If your skin is crying for help but you’re too tired to care, the best red light therapy masks are the easiest fake-it-’til-you-make-it hack around. You might have seen a wave of people on social media channeling their best Hannibal Lecter while wearing an LED device—like our top pick, the CurrentBody LED Face Mask Series 2 ($470)—with red or blue light-emitting diodes. They’re not sipping Chianti, but instead claiming that the wrinkles and fine lines on their faces have disappeared with the help of red light therapy. There’s nothing wrong with aging (duh), but after seeing their huge rise in popularity, we had to find out if the “anti-aging” technology behind these masks could make a big impact on your skin.
You can’t get the same effect with just any red LED from the hardware store. If the wavelength isn’t strong enough, it won’t penetrate your skin—sorry to the one TikTokker sitting in front of a chicken coop heat lamp. After talking to dermatologists and testing several at-home devices, we’ve rounded up the best red light therapy masks for every skin condition, budget, and lifestyle.
For more self-care and wellness recommendations, check out our guides to the Best Electric Toothbrushes, Best Hair Dryers, and Best Sunscreens.
The Best Red Light Therapy Masks
Updated June 2025: We’ve added the Solawave Wrinkle Retreat Light Therapy Face Mask as an honorable mention. We’ve also updated prices and links.
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Best Red Light Therapy Mask Overall
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Courtesy of CurrentBody
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Courtesy of CurrentBody
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
CurrentBody
LED Face Mask Series 2
The CurrentBody LED Face Mask Series 2 is almost an in-between of a soft and firm mask. It also comes with a more secure strap, with each side shaped like a U rather than a single strap, making it much easier to securely wrap around my head. This mask I can wear and walk around if I’d like, without worrying about it easily slipping off, and the attached remote even has a little clip on it to hook it to your body.
This mask only has a red light mode, though it does have three red light wavelengths, while most others only have two: red (633 nanometers), near-infrared (830 nanometers), and what CurrentBody calls deep near-infrared (1072 nanometers). CurrentBody says the deep near-infrared lights are designed to target areas that will have more signs of aging, though you can’t tell a difference in the lights just by looking at the lit-up mask.
It also has more LED bulbs in it than most other masks, with 236 LED bulbs in total. It’s a powerful mask, but I didn’t see much different results than I did from the cheaper LED Esthetics, once again seeing my acne clear up quickly with fewer scars left behind and a good glow to my skin. It was noticeably more comfortable and easier to wear around the house, so if you’re looking for a red light-only mask you can multitask while wearing, the CurrentBody Series 2 is a great choice. —Nena Farrell
Best Cooling LED Face Mask
Courtesy of Shark
Shark
CryoGlow Red Blue and Infrared iQLED Face Mask and Under Eye Cooling
The Shark CryoGlow (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is one of the newest LED masks on the market and is a great choice for newcomers since it holds your hand through the process. There are two main programs to follow—Blemish Repair, which uses a combination of blue light (415 nm), infrared, and red LED (630-830 nm) for eight minutes, and Better Aging, which uses just infrared and red LED for six minutes. It’s recommended to follow one program daily for eight weeks, switching to the four-minute Skin Sustain program afterward to maintain the best results. It comes with a handy controller that counts down your time remaining and also tracks your progress, plus the mask has a party trick of cooling under-eye pads that can be used in combination with the LEDs or on their own, to soothe puffiness.
During my eight weeks, I noticed patches of perioral dermatitis clear up much quicker than they usually would, and my skin looked plumper and more glowy. Most interesting, though, was going to an aesthetician who scanned the layers of my skin beneath the epidermis before and after the program—it found I had considerably less inflammation and pigmentation after eight weeks, plus improved fine lines to boot. —Verity Burns
