The lighter, longer days have put a spring in everyone's step but for women, summer brings an unwelcome downside - a more intensive hair removal regime.

Julia Roberts may have once revealed that at times she likes to remain au natural, when she flashed her astonishingly hairy armpits at the premiere of the film Notting Hill in 1999, but as the resulting media furore revealed, hairiness is considered deeply unfeminine.

Women may have achieved the vote in the 1920s, burned their bras in the 1960s and had a more liberal approach to sex in the 1990s, but hairiness is still one of the last taboos.

Studies show 99 per cent of UK women regularly remove some hair from some part of their body, with the underarms, legs, pubic area and eyebrows the areas most commonly targeted for shaving, plucking or waxing. In fact, so keen are women to remove unwanted hair that they spend more than £300 million a year on products to do so.

The joke among British women is that a bit of fuzz on the legs provides a much-needed extra layer of insulation in winter.

But with peak time for hair-stripping efforts fast approaching in the shape of summer, is there anything we can do to remove hair permanently?

Destination Skin (formerly White Light Skin Clinics) has pioneered a form of permanent hair reduction in the UK using intense pulsed light (IPL) therapy. The therapy, which was launched first in America, can also be used to treat thread veins, pigmentation problems, acne and other skin complaints.

It works by using a broad spectrum of light, emitted in short pulses, which travels down the hair to the follicle and destroys the cells responsible for hair growth.

Destination Skin, which is based in Swindon and has salons in Bristol and Cheltenham, is wary of promising truly permanent hair removal (hormonal changes, among other factors, could scupper that) but you should see dramatically reduced hair regrowth.

Indeed, some women describe the therapy as life-changing, particularly for those who suffer from distressing facial hair, whether caused by hormonal changes as we age or conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome.

"Having hair-free areas without that constant need to shave or wax saves so much time and worry," says Ella Tracey, Destination Skin's managing director. "The treatment is perfectly safe and can be used in even the most sensitive areas such as the bikini line and chest, and there is no damage to the surrounding skin."

It's not only women who are queuing up to get their embarrassingly hairy areas defuzzed. Quite a number of men, too, feel shamed by a gorilla-like chest or back.

There are three downsides to IPL, however: it's not cheap, it's not quick and it can't be used on suntanned or burned skin because the treatment reacts to dark pigmentation. That doesn't matter too much if you're having IPL on a part of your body that rarely sees the light. But if you want to treat an area you'd usually expect to bare, now is a good time to embark on a course.

Individual IPL treatments can be done in your lunch hour but you generally need a minimum of six sessions, each requiring an interval of several weeks, in order to catch all the hair at the right stage of growth.

Elaine Quantrill, manager of Destination Skin's Cheltenham salon, explains that hair goes through a three-stage cycle: "IPL treatment is only effective when the hair is in the growing phase and only about 30 per cent of hairs are in the growing phase at any given time."

Destination Skin sessions start at £34 for the upper lip, £65 for the underarm, £170 for the lower legs and £250 for the chest or stomach, but multiplying this by six boosts the price to £204, £390, £1,020 and £1,500 respectively.

You can achieve some savings by opting for packages (top tip: you're most likely to get the best deals in summer when people don't want to have treatments because of the need to stay as pale as possible).

Destination Skin is currently offering a package of upper lip and chin treatments for £355 instead of the usual price of £443, and a bikini body package of bikini line and underarms for £660 instead of £825. A man's chest and back package is £1,960 instead of £2,450.

Seduced by the idea of never having to shave my underarms again, when Destination Skin invited me to try the treatment for myself, I leapt at the chance.

It was surprisingly painless; each pulse of light, directed through the nozzle, produced a sharp but brief sensation of localised heat which Elaine aptly described as being "flicked with an elastic band".

Afterwards, I had to apply soothing aloe vera gel and keep away from soaps and perfumes for 24 hours but there was no lingering discomfort at all.

The result? I only had three treatments but my armpits are distinctly less hairy than they used to be, and I need to shave far less often.

Budget allowing, I'd definitely consider IPL for other areas such as my legs or bikini line. And, should the need ever arise in future, I'd have no hesitation in paying any amount of money to get facial fuzz zapped for good.

Visit www.destinationskin.com. For the Bristol clinic, call 0117 370 1300, and for the Cheltenham clinic, call 01242 529 415.