The honest answer to the question most people arrive with is no. Microneedling does not remove stretch marks, and anyone telling you it does is selling you something I would not sell you.
What it can do is change how they sit in the skin. A stretch mark is a scar, and scar tissue can be softened, levelled and blended so it catches the light less than it did. That is a real change and people are pleased with it. It is not the same as the marks going away, and the gap between those two sentences is where most of the disappointment in this industry lives.
Microneedling on the stomach is £120 a session at House of Glam HQ in Southsea. The whole list is further down, along with the areas I cannot treat, because that matters more here than it does on most pages. Every price is published, where most Portsmouth clinics quote only after a consultation.
Can microneedling remove stretch marks?
No. Nothing I offer removes them, and I have not seen a treatment anywhere that does.
Here is what actually happens. The pen makes thousands of tiny channels through the mark and into the skin underneath. Your body treats those channels as something to repair, and the repair lays down new collagen in and around the old scar tissue. Over the following weeks the mark can flatten, the edges can soften, and the colour can move closer to the skin around it.
The result is a mark you notice less. In good light, up close, you will still find it. I would rather you know that before you pay me than after.
Where I can treat them, and where I cannot
This is the part most pages leave out, so I will put it near the top.
My microneedling price list has four areas: the face, the face and neck, the face with neck and décolletage, and the stomach. That is the whole list. There is no thigh option, no hip option, no bum and no upper arm, because those are not on my price list and I am not going to invent a price for them.
Stretch marks turn up on all of those places. If yours are on your thighs or your hips, I am not the right clinic for you and you should look for somewhere that treats those areas properly rather than booking a stomach session and hoping. If they are across your lower stomach, which is where most of them land after a pregnancy or a change in weight, then this is a treatment I do, at a price you can see.
Microneedling prices in Portsmouth
The stomach is £120 a session and takes about forty five minutes including the numbing time. The rest of the list is here so you can see where it sits.
| Area | Price |
|---|---|
| Stomach, for stretch marks and crepey texture | £120 |
| Face, about 45 minutes | £80 |
| Face and neck | £120 |
| Face, neck and décolletage | £170 |
| Course of three, face only | £215 |
| Course of six, face only | £410 |
| Standalone consultation, deducted from your treatment | £15 |
Book the stomach at £120, or message me on WhatsApp first and tell me where the marks are and roughly how old they are. Klarna spreads a treatment over three monthly payments.
What happens in the £120 appointment
You book the stomach session itself, not a consultation. I look at the area at the start of that appointment and there is no separate fee for it. If you would rather talk first, a standalone consultation is £15 on Fresha and comes off the treatment, though it is a short slot and the treatment then goes in the diary for another day.
Numbing cream goes on first and sits for twenty to thirty minutes. Then twenty to thirty minutes of treatment: I set the needle depth to what I am working on and pass across the area in sections, then finish with a serum. The depth is the part that matters and it is the part you are paying for. Scar tissue needs more than a maintenance pass over a cheek.
You leave with the aftercare written down rather than recited at you, and you drive yourself home.
Can you get rid of years-old stretch marks?
Older marks respond more slowly than newer ones, and the change you get from them is smaller. That is the clearest pattern I see and it is worth understanding before you decide.
| Newer marks | Older marks | |
|---|---|---|
| Colour | Red, pink or purple | Silver or white |
| Roughly | Under a year | Several years |
| How they respond | More readily | Slowly, and less |
| Sessions | 3 to 6 | 6 or more |
None of that means a silver mark is untreatable. It means the honest conversation about a silver mark is a different one: more sessions, a smaller change, and a decision about whether that is worth your money. Sometimes I think it is not, and I will say so.
How many sessions will I need?
Three to six, four to six weeks apart, is the usual range, and stretch marks sit at the higher end of it rather than the lower.
I will not sell you a block up front for the stomach, and there is no stomach course on my price list to sell you. Book one session at £120, give it the four to six weeks, and look at the area again before you commit to a second. If the first session has done nothing at all, that tells us something useful and you have spent £120 finding it out rather than £700.
The change arrives between sessions, not in the week of one. If you judge it three days later you will think it has not worked.
Does microneedling on the stomach hurt?
Less than people expect, and less than the same treatment on a face. The skin across the stomach is thicker and there is less bone underneath it, and the numbing cream has twenty to thirty minutes to work before anything starts.
Most people describe a scratchy vibration and a warm, dragging feeling rather than pain. The areas right at the edges of the hip bones are the sharpest. If it is too much I slow down or stop, and that is not a failure of yours.
The two days afterwards
Expect redness like mild sunburn for twenty four to forty eight hours, and the skin to feel tight and hot. On a stomach you also feel your waistband on it, so loose clothing that day is worth thinking about.
No makeup, no acids, no retinol and no direct sun on the area for two days. Then carry on normally. There is nothing to dress, nothing to change and no follow up appointment unless you want one.
Do derma rollers work at home?
A home roller is not the same treatment and I would not use one on a stretch mark.
The depth is the whole point. A roller at a depth you can safely use on yourself will not reach the scar tissue that is causing the problem, and a roller at a depth that would reach it is not something to be doing to yourself over a sink. Rollers also drag across the skin rather than entering and leaving it cleanly, which is how people end up with tracking marks on top of the marks they started with.
If you want to spend a little rather than a lot, spend it on one clinic session and see what the area does. That is a better test than a year of rolling.
At what age do you stop getting stretch marks?
There is no age where they stop. They form whenever skin is stretched faster than it can keep up with, so they turn up in puberty, in pregnancy, through weight changes in either direction, and when people put on muscle quickly.
That is also why I will not tell you that treating them now stops new ones. It does not. Microneedling works on the marks that are already there.
What microneedling will not do
It will not remove a stretch mark. It will not return the skin to how it looked before, and it will not tighten loose skin across the stomach, which is a separate problem that often sits alongside the marks and is the thing some people are actually unhappy about.
It will not work on an area I do not treat, and it will not do anything for marks on the thighs or hips, because I will not be treating them.
It will not do much in one session. And it will not stop you getting more.
What it does is make established marks on the stomach flatter and less obvious than they are now, over a course, gradually. If that is worth £120 a session to you, book it. If it is not, that is a completely reasonable conclusion and I would rather you reach it before the appointment.
When I will say no
Not in pregnancy. This comes up constantly on this treatment, because the marks arrive with the pregnancy and people want to start straight away. Wait until afterwards, and if you are breastfeeding tell me, because I would rather have that conversation than not.
Not over active acne, rosacea, eczema or psoriasis in the area being treated, not with an active skin infection, and not within six months of Roaccutane. Adults only, eighteen and over.
Microneedling uses fine needles rather than heat or light, so there is no heat-related pigment risk and every skin tone from I to VI can be treated. I check the skin at the start of each session regardless.
Book stomach microneedling in Southsea
Picking the area is the booking. If the marks are on your stomach and you want to see what one session does, the £120 slot is the one. If you are not sure, message me and describe them: where they are, roughly how old, and whether they are still coloured or have gone silver.
| Booking | Price |
|---|---|
| Microneedling, stomach | £120 |
| Microneedling, face | £80 |
| Consultation on its own, deducted | £15 |
Or message me on WhatsApp, or call 07831 846273. I carry out every House of Glam HQ treatment personally, so the person who answers is the person holding the pen.
House of Glam HQ, 1A Auckland Road East, Southsea, Portsmouth PO5 2HA. Free street parking nearby. Open Tuesday 10am to 5pm, Wednesday 12pm to 7pm, Thursday to Saturday 10am to 4pm, closed Sunday and Monday. Clients come for this from Portsmouth, Southsea, Havant, Fareham, Gosport and across Hampshire.
If you are still working it out, there is more on what microneedling treats and every price I charge for it, on how long the redness actually lasts, and on what to do with postpartum skin before you book anything.
