3D scalp micropigmentation has arrived

It was bound to happen sometime. With so many thousands of people having dots placed on their heads to hide baldness, it was never going to be too long before one of the major providers started looking into a three dimensional option.

That is exactly what Good Look Ink have developed, and now offer to the general public. Although not truly 3D in reality, GLI have found a way to replicate tiny hairs instead of shaven follicles, producing the illusion of a 3D hairstyle by placing ‘strokes’ on the scalp instead of dots. Good Look Ink have further enhanced the process (called 3D Advanced Enhancement) by creating crown-like swirls in the right places to create the most realistic effect possible.

In its infancy

3D SMP is a brand new development, so there isn’t a long list of case studies available just yet. The following photos are the only ones in existence that we are aware of, and have been kindly supplied by GLI.

This next set of photos shows a real client before his treatment, then again after having a standard scalp micropigmentation treatment, then finally after his new 3D effect treatment. Please click these photos to zoom.

Unanswered questions

Although this looks undoubtedly very cool, there are a number of things we still don’t know about this treatment option.

For a start, we do not know how fading can influence this new stroke technique. With dots you can go over and over the same area until the required darkness and density is achieved. You can’t do that with strokes, so how is this resolved? What about longer term fading? What about the fact that practitioners will need re-training? How many of them will be re-trained, and how reliable and repeatable will their results be? Does this mean the client can wear their hair longer, or is daily shaving still necessary? How does this look on black guys, blonde guys, Hispanic guys etc?

Scalp micropigmentation started out as nothing more than a great idea. Who is to say this couldn’t be the next generation of SMP? It might never catch on, but if some of the key questions can be answered definitively, you might just see 3D scalp pigmentation hitting a clinic near you very soon.