Techniques
Every hair transplant works on the same proven principle. Follicles are taken from the back and sides of the head, where the hair is genetically resistant to thinning, and planted where they are needed, and they keep that resistance for good. The techniques differ in how the hair comes out of the donor area and how it goes into the recipient area.
FUE and FUT differ in extraction and leave different kinds of donor scar. DHI differs in placement. Sapphire FUE changes the blade, and unshaven FUE leaves your hair long. Body hair transplant extends the donor to other parts of the body. Once grown, the hair looks the same whichever route it took.
So alongside the technique, the things that shape your result are how much donor hair you have, who designs the hairline, how carefully the grafts are handled, and keeping the surrounding hair healthy with medication. Get those right and the technique choice usually becomes clear, because the technique mostly decides what the back of your head looks like afterwards.
Who techniques is for
Anyone whose loss has stabilised, who has enough donor hair to work with, and who wants to move permanent hair to where it makes the most difference. Stability matters most, because a plan designed around a settled pattern stays looking right as you age.
Age is the guide surgeons use for stability. Under thirty with a strong family history, a transplant still works, but the pattern may not yet show its final shape, so most careful surgeons suggest finasteride first and design with the future in mind.
Donor supply sets the budget, roughly 6,000 to 8,000 grafts in a lifetime for most people and less for some. It does not regrow, so a good plan spends it where it does the most good.
Diffuse thinning that includes the donor area needs a careful assessment first, and scarring alopecias need a dermatologist before a surgeon.
Before your first consultation
Photograph your head from the front, both sides and directly above, in flat daylight, and repeat it every three months for a year. Loss is too slow to see in a mirror, and a year of your own photographs is the clearest evidence of whether it is stable.
Choosing between them
For most people the choice is between FUE and FUT, and it comes down to one question that has nothing to do with hair quality. How short will you ever wear the back of your head? Shorter than a number three, and a linear scar will show, which rules out FUT. Longer, and FUT is genuinely on the table and brings real advantages in yield.
The second question is how many grafts you need. A large case wanting 3,500 grafts in one sitting favours a strip, taken from the densest part of the donor. A moderate case of 2,000 does not need it.
DHI is not a third option in the same sense. It is FUE with an implanter pen instead of forceps, it has genuine advantages for dense packing and for planting among existing hair, and it usually costs more. A good clinic will show you exactly where it helps on your scalp.
Body hair transplant is for later rather than a first case, when you want more coverage than the scalp donor can provide. And repair refines or corrects an earlier transplant.
Where surgeons genuinely differ is graft counts and hairline position, not technique. Two good surgeons might quote 2,200 and 3,000 for the same head and both have a case. The best plan is usually the one that explains clearly how it uses your donor supply and what it keeps in reserve.
When you have two quotes
Compare the graft counts and the hairline drawings before you compare the prices. Two quotes for different operations are not comparable, and the number of grafts a clinic proposes says more about how they will treat your donor supply than any price does.
The techniques procedures
Every technique here builds on the same foundation. Read FUE first even if you think you want something else, since it is the baseline the others refine or extend.
Unshaven and sapphire FUE are refinements of FUE, one for discretion and one for dense packing. Body hair transplant extends the donor supply, and repair refines or corrects an earlier transplant. Scalp micropigmentation sits last because it is not surgery at all. I think it is the most underused tool in the field, alone or behind a transplant.
Techniques
FUE Hair Transplant
An FUE transplant where each follicular unit is punched out of the donor area individually and replanted in the thinning area. It leaves scattered pinpoint scars rather than a line, which is why most people choose it.
Best for: anyone who wants to wear their hair short at the back, or needs fewer than about 3,000 grafts
- Scar
- Hundreds of pinpoint dots across the donor area; invisible at a number two and above
- Sensation
- Numbness and itching in both areas for weeks to a few months
- Back to work
- 5–10 days
- Typical cost
- $8,000–$20,000
FUT Hair Transplant
A strip transplant where a band of scalp is removed from the back of the head and dissected under microscopes into individual grafts. It yields more grafts per session than FUE and leaves a single linear scar.
Best for: anyone who wears their hair long enough to cover a line and needs a lot of grafts
- Scar
- One horizontal line across the back of the head, hidden by hair of about a number four or longer
- Sensation
- Numbness above the donor scar is common for months and occasionally permanent
- Back to work
- 7–14 days
- Typical cost
- $7,000–$18,000
DHI Hair Transplant
A DHI transplant, which is an FUE in which grafts are placed with an implanter pen that makes the incision and inserts the graft in one movement. It is a placement method rather than a distinct operation.
Best for: dense packing at the hairline, or planting into an area with existing hair
- Scar
- Pinpoint dots across the donor area, exactly as in FUE
- Sensation
- Numbness and itching in both areas for weeks to a few months
- Back to work
- 5–10 days
- Typical cost
- $10,000–$25,000
Body Hair Transplant
A transplant that harvests follicles from the beard, chest or another body site instead of the scalp. It extends a spent donor supply, and the hair keeps its own texture and growth cycle wherever it is planted.
Best for: someone out of scalp donor who needs bulk behind an existing hairline, or scar camouflage
- Scar
- Pinpoint dots across the donor site, on the beard, chest or both
- Sensation
- Numbness and itching at both sites; beard donor areas are more tender than scalp
- Back to work
- 7–14 days
- Typical cost
- $10,000–$25,000
Unshaven FUE
An FUE transplant done without shaving the head, either by trimming only the hairs being taken or by clipping hidden strips under longer hair. It brings the same permanent result as standard FUE with almost none of the visible giveaway in the first fortnight.
Best for: anyone who cannot be seen with a shaved head, women, and small to moderate cases up to roughly 2,000 grafts
- Scar
- Pinpoint dots in the donor area, hidden under the hair you kept
- Sensation
- Numbness and itching in both areas for weeks to a few months
- Back to work
- 2–5 days
- Typical cost
- $7,000–$18,000
Sapphire FUE
A sapphire FUE is a standard FUE in which the recipient incisions are made with a blade of synthetic sapphire instead of steel. The blade gives fine, smooth, consistent slits, which helps a skilled surgeon pack grafts closely with minimal trauma.
Best for: anyone having FUE who wants dense frontal packing, and who has chosen the surgeon first
- Scar
- Pinpoint dots across the donor area, the same as any FUE
- Sensation
- Numbness and itching in both areas for weeks to a few months
- Back to work
- 5–10 days
- Typical cost
- $8,000–$20,000
Revision
Repair and Revision
A repair that corrects a previous transplant: removing badly placed grafts, redesigning a hairline, camouflaging donor damage and adding coverage. It works with a donor supply already partly spent.
Best for: anyone living with a transplant that looks wrong, or a donor area damaged by one
- Scar
- Existing scars, plus new pinpoint dots wherever grafts are excised or harvested
- Sensation
- Numbness in reworked areas; scarred scalp is often less sensitive already
- Back to work
- 7–14 days
- Typical cost
- $12,000–$35,000
Without surgery
Scalp Micropigmentation
Scalp micropigmentation, or SMP, places thousands of tiny pigment dots in the scalp to mimic hair follicles. It creates the look of a close shave with a sharp hairline, or adds the impression of density behind longer hair, without spending any donor hair.
Best for: extensive loss, limited donor supply, scars to camouflage, or more apparent density behind a transplant
- Scar
- None. A good result reads as hair follicles, not ink
- Sensation
- Some redness and tenderness for a day or two after each session
- Back to work
- 1–2 days per session
- Typical cost
- $1,500–$5,000
Techniques recovery
Recovery is essentially the same whichever technique you choose, because everything after extraction is identical. Two weeks of scabs and redness in the recipient area, swelling that often drops into the forehead on days two to four, and grafts that are not securely anchored until about day ten.
Then comes the shed. At three to six weeks the transplanted hairs fall out. This shedding is expected, and the follicles stay in place ready to grow, though the area can look thinner for a few weeks. New growth starts around month three, and the result is ready to judge at nine to twelve months, or eighteen for body hair.
The technique-specific differences are small. A strip donor is tight and sore for a fortnight and has sutures to remove; an FUE donor is not. An unshaven DHI case looks presentable much sooner. None of that changes the twelve-month timetable.
Techniques cost
Almost everyone prices by the graft, which makes the graft count the number to interrogate. A quote is a price per graft multiplied by a count that the clinic chose, so a higher total can mean a more expensive clinic or a more generous plan with your donor supply, and you cannot tell which without asking.
Expect roughly $4 to $8 per graft in the US, a little less in the UK, and a third to a half of that in Turkey, Thailand and India, where flat packages are the norm. DHI carries a premium of twenty to forty per cent at most clinics that offer both.
Lower prices usually reflect local costs and how a clinic is staffed, often with technicians doing much of the operation under the surgeon's direction. That can work very well with an experienced team, so know which model you are choosing. Ask who performs each stage. Good clinics answer readily, at every price point.
No public health system or insurer funds cosmetic hair restoration, so all of this is self-pay. Budget too for the medication that protects your result, which is modest month to month and worth including in the plan from the start.
Where it fits
Medication first, surgery second. If the loss is active, finasteride or an alternative needs to be established and working before anyone operates, ideally with a year or two of evidence behind it. A transplant moves hair rather than treating the loss itself, so medication is what keeps the surrounding hair in step with the grafts and the result looking natural for years.
Within surgery, the front comes before the crown. The hairline and frontal third do most of the work of framing a face, the crown can take a very large number of grafts, and treating the front first gives the most visible return on your donor supply.
Second sessions are normal and are planned at twelve months once the first has grown out. Anything sooner is guessing.
Eligibility
Hair restoration has no referral system, letters or waiting list, so you decide when you are ready.
That makes the surgeon's judgement the key safeguard, so choose for it. A good surgeon designs for your long-term pattern, suggests medication first if your loss is still active, and is clear about what your donor supply can cover. Who a transplant suits sets out the criteria a careful surgeon applies, so you can go into a consultation knowing where you stand.
Clinics that do techniques
Compared side by side in 8 Best Hair Transplant Clinics in Thailand.
Frequently asked questions
Which technique is best?
The one that fits your head. FUE for anyone who wears their hair short, FUT for large cases on longer hair, DHI as a placement tool for dense packing. See choosing between them.
How many grafts will I need?
A hairline and frontal third is commonly 2,000 to 2,500 and a crown as much again, against a lifetime supply of roughly 6,000 to 8,000. See who it's for.
Is a transplant permanent?
Yes, the moved hair is permanent. Medication looks after the hair around it, which is why the two work best together. See sequence.
When will it look right?
Nine to twelve months, after an expected shed at three to six weeks. See recovery.
Is it worth going abroad?
It can be very good value. What matters most is not the country but who performs the operation, so ask it everywhere. See cost.
Thinking about a transplant?
The Start Here guide shows you the order that gets the best result: what is causing your loss, how medication protects your hair, how much donor hair you have, and where a transplant makes the biggest difference.
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