Published Jun 18, 2026
13 minute read
Getting a facelift is a major choice. People spend a lot of time considering the procedure, planning for recovery, getting help at home, and waiting for swelling to go down so their face feels familiar again. Once they’re happy with the results, almost everyone asks the same question.
How do I keep it this way?
A facelift can lift deeper facial tissues, improve jowls, sharpen the jawline, and tighten sagging skin in your lower face and neck. It gives the face better contours and a fresher look, but it doesn’t stop your skin from aging. Facial muscles keep moving, collagen levels still change, and volume loss can still happen over time due to weight changes, hormones, or sun exposure.
At Coastline Plastic Surgery in Newport Beach, Dr. Brandyn Dunn takes a practical approach to facelift maintenance. Adding more treatments can only do so much when you’re not using them strategically. Here’s how to protect your results with the right care at the right time, so your face never looks overdone.
A facelift is strongest at improving deeper structural changes in the lower face and neck. That usually means jowls, jawline softness, loose skin, neck laxity, and facial tissues that have descended over time.
A facelift is less helpful for surface skin issues. It won’t erase every fine line, brown spot, sun damage, rough texture, or large pore. It also can’t stop new wrinkles from forming in areas that move a lot, like the forehead, crow’s feet, or frown lines.
Someone might love their facelift results but still see sun spots, acne scars, fine lines near the eyes, or rough skin, making them think the facelift didn’t work. It’s important to remember that a facelift only does what it implies: lifts the face. While you will look younger and noticeably refreshed, your skin still needs help of its own when it comes to blemishes and spots.
Good maintenance starts with understanding this difference. Facelift surgery can restore support, while non-surgical treatments help with changes that happen on the skin’s surface.
In the first few months after a facelift, it’s best not to worry about every little change. Swelling can change how your face looks, tissues may feel firmer, incisions might look pink, and numbness can make your skin feel a bit strange. This is all normal, your face just needs time to heal.
Dr. Dunn will let you know when it’s safe to start skin treatments, non-surgical options, injectables, and your usual routines again. Timing is important. Doing too much too early can make it harder to see your true results, especially while your face is still healing.
The main focus at first is recovery: protect your incisions, stay out of the sun, follow aftercare instructions, and let the swelling go down. You might feel ready for more treatments before your face is actually ready. Being patient really helps.
As you heal, it becomes easier to plan maintenance treatments. By then, it’s clear what the surgery has fixed, what still needs help with skin quality, and what is just part of normal healing.
A facelift doesn’t stop your facial muscles from moving, which is a good thing. Your face should still show expression. The challenge is that repeated movements can still create lines and wrinkles over time.
Neuromodulators, including Botox and similar treatments, can help smooth wrinkles caused by facial movement. These are the lines that show up when someone frowns, raises the brows, smiles, squints, or contracts certain neck muscles. Used well, they can help prevent dynamic wrinkles from forming or deepening.
After a facelift, neuromodulators can help in areas the surgery doesn’t address, like forehead lines, frown lines, crow’s feet, bunny lines, chin dimples, and some neck bands. The goal is to reduce muscle movement so the skin isn’t always folding in the same spots.
This is where Dr. Dunn’s knowledge of facial anatomy is important. Neuromodulator treatments after a facelift should be careful and precise. Using too much can make the upper face look different from the lower face, while too little might not help enough.
Most people see results from neuromodulators within a few days, and the effects last a few months. This makes them part of a regular maintenance routine, not a one-time fix. When done right, these treatments help keep expression lines from standing out too much.
Dermal fillers after a facelift need a light hand. A facelift repositions tissue, but it does not restore every area of lost volume. Some patients may still have hollowing at the temples, under the eyes, or around the mouth. Others may benefit from small adjustments to the chin, jawline, cheeks, or lips.
Filler injections can help in these situations, but they should work with your surgical results, not against them. Hyaluronic acid fillers can restore volume in specific spots, improve facial contours, and soften certain lines when volume loss is the main issue.
This is where using too much filler can be a problem. A face that’s already been lifted can start to look heavy or unnatural if too much filler is added to the cheeks, lower face, or around the mouth. Even with a good surgical result, overdoing maintenance can affect the outcome.
Dr. Dunn looks at the face as a whole. If volume has changed, he looks for where a little support would help the face look more balanced. Sometimes that means the temple, sometimes the area near the jowls, and sometimes it means waiting.
CO2 laser skin resurfacing treats a different part of aging than a facelift does. A facelift can improve the position of facial tissues and remove excess skin. Laser skin resurfacing works on the surface and quality of the skin.
Laser treatments can help improve fine lines, rough skin texture, acne scars, sun damage, age spots, pigmentation, and enlarged pores. Laser therapy can also stimulate collagen production, which can improve firmness and skin texture over time.
For a patient who has already had a facelift, this can be a great pairing. The surgery improves structure, while the laser improves the skin sitting over that structure.
Timing matters here, too. CO2 laser resurfacing has its own recovery. Patients can expect redness, swelling, peeling, and a sunburn-like feeling during the early healing period. Most people need about a week or more of visible downtime, depending on the intensity of the treatment, skin type, and areas treated.
Laser treatments also require careful sun protection. This is especially important in Newport Beach, where UV rays are basically everywhere, from driving, eating outside, walking by the water, playing golf or tennis, or spending time at the beach. Both treated skin and healing facelift scars need to be protected from the sun.
CO2 laser resurfacing shouldn’t be done on a whim. It needs to be planned around your healing, skin health, sun exposure, and how much downtime you can handle.
No one gets excited about sunscreen instructions. But, sun protection is one of the biggest factors in maintaining facelift results. UV radiation speeds collagen breakdown, worsens pigmentation, thins the skin over time, and can make scars darker or more noticeable while they are healing.
A facelift can reshape your lower face and neck, but your skin is still going to be facing the real world. In Southern California, that means a lot of sun exposure.
Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen with at least SPF 30 as part of your daily routine. Hats and shade help, and wearing protective clothing is important, especially if you’ll be outside for a while. Even quick errands, driving, walking to lunch, sitting by a window, or spending time outdoors all add up.
This becomes even more important after laser skin resurfacing, chemical peels, or any treatment that makes the skin more sensitive. Sun exposure at the wrong time can undo progress and create new pigmentation issues.
Medical-grade products can also help, depending on your needs. Retinol, vitamin C, pigment control products, and moisturizers that support your skin barrier can all be useful, but they should be added at the right time after surgery.
Facelift results can change as your body changes. Losing weight can reduce facial volume and make loose skin more obvious. Gaining weight can blur the jawline and neck. Rapid weight changes can alter your appearance, even if your surgery healed perfectly.
This is especially important now that more people use GLP-1 medications or lose significant weight later in life. The face can start to look thinner, cheeks may lose support, and loose skin can become more noticeable. Some people may benefit from fillers, fat grafting, laser treatments, or skin care. Others might just need to wait until their weight is stable before deciding on more treatments.
Healthy habits help your skin heal and stay strong. Eating a balanced diet with fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins gives your body what it needs to repair. Staying hydrated keeps your skin healthy. Getting enough sleep lets your skin recover. Avoid smoking, since nicotine hurts circulation and healing. Limiting alcohol also helps your skin overall.
These habits might not sound exciting, but they really do make a difference.
A good maintenance plan depends on making careful choices. More treatments don’t always lead to better results.
Some people run into problems by trying to fix every tiny line, shadow, or uneven spot. They add filler when their face just needs time, treat movement lines too aggressively, or pile on lasers, injectables, peels, and new skin care without a clear reason. This can end up looking more obvious than the aging they wanted to improve.
Facelift maintenance should protect your surgical results, not create a completely new look.
This is one of the reasons Dr. Dunn’s approach stays conservative. The best post-facelift care may include neuromodulators a few times a year, occasional dermal fillers in small amounts, laser skin resurfacing when the skin needs it, and a strong home skin care routine. It may also mean doing nothing for a while because the face is still healing or because the result looks good without extra help.
Maintenance should have a reason. If the reason is panic, pause.
The first three months are about healing. Swelling, bruising, tightness, numbness, scar redness, and tissue firmness can all be part of the process. Patients should focus on incision care, sun protection, follow-up visits, and following Dr. Dunn’s activity instructions.
This is not the time to judge every small detail. The face is still changing.
By this stage, many patients are starting to feel more like themselves. Swelling has improved, and the face is beginning to show a more accurate version of the result.
This may be the time to discuss skin care, scar care, and neuromodulator maintenance if Dr. Dunn clears it. Some patients may be ready for light touch-ups. Others may need more time.
Once the surgical result has matured further, skin-quality treatments may make more sense. CO2 laser resurfacing, chemical peels, or other non-surgical treatments can be considered for texture, fine lines, sun damage, scars, pigmentation, or roughness.
Filler may also be discussed if there is true volume loss that affects facial balance. The amount should usually be conservative, especially after a well-done facelift.
Long-term maintenance is usually a rhythm. Neuromodulators can be used as needed. Filler may be placed in small amounts when volume changes. Laser treatments can be planned around skin quality, sun exposure, and downtime. Skin care continues in the background.
The point is not to stay frozen at one age. It is to age from a better foundation and maintain optimal results without making the maintenance obvious.
Non-surgical facial rejuvenation can help improve skin quality, movement lines, pigmentation, texture, and small volume changes. It cannot fully correct significant recurrent tissue descent, heavy neck laxity, or major excess skin.
That distinction is important. If the concern is sun damage or fine lines, laser therapy or skin care may help. If the concern is a small volume shift, filler may be useful. If the deeper tissues have descended again, years after surgery, non-surgical treatments may only make a limited improvement.
This does not mean more surgery is automatically needed. It means the answer should be honest. Sometimes the right move is maintenance. Sometimes it is waiting. Sometimes it is a revision discussion years down the road.
Dr. Dunn’s facelift maintenance philosophy comes back to the same idea that guides the surgery itself: facial harmony. The face should look supported, balanced, and believable. That requires restraint.
Neuromodulators should preserve expression. Filler should be used in small, strategic amounts. Laser skin resurfacing should be timed around healing, skin type, and sun exposure. Skin care should support the result without overwhelming the patient with a cabinet full of products they will not use.
As a facial plastic surgeon, Dr. Dunn looks at maintenance through facial anatomy. He is not treating a line in isolation. He is looking at how the brow, eyes, cheeks, jawline, neck, skin quality, and facial volume work together.
That kind of personalized care matters after plastic surgery because the result has already changed the face. Maintenance has to respect that change. The wrong treatment in the wrong place can make a good surgical result look less natural. The right treatment can help patients enjoy a rejuvenated look for longer in real life.
Non-surgical treatments can help you keep your facelift results when used carefully and with a clear plan. Neuromodulators soften movement lines, fillers address small volume changes, and CO2 laser resurfacing improves skin texture and boosts collagen. Sun protection, healthy habits, and a steady skincare routine do the daily work in the background.
The best maintenance helps your facelift keep looking like it truly belongs to you, rested, balanced, and natural as time goes on.
