The mirror makes a poor timekeeper. After a carbon dioxide laser session, the home task most readers take on is judging their own redness against a number they found somewhere. The safer job is smaller: follow your clinic's written instructions and call about anything they do not cover.
Why one healing number cannot be yours
Penn Medicine says the recovery time after laser skin resurfacing depends on the procedure type. A figure quoted on a forum may describe a different procedure from yours, so it cannot tell you whether your skin is on schedule. For the technique itself, NCBI PubMed Central (NIH) hosts Laser Resurfacing Pearls, a source for reading about laser resurfacing in the medical literature.
Clear cases and risky ones
The clear cases are small. Follow the written aftercare sheet, note the date of the session, and photograph your skin each day so you can show the clinic how it changes.
The risky cases involve guessing. Deciding from a stranger's timeline that your redness is late, or adding products because it lingers, are both guesses made without the facts of your procedure. Because recovery depends on the procedure type, the only fair comparison is with what your own clinic told you about your own procedure.
NCBI PubMed Central (NIH) also hosts Sequential Fractional CO2 and 1540/1570 nm Lasers: A Narrative Review of Preclinical and Clinical Evidence. It reviews evidence, and it does not set your timeline.
Other light treatments are not your timeline
A page about a different treatment, such as DermNet's page on intense pulsed light therapy (IPL, flashlamp), is about a different treatment, so it does not describe your own recovery.
The rule when you are unsure
Call the clinic that treated you. If your written instructions do not answer the question, the conservative move is to ask, not to wait and compare.