A lot of guys treat the hot towel shave as an indulgence — something you add on for a special occasion, not something worth doing regularly. Once you understand what the hot towel is actually doing to your skin and beard before the razor ever touches you, it's easier to see it as maintenance, not luxury.
The hot towel isn't decorative. Applied before the shave, it opens your pores and softens both the beard hair and the top layer of skin, which is the single biggest factor in whether a straight-razor shave feels smooth or irritating. Shaving cold, dry skin and hair is why most guys associate razor shaves with irritation — the razor is doing more work than it should have to.
After the pre-shave towel, we work in a warm lather and go over the area with the straight razor, always with the grain first to minimize irritation, then against the grain on a second pass if your skin tolerates it (not everyone's does, and we'll tell you honestly if we think a second pass is a bad idea for you specifically).
The second hot towel, after the shave, does a different job — it closes the pores back down and calms the skin, which is why a proper hot towel shave doesn't leave you with the razor burn people associate with a rushed drugstore-razor shave at home. It's the bookend to the whole process, not an afterthought.
Marcus does most of our hot towel shaves and has a rule he follows for every new client: he checks your skin before your first shave for sensitivity or ingrown-hair-prone areas, because a straight razor on skin that's not ready for it is how people end up with a bad first impression of the whole service. Done right, on skin that's prepped for it, it's genuinely one of the more relaxing 30 minutes you can spend in a barber chair.