Near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has emerged as a promising tool to evaluate vascular reactivity in vivo. Whether this approach can be used to assess age‐related impairments in microvascular function has not been tested. Tissue oxygen saturation () post‐occlusion recovery kinetics were measured in two distinct age groups (<35 and >65 years of age) using NIRS placed over the flexor digitorum profundus. Key end‐points included the following: (i) the desaturation rate during cuff occlusion; (ii) the lowest value obtained during ischaemia (); (iii)  reperfusion rate; (iv) the highest value reached after cuff release (); and (v) the reactive hyperaemia area under the curve (AUC). At first, using a conventional 5 min cuff occlusion protocol, the elderly participants achieved a much slower rate of oxygen recovery (1.5 ± 0.2 versus 2.5 ± 0.2% s⁻¹), lower (85.2 ± 2.9 versus 92.3 ± 1.5%) and lower reactive hyperaemia AUC (2651.8 ± 307.0 versus 4940.0 ± 375.8% s⁻¹). However, owing to a lower skeletal muscle resting metabolic rate, was also significantly attenuated in the elderly participants compared with the young control subjects (55.7 ± 3.5 versus 41.0 ± 3.4%), resulting in a much lower ischaemic stimulus. To account for this important difference between groups, we then matched the level of tissue ischaemia in a subset of young healthy participants by reducing the cuff occlusion protocol to 3 min. Remarkably, when we controlled for tissue ischaemia, we observed no differences in any of the hyperaemic end‐points between the young and elderly participants. These data highlight the important role NIRS can serve in vascular biology, but also establish the need for assessing tissue ischaemia during cuff occlusion protocols.