Use Nair to Remove Hair From a Necklace

I found myself googling “how to get hair out of a necklace” this week after becoming frustrated with the little clumps and knots of hair that dot the chain of my everyday necklace. The chain gets stuck in the little hairs at the nape of my neck, pulling on them until I absentmindedly reach back there and yank it off—which doesn’t pull the hairs off the chain, but rather pulls them off my head. Sometimes, longer strands also get wound around the chain, which is simply the reality of, well, hair. I’ve tried pulling the hairs off, but it never works; they’re too small and tightly wound around the also-tiny chain.

Use Nair to remove hair from a necklace

I set about googling a solution and found suggestion after suggestion to use a pumice stone to remove the hair. I don’t have a pumice stone lying around and I also resent having to do that much manual labor, so I kept searching until I found a hack that would be accessible and easy, using something I could easily grab from the drug store and not have to put any elbow grease into. Finally, I found a suggestion so obvious that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner: Nair. But does it work?

Like most women, I’ve had my run-ins with Nair, but some moderate successes, too. In my youth, I burned myself with it once, but those days are over and I’m smarter, wiser, and safer these days. I grabbed some Nair Body Cream ($5.99) from my bathroom and ran to the store to get another kind, just to see if there might be a difference. I picked up the Flamingo Facial Hair Removal Cream ($7.99). I’ve never used a facial hair remover—of all my lots in life, facial hair just isn’t one of them—but it’s supposed to be gentler than the one you slap on your legs, so I figured it might be better for the chain (although possibly less effective on the hairs themselves).

Nair to take hair off jewelry: Does it work?

The bottle of facial-hair remover told me it shouldn’t be left on more than 10 minutes; the Nair bottle said the same thing. I put the pendant of my necklace in the center of the chain and spread it across a paper towel, then applied Nair to the right of the charm and Flamingo to the left.

I left it alone for 10 minutes, but scratched at the hair periodically. When 10 minutes were up, I really scratched, using my fingernails and the paper towel to pull off the hair. It came off easily, in gooey clumps, but the Nair side did much, much better. On the side where I used facial hair remover, about half the hair came off, so I think with a second application, I’d be able to get it all.

Be advised that hair remover cream often contains thioglycolate, which can tarnish silver. That ingredient was listed third for the Nair and fourth for the Flamingo, so you may want to choose a facial hair remover if you’re worried about tarnishing. My necklace is sterling silver, so it could easily tarnish, but after inspecting it, it doesn’t look like it got that bad.

A final note: Make sure you rinse the chain well after doing this so you’re not accidentally rubbing Nair along the base of your neck all the time.