By Tatiana Boncompagni

Inspired by 2000s pop stars such as Gwen Stefani and Fergie, Alanah Pearce overplucked her eyebrows in high school. In the years that followed, the Los Angeles-based writer and actress tried, unsuccessfully, to fix her "uneven, patchy" arches with serums, makeup and semi-permanent tattoos. Then the 32-year-old heard about eyebrow transplants, a procedure that uses hair from the back of the head to thicken brows.

Pearce, who was tired of having to struggle with brow powders and pencils in the morning, said she got a transplant in 2024 "out of laziness. I just wanted to be able to wake up and go." She said her new brows look natural and she spends less than 10 minutes getting ready. "Huge fan!"

According to plastic surgeons in Los Angeles and New York, eyebrow grafts are becoming more popular among women, especially those who overplucked in the 1990s and 2000s and want the full, fluffy look popular today. Celebrities such as model Chrissy Teigen and author Robin McGraw have publicly raved about their transplants.

The procedure, performed under local anesthetic, can cost as much as $18,000. It's a mostly painless procedure that comes with some swelling and bruising. When done well, the results are natural and permanent (though sometimes touch-ups are needed years later).

There's just one catch: The transplanted hairs grow much faster than regular eyebrows -- not to mention indefinitely -- so they need weekly trimming.

According to RealSelf, a digital platform where consumers search for providers of aesthetic services, page views of eyebrow transplant-related content grew nearly 10-fold from 2022 to 2024. Dr. Jason Champagne, a facial plastic and hair restoration surgeon in Los Angeles, said interest in brow transplants tripled four years ago, when celebrities started talking openly about the procedure. That "helped bring the conversation into the mainstream," said Champagne, who has given new brows to Teigen and the actress Meagan Good.

Eyebrow transplants date back to the early 1900s, when doctors harvested "strips" of hair from a donor site on the scalp and grafted them onto the eyebrows. In the 1990s, doctors switched to the follicular unit transplantation $(FUT)$ method, which involved implanting very small groups of follicles. Today surgeons typically use follicular unit extraction $(FUE)$: harvesting and implanting individual hairs. The results are more consistent and organic-looking, said Dr. Norman Rowe, a plastic surgeon with offices in New York, New Jersey and Palm Beach, Fla.

Dr. Marc Dauer, a hair restoration surgeon in Los Angeles and New York, charges $16,000 to $18,000 for transplants. He uses an "implanter pen" first developed in Korea, but most doctors work with a team of technicians who use jewelers' forceps. After the surgery, patients can't touch their eyebrows or wash their face properly for one week. Depending on the technique used, at least half of the 200 to 375 grafted hairs fall out within six weeks, and if the surgery is successful, they begin to grow back in three to four months (in the meantime, patients use powder or pencils to fill in their brows). According to Dauer, 70-90% of transplanted hairs "take," with some grafts failing because of previous scars or underlying medical conditions.

Melissa Zapin, 52, a baker in Los Angeles, spent $25,000 on two eyebrow grafts with Dauer. (The second "touch up," several years later, added density.) She said the surgeries didn't hurt, though "it's annoying that you can't touch your brows. I looked like a monster for [a] few days the first time, but the second time I had no swelling." She loves the natural results. "Dr. Dauer gave me back my eyebrows, the ones I had when I was 19, before I started plucking them into oblivion."

Achieving a natural look can be tricky because of the way brows grow. The hairs closest to the nose slant upward, while those in the center of the brow follow more of a "crosshatched" pattern. During a transplant, follicles are placed to mimic organic growth patterns, and at an angle so that they "lie flat against the skin," said Dr. Jeff Epstein, a facial plastic and hair restoration surgeon in Coral Gables, Fla. whose brow restorations cost $15,000 to $18,000.

About 15% to 20% of Epstein's transplants are revision cases to correct bungled transplants, many of which he said were done in Turkey. (Brow transplants can cost roughly $3,500 in Turkey, an international hot spot for cheaper hair-restoration procedures.) "They think because the doctor knows how to do a hair transplant, they can do eyebrows as well," said Epstein, but he called brow grafts "a significantly more aesthetically challenging procedure."

Surgeons carefully select eyebrow-like hairs from the back of the head. Because brow hairs are relatively straight, the procedure is trickier when patients have curly hair or tight coils, said Epstein. And those with gray hair may need to dye their transplanted brows.

The never-ending trimming is a major drawback. Dr. Ben Paul, a facial plastic and hair restoration surgeon in Manhattan, counsels patients to seriously consider this before signing up. "Even the finest hairs from the nape of the neck are not eyebrow hairs. These are hairs that could grow down to your feet left unattended," said Paul. Most of his would-be eyebrow patients ultimately decide against the surgery for this reason.

But Pearce, the writer and actress, remains undaunted by the upkeep, using a small pair of eyebrow scissors for trims. "I like to make jokes about how if I ever end up in a coma I might be able to braid my eyebrows right back into my hair."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 29, 2026 18:30 ET (23:30 GMT)

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