How To Get A Natural Looking Hair Transplant

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How To Get A Natural Looking Hair Transplant

Many hair transplant patients worry about whether their hair transplant will look natural. It’s an understandable concern — when you’re investing money and hope in a hair transplant, you want to know your hair will look good at the end of it.

So do hair transplants look natural? And how can you increase the chances of getting a discreet, natural-looking hair transplant? In this article, we’ll show you how to make sure your hair transplant looks natural in five steps.

Table of Contents

Do hair transplants look natural?

When they’re performed by a qualified, skilled surgical team, hair transplants look completely natural. In fact, you won’t be able to tell the difference between your transplanted hair and your natural hair once the grafts have healed and grown.

Rob Holding’s hair transplant is known as one of the best in the Premier League. Performed by Wimpole Clinic surgeon Dr. Luciano Sciacca, Rob’s hairline transplant is now full, natural-looking, and indistinguishable from his natural hair.

Rob Holding before and after hair transplant at Wimpole Clinic

But some hair transplants can look unnatural, usually if they’re performed by untrained technicians or using outdated techniques:

old fashioned hair plugs (left) and overharvesting scars from a bad hair transplant (right)

Left: old-fashioned hair plugs placed along the hairline [1]. Right: FUE scars following overharvesting of the donor area [2].

Results like these are very rare in UK clinics, where safety regulations are strictly adhered to and technicians are generally highly skilled and qualified. But it’s not so rare in overseas hair transplant clinics, where healthcare requirements aren’t followed as closely and there’s more variation in clinic quality and surgical skill.

Fortunately, failed hair transplants are the exception rather than the norm in the UK. Most surgeons here can help you get transformative results that look completely natural.

Successful Hair Transplant
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Natural looking hair transplants: Real patient photos

Natural-looking hair transplants aren’t just for footballers and celebrities. They’re more affordable and accessible than many people think. Dr. Sciacca says:

“What we have been able to do with FUE and FUT techniques in recent years is really amazing, and it’s not as expensive as some clinics would like you to believe. I would really recommend to anybody considering a hair transplant to read our hair transplant costs analysis conducted early in 2022 where we examined UK prices nationwide.”

These patients have also achieved a natural-looking hair transplant at the Wimpole Clinic:

FUE hair transplant after 10 months

Procedure: FUE
Grafts: 2,400
Time: After 10 months

FUE hair transplant after 15 months

Procedure: FUE
Grafts: 2,500
Time: After 15 months

FUE hair transplant after 8 months

Procedure: FUE
Grafts: 700
Time: After 8 Months

FUT hair transplant after 12 months

Procedure: FUT
Grafts: 1,500
Time: After 12 months

FUT and FUE hair transplants before and after photos

Procedure: FUT/FUE
Grafts: 6,200 over three procedures

Having multiple hair transplants may help you achieve more natural results, especially if you need a substantial number of hair grafts. If you need 8,000 hair grafts, for example, it’s usually recommended that you spread these over several sessions, as the patient above has done to achieve a fantastic result.

How to achieve a natural-looking hair transplant

Maximise your chances of getting a natural-looking hair transplant with these steps.

1.Choose the right surgeon at a UK clinic

Choosing a skilled, qualified surgeon with experience of working with your hair type is the number one way to ensure your hair transplant looks natural. 

Hair transplants aren’t just about harvesting grafts and planting them in your balding areas. Surgeons need to consider the natural growth pattern of your hair, as well as managing the number of follicles in your donor area and extracting them safely. This takes a lot of skill and experience, which you generally won’t get with a cheap overseas procedure.

Choosing a cheap hair transplant from a cheap surgeon is a high-risk strategy. That’s why there are far more stories of hair transplants going wrong that come out of Turkish hair transplant clinics. It’s easier for unlicensed and untrained technicians to circumvent safety regulations there, and it’s much harder for you to go back and complain.

That’s why we always recommend doing plenty of research with several UK clinics to find the best UK hair transplant surgeon for your budget. 

2. Choose the right procedure type

There are two modern hair transplant types: FUE and FUT. While both offer natural-looking results when performed by a skilled surgeon, there is an important aesthetic difference: hair transplant scarring.

FUT is more likely to leave a visible scar on the back of the head. If you wear your hair long, this probably won’t be noticeable, which is why FUT is a popular type of female hair transplant. But the scar can often be seen if you get a buzzcut after your hair transplant.

Getting a FUT transplant doesn’t mean your hair growth will look less natural. In fact, there are benefits to FUT: the graft survival rate is slightly higher, and you may be able to extract more grafts and therefore get more coverage [3]. But you may be left with a thin scar that shows you’ve had a procedure.

Senior man and hair loss issue
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3. Plan your hairline

Your surgeon will help you design a hairline that suits your face shape and age. While you can have some input into your hairline design, ultimately your surgeon should have the final say. 

These images show the difference between a natural hairline design and a poorly designed hairline [4]. The first two images show good hairline design both immediately after surgery (A) and one year after the procedure (B):

examples of good hairline design

By contrast, these poorly designed hairlines look unnatural due to overly straight graft placement, lack of consideration of hair growth direction, and other factors:

Examples of poor hairline designs

4. Know your limits

Hairline planning isn’t just important for ensuring your newly transplanted grafts look natural. It can also impact your donor area.

Skilled surgeons know what results are possible based on the availability of hair in your donor area. Be wary of surgeons that overpromise results, as they may overharvest your donor hair. This can result in patchy hair at the back or side of the scalp, which doesn’t look natural.

examples of overharvesting from a bad hair transplant

5. Look after your hair transplant

Aftercare during the hair transplant recovery phase is also very important when it comes to creating a natural-looking hair transplant. It’s important that you take all prescribed medications to avoid hair transplant infection and other complications that might compromise the look of your hair transplant.

In addition, consider taking Finasteride after a hair transplant to maintain your hair. Finasteride can prevent ongoing hair loss, so the hair around your new grafts stays thick and natural.

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Does a hair transplant grow like normal hair?

Yes, a hair transplant grows the same way as normal hair, unless you use a synthetic hair type like Biofibre for an artificial hair transplant. Most people have enough hair in their donor area to avoid the need for these synthetic fibres.

It takes a few months for your transplanted hair to grow, so your hair transplant may not look especially natural at first. But when your grafts heal and your hair begins to grow, you’ll soon find you can’t tell the difference between your existing hair and your new hair grafts.

hair transplant growth chart featured image
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How long does it take for hair transplant results to look natural?

The amount of time it takes for your hair transplant results to look natural depends on the length of your hair growth cycle. People with shorter cycles may see results sooner than those with longer cycles.

In general, it takes around six to 12 months to see sustained results from your hair transplant.

photo examples showing the growth of a hair transplant over months

Book a free hair transplant consultation

Whether you’re ready to book your hair transplant or you’re still in the research stages, the Wimpole Clinic team can help. Our advisors can share their own experiences of getting a natural-looking hair transplant, including tips and tricks for getting the best possible results.

Our hair loss treatment plans have seen us win hair transplant clinic of the year in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Our natural-looking hair transplants make our patients feel confident:

“​​Since having the hair transplant it’s made such a positive impact on my life. Those insecurities that just used to creep into everyday life. You don’t realise, the eating out, the wind blowing, the hair getting wet, the hairdressers, the things we have to do. I am much more confident in how I look, how I feel, being a dad, being a husband, it’s just made a really positive impact!”

Book a free consultation with our team to start your hair restoration journey.

How To Get A Natural Looking Hair Transplant, Wimpole Clinic

Sources:
  1. Revision of the Unfavourable Result in Hair Transplantation
  2. Complications in Hair Transplantation
  3. A Study of Donor Area in Follicular Unit Hair Transplantation
  4. Hairline Design and Frontal Hairline Restoration
The Wimpole Clinic offers FUE Hair, Beard & Eyebrow Transplants & Trichology.
Talk to a specialist ☎ 020 7935 1861.

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