Abstract Owing to the increasing diversity of technological developments and to the resulting versatility of treatment options, the range of laser applications in dermatology has been expanding rapidly. A large variety of benign skin disorders originating from diverse epithelial, adnexal, vascular or other tissue elements, but also many disease-related or acquired cutaneous lesions as well as signs of aged skin or disorders of hair growth can be amenable to laser light treatment. In fact, modern laser technology does improve the majority of such cases either by means of appropriate wavelengths targeting vascular or pigmented lesions or by laser ablation widely utilized to superficially remove circumscribed disorders and moreover for skin resurfacing purposes mainly in photodamaged skin areas. As a consequence, we meanwhile face a broad number of potential indications in Dermatology. Nevertheless, also non-ablative skin rejuvenation techniques using intense pulsed light sources (IPL technology) or radiofrequency (RF) devices for a non-optical energy delivery as well as the introduction of photodynamic therapy have noticeably influenced today's concepts especially with regard to skin rejuvenation purposes.