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How to Lash Faster: Tips for Speeding up your Eyelash Extension Application

Whether you're a seasoned lash technician or a beginner there are lots of reasons you may want to learn to lash faster. Speeding up your lash application can reduce treatment times making the experience more comfortable and convenient for clients, as well as being more cost effective for yourself as you can make more money in shorter periods of time. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you lash faster without sacrificing quality.

Prepare Your Tools and Workspace

Organise Your Supplies: Ensure that all your tools and working environment are ready prior to your client arriving. This will allow the client to be in for a shorter period of time and make sure you aren't wasting time or struggling to find things during the treatment. Check client notes prior to their arrival to make sure you have the correct glue and their lashes of preference at the ready (usual curl, thickness and lengths), we would recommend using Pinkfishes Client Record Pads to note and store all important client information. Make sure you have cleaned your tweezers, and have fresh couch roll on your lash bed. There are also some helpful pieces of equipment that can assist with organising your lash products such as lash trolleys - these can be used to store your lash equipment and have them nearby during treatments. Tweezer cleaner is also a really handy product too have on your lash trolley as if you get lash glue on your tweezers during the treatment it can be hard to continue lashing and slow you down but instead you can submerge your tweezers in the solution to help remove the adhesive easily and quickly.  Acrylic storage boxes are ideal to help you organise lashes on, you can work directly from the tile saving you time during appointments instead of trying to get lashes out of lash trays

 (Pinkfishes Acrylic Storage Boxes

Create a Comfortable Setup: Make sure your workspace is well-lit and ergonomically set up. Invest in lighting as being able to see the natural lashes clearly will make it easier and quicker for you to isolate and apply lash extensions correctly and precisely. Pinkfishes multimedia pro lighthas been designed to be adjustable for lash technicians to work around clients with movable arms and light colour changing features. 

Use High-Quality Products

Invest in Good Tools: Test out different tweezer styles to see what works for you as everyone has their own preference. Some lash technicians will prefer a light weight and some a heavy tweezer, some will prefer a bulkier tip and some precision. At Pinkfishes we have 16 different styles of tweezer including diamond and fibre coated tips. Finding the right tweezer for you will ensure you can make fans more easily and quickly! 

Opt for Fast-Drying Adhesive:Using an adhesive with a quick drying time can reduce the waiting time between each lash  application, speeding up your overall treatment time. Make sure to choose one that suits your needs and practice using it to get the best results. Always ensure you can still apply the extension quickly enough before it starts to cure. Our quickest drying adhesives are Pink Radical II and Pink Supreme Clear with a 0.5 second drying time. 

(Pinkfishes Pink Supreme Clear Fast Drying Lash Adhesive) 

Master Your Technique

Practice Practice Practice: Speed comes with practice. The more you practice your lash application technique, the more efficient you’ll become. Try to get comfortable with the motions and become familiar with handling the lashes and tools. The more models and clients you perform lash extensions on the quicker you will get naturally. It is not uncommon for beginners to take over 3 hours to complete a full set of lash extensions. You can also practise fan making and isolating using a mannequin head, this is ideal as you can do this in your own time and can practise different techniques and styles. Here at Pinkfishes we conducted a poll with 350 lash technicians and asked them how long on average it took them to apply a full set of Russian Lash Extensions. As you can see from the chart below the results show that most lash technicians take between 2-3 hours and closely behind 1-2 hours. However there are a percentage of lash techs who take under an hour and again over 3 hours. There will be many factors effecting how long you take to complete a set and it is important to remember that speed is not the main priority - you want to make sure your quality and coverage is consistent before aiming to reduce your treatment times. Having said this if you do take over 3 hours to complete a set with practice you could reduce this as demonstrated by a large proportion of lash technicians we sampled. 

(Poll: How long on average does it take to apply a full set of Russian Lash Extensions?) 

There is not a set ''ideal'' treatment time as each client will be different in terms of how long their lash line is, how many natural lashes they have, what style of lash extensions they want, how easy their natural lashes are to work with as well as your preferred method of fanning and applying and experience. You don't want to rush sets and not apply full coverage however it can be uncomfortable and inconvenient for clients to lay down for too long so we would suggest aiming to take approximately 1.5-2.5 hours for a full set of Russians. 

Training: It is important to always be developing your skills no matter whether you are a beginner or expert. A great way to improve your own ability and speed is to invest in your own training whether that's through mentoring with experienced lash technicians, e-learning tutorials, courses, manuals and more. 

(Pinkfishes E-Learning Trailer for Lash Styling & Mapping)

Use a Methodical Approach: Develop a consistent method for applying lashes. Whether you apply lashes from the inner corner to the outer corner or vice versa, sticking to a methodical approach can streamline the process. We would recommend working on both eyes at the same time as this means you can move onto applying another extension whilst the previous one is drying to avoid lash extensions clumping together. 

Employ Time-Saving Techniques

Pre-Fanned, Pro-made and Easy Fan Lashes: For professional lash artists, using pre-fanned, pro-made or easy fan volume lashes can save a significant amount of time compared to creating fans from scratch - especially if you struggle to make fans quickly. We conducted an experiment here at Pinkfishes and asked one of our expert lash technicians (who usually makes her own fans) to time how long it took her to do full coverage on a mannequin eye using her own hand made lashes on one eye and then on the other pro-made lashes. It was much quicker using pro-made lashes taking only 28 minutes and 52 seconds in comparison to hand made fans taking 49 minutes and 47 seconds. This demonstrates how whether you are a beginner or expert lash technician that using pro/pre-made or easy fans could help speed up your application time. 

(Handmade VS Pro-made Lashes) 

Stay Focused and Relaxed

Take Breaks: If you’re working on clients back to back you may fatigue, burn out and slow down meaning sets will take you longer as you become tired. Taking short breaks can help maintain your focus and allow you to reset and prep properly which could actually save you time in the long run.

Silent Appointments: Chatting during appointments could also be slowing you down without you realising, as you are trying to multitask by doing the lashes and focusing on the conversation. Of course we don't want to come across rude to clients so a great idea is to ask them their preference, for example would they like to listen to a podcast, the radio or a particular genre of music. 

By incorporating these tips into your routine, you should be able to speed up your lash application process while maintaining high-quality results. Remember, practice makes perfect, and with time, you’ll find the balance between speed and precision that works best for you. Another important point to remember is that to achieve full coverage it will take some time and being the fastest lash technician will not necessarily make you the best, don't compromise quality for speed.