How to Get Rid of Acne Scars on Your Body

Body acne scars respond to many of the same treatments used on the face, but the chest, back, and shoulders present their own challenges. Skin on the trunk is thicker, heals under more mechanical tension, and is more prone to raised scarring than facial skin. That means the treatment strategy for body scars often looks different from a facial scar protocol, and some popular treatments work better than others depending on whether your scars are raised, depressed, or simply discolored.

Why Body Acne Scars Differ from Facial Ones

Acne hits the face, chest, and back at high rates because those areas are dense with oil glands. Roughly half to two-thirds of people with acne have trunk involvement alongside facial breakouts, and the combination tends to affect quality of life more than facial acne alone. The psychological burden gets worse as truncal acne severity increases, partly because people become self-conscious in situations where their torso is exposed.¹

The skin on your chest, upper back, and shoulders is structurally different from facial skin. It is thicker, sits over larger muscles, and experiences more stretching and movement. Scars that form in areas of greater mechanical tension, like the anterior chest, the scapular region, and the jawline, are more likely to become raised and thickened rather than pitted.² That is why the chest and upper back are hotspots for hypertrophic scars and keloids after acne, while the face more commonly develops the depressed, pitted variety.

Identifying What Kind of Scar You Have

Before choosing a treatment, you need to know which type of scar you are dealing with. Acne scars broadly fall into two categories: atrophic (indented) and hypertrophic or keloidal (raised).³ On the body, you may have one type, the other, or both. Among people who develop acne scars, roughly a quarter develop the raised, pathological kind, and this proportion climbs with more severe acne.²

Atrophic scars: These are depressions or pits in the skin where collagen was lost during healing. They are more common on the face but can appear on the back and shoulders too, particularly from deep cystic lesions.
Hypertrophic scars: Firm, raised scars that stay within the boundaries of the original acne lesion. They result from the body overproducing collagen during wound repair. Common on the chest and upper back.
Keloids: Similar to hypertrophic scars but they grow beyond the original wound edges and can continue expanding over months or years. The chest, shoulders, and upper back are among the most keloid-prone areas on the body.
Post-inflammatory marks: Dark spots or red patches that linger after a pimple heals. These are technically not scars, since the skin texture is flat, but they can last for months and are the most common reason people seek treatment after body acne.

The distinction matters because treatments that work well for depressed scars can make raised scars worse, and vice versa. A laser that helps resurface a pitted scar could trigger a keloid to grow if used on proliferative tissue.

Treating Raised Scars on the Chest and Back

Raised scars are the signature body acne scar problem. The front of the chest and the area around the shoulder blades are under constant tension from daily movement, which encourages excess collagen production during healing. The treatment toolbox for these scars is different from the one used for pitted scars.

Silicone sheets and gels are the most accessible first-line option. They work by covering the scar and keeping the wound bed hydrated, which appears to calm the overactive cells that drive scar thickening.⁴ One clinical study found that wearing a silicone sheet for at least four hours a day produced meaningful improvement in scar thickness.⁵ That said, a Cochrane systematic review of silicone sheeting for keloids specifically found the overall evidence to be very low certainty, with small studies and inconsistent results making it hard to draw firm conclusions.⁶ Silicone is cheap, widely available, and unlikely to cause harm, which is why dermatologists still recommend it as a starting point even while acknowledging the evidence is limited.

Intralesional corticosteroid injections are the workhorse for stubborn hypertrophic and keloid scars. A dermatologist injects a steroid directly into the scar tissue, which reduces collagen production and can flatten the scar over several sessions. This is one of the most well-established treatments for raised body scars and is often combined with other modalities.

Cryotherapy, where the scar is frozen with liquid nitrogen, is another option sometimes used alongside injections. For keloids that resist other treatments, surgical excision followed by adjuvant therapy (steroid injections, pressure garments, or radiation) is sometimes necessary, though keloids have a high recurrence rate after surgery alone.³ One thing to avoid: CO2 laser vaporization on proliferative raised scars. It carries a high rate of recurrence or worsening.⁷

Treating Depressed Scars on the Body

Atrophic scars on the body, while less common than on the face, do occur, especially on the upper back where deep cysts have healed. The same general approaches used for facial atrophic scars apply here, though treatment on the trunk can require more sessions because of the thicker skin.

Microneedling creates thousands of tiny punctures in the skin, triggering a controlled wound-healing response that generates new collagen. Research has shown that multiple sessions significantly increase collagen production in treated areas while also reorganizing existing scar tissue.⁸ It is considered relatively low-risk, with most side effects limited to temporary redness, swelling, and mild pain that resolves within a week.⁹

Fractional laser resurfacing is another strong option. A study using 1,550-nm fractional photothermolysis specifically included both facial and back acne scars and found that most patients achieved between 50% and 75% improvement, with five out of 29 patients seeing greater than 75% improvement.¹⁰ Fractional lasers work by creating tiny columns of thermal damage in the skin, leaving surrounding tissue intact so healing is faster than with traditional full-surface resurfacing. For moderate scars visible at a conversational distance, fractional devices are considered among the best options.¹¹

Subcision, where a needle or blade is inserted under the scar to break up the fibrous bands tethering it down, works well for rolling-type atrophic scars. It is sometimes combined with fillers or radiofrequency energy. One pilot study found that radiofrequency-assisted subcision combined with a collagen-stimulating filler was effective for rolling and ice-pick subtypes, though less so for boxcar scars.¹² Deep grade-4 scars that barely improve with resurfacing procedures can sometimes be addressed with punch excision, where the scar is physically cut out and the wound sutured or grafted.¹³

Dealing with Dark Marks and Redness

Many people who think they have acne scars on their body are actually dealing with post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation or post-inflammatory erythema. Hyperpigmentation shows up as dark brown or black flat patches, more common in people with darker skin tones, while post-inflammatory erythema appears as persistent pink or red marks, more noticeable in lighter skin.¹⁴ These marks can persist for months and are often more distressing to patients than the acne itself.

The good news is that post-inflammatory marks tend to fade on their own, though the timeline can stretch from several months to over a year on the body. You can speed this along with topical treatments containing ingredients like azelaic acid, niacinamide, vitamin C, or prescription-strength retinoids. Chemical peels using glycolic acid or salicylic acid have been shown to be safe and effective for both acne and acne scars, including in people with darker skin tones who are at higher risk for pigmentation complications.¹⁵

For persistent redness, pulsed dye lasers and intense pulsed light devices have been used to target the dilated blood vessels that cause the pink or red discoloration.¹⁶ These are most commonly performed on the face, but the same technology can be applied to chest and back erythema. Keep in mind that any laser or light treatment on the body typically requires more caution regarding post-treatment sun exposure on treated areas, which can be trickier to manage when the treatment site is your back or chest rather than a face you can easily shade with a hat.

Sun Protection and Its Underrated Role

Ultraviolet exposure has a complicated relationship with acne-scarred skin. You might notice that a sunburn or tan seems to temporarily make bumps less visible, but sun exposure drives both inflammatory and fibrotic responses in the skin. It also worsens hyperpigmentation and erythema, making dark marks and redness last longer.¹⁷ If you are actively treating body acne scars, unprotected sun exposure on those areas works against you.

Sunscreen on the chest is easy enough, but the back is harder to manage on your own. Spray sunscreens make it more practical to cover hard-to-reach areas. Clothing with UPF protection is another straightforward option for daily wear. The point is not to become a hermit but to recognize that consistent photoprotection makes every other scar treatment work better by preventing the UV-driven pigment darkening that undoes progress.

Can You Prevent Body Acne Scars from Forming?

The single most effective way to prevent acne scars is to treat the acne aggressively before it has a chance to cause deep tissue damage. Early intervention with prescription-strength therapies reduces scarring substantially. A controlled study of trifarotene, a topical retinoid, found that it significantly reduced the development of new atrophic scars compared to a placebo. At 24 weeks, the retinoid-treated areas had roughly twice the scar reduction compared to untreated areas, and the difference was detectable as early as two weeks.¹⁸ Trifarotene is specifically designed for both facial and truncal acne, making it particularly relevant for body scar prevention.

Beyond prescription retinoids, the basics matter: avoid picking, squeezing, or mechanically irritating body acne. The friction from backpack straps, tight clothing, and sports equipment over active breakouts is a common aggravator on the trunk. Keep breakout-prone areas clean, but do not scrub aggressively. Gentle cleansing with a benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid body wash can help manage active lesions before they progress to the scarring stage.

Adding PRP to Professional Treatments

Platelet-rich plasma, drawn from your own blood and concentrated, has become a popular add-on to microneedling and laser treatments. The idea is that the growth factors in the plasma boost the skin’s healing and collagen production beyond what the procedure alone achieves. An overview of systematic reviews found that combining PRP with microneedling or laser therapy led to significantly better clinical improvement and higher patient satisfaction compared to the same procedures without PRP.¹⁹

A split-face study comparing microneedling plus PRP against microneedling plus botulinum toxin found significant improvement on both sides, with no clear statistical winner between the two combinations, though both outperformed microneedling alone based on historical comparisons.²⁰ PRP adds cost per session, and most of the research has been on facial scars, so the evidence for body-specific use is still catching up. But the general direction of the data suggests it is a reasonable upgrade if you are already investing in a professional procedure.

At-Home Devices and Their Limits

Consumer-grade derma rollers and microneedling pens have become widely available. They use shorter needles than professional devices and penetrate less deeply. For post-inflammatory dark marks and very shallow texture irregularities, they can help with product absorption and mild stimulation. But for established atrophic scars or raised hypertrophic tissue, they are unlikely to produce meaningful results. The depth of needling required to reach the mid-dermis, where scar remodeling happens, exceeds what at-home devices safely deliver.

Safety is the bigger concern with home devices. Professional microneedling has a well-documented safety profile: the most common events are temporary redness, swelling, and mild pain lasting up to a week. Persistent serious side effects, though uncommon, include lasting hyperpigmentation, track-mark scarring, and granulomatous reactions. Risk factors for complications include active skin infections, darker skin, and metal allergies.²¹ With professional treatments, a trained provider can manage needle depth, sterility, and patient selection to minimize these risks. At home, the margin for error is larger. Rolling a non-sterile device over inflamed or infected skin can make scarring worse rather than better.

If you want to try at-home microneedling, keep the needle length short (no more than 0.5 mm), sterilize the device before each use, and do not use it over active breakouts or broken skin. For anything deeper, see a professional.

How Skin Tone Affects Treatment Choices

Darker skin tones face a double challenge with body acne scars. Post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation is more common and more pronounced in people with Fitzpatrick skin types III through VI, and the marks left behind are often more visible and longer-lasting than the original acne.¹⁴ On top of that, certain treatments carry a higher risk of causing additional pigment changes in darker skin. Aggressive laser resurfacing, deep chemical peels, and even microneedling performed too aggressively can trigger the very hyperpigmentation they are meant to address.

Chemical peels have been studied specifically in populations with darker skin and found to be generally safe and effective when the peel type and concentration are matched appropriately.¹⁵ Surgical approaches like punch excision have also been evaluated in skin of color and remain viable for deep scars that do not respond to resurfacing.¹³ The key is working with a provider experienced in treating your skin type, because the same device at the same settings can produce good results on one person and lasting discoloration on another.

Realistic Timelines and Expectations

Body acne scar treatment is slow. Even the most effective professional treatments require multiple sessions spaced weeks apart, and the collagen remodeling process continues for months after the last session. A typical microneedling or laser protocol might involve three to six sessions over several months, with continued improvement for up to a year afterward. Post-inflammatory dark marks, if left untreated, can take six months to two years to fully resolve on their own.

No single treatment erases scars completely. The realistic goal is significant improvement, not perfection. That fractional laser study mentioned earlier, where most patients achieved 50% to 75% improvement, represents a genuinely good outcome.¹⁰ Combination approaches, like microneedling followed by PRP, or subcision followed by filler, tend to outperform single modalities. Raised scars often require ongoing management because keloids in particular can recur even after successful treatment.

For many people, the trunk is actually easier to treat in one respect: you can cover it while it heals. Post-treatment redness, peeling, and sensitivity are easier to hide under a shirt than on your face, which can make the social downtime of aggressive treatments more manageable. The tradeoff is that body skin is slower to respond, may require higher treatment intensity, and heals in an environment with more friction and sweat. Discussing a multimodal plan with a dermatologist who can assess your specific scar types, skin tone, and goals is the most efficient path to visible improvement.

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