My skin was red afterward, a little swollen for a couple days, and then rough/textured while healing.
But again, the entire reason I wanted to do this now is because collagen-building treatments reward patience. Summer is easy when you prepared in spring.
Very on brand for this series, honestly.
The Honest Part: Cost & Tradeoffs
Neither of these treatments is cheap.
And I went back and forth on it for a while because I’m always cautious about spending money on aesthetic things that can quietly turn into endless maintenance.
What ultimately made sense to me was this:
I would personally rather invest in one or two treatments done really well a couple times a year than constantly buy products I don’t consistently use.
Because if I’m honest with myself, I am not someone who enjoys a 14-step skincare routine. I’m never going to be.
I like simple. I like effective. I like low daily effort.
So for me, the math became:
fewer random product purchases
fewer attempts at “fixing” things at home
more intentional treatments with longer-lasting payoff
That doesn’t mean this is the right choice for everyone. But it felt aligned with how I actually live.
Which is usually the entire point of “maintenance” decisions anyway.
Wrapping Up
I’ll definitely do a follow-up in a few months once the Morpheus8 results have had more time to develop because that treatment really is a patience game.
But so far, I already feel like these two treatments moved me closer to the exact goal I had:
less makeup, less effort, less thinking about my skin day to day.
High maintenance… to be low maintenance.
And yes — this is officially part of the High Maintenance Sunday series now.
If you have questions about either treatment, recovery, cost, pain level, or whether I think they were worth it, feel free to comment or DM me.