The Best Skincare Advice I Received

The best skincare advice helps you understand why something is helpful or unhelpful so that it brings value to the products you already invested in or makes you more informed to find something else. The following tips are really helpful in building a skincare routine and allowing your products to do what they need to do.

 

Consistency is one of the most preached skincare tips - and for good reason! Too many times we start using a new product and then lose steam or don’t see immediate results so we get out of the habit. Creating routines will help you see results faster, maintain a healthy skin barrier, and help you be able to instinctively understand what your skin needs. 

 

We wrote an entire blog post about cleansing and how it is the building block of your routine - you can read more here. When people come into the shop and talk about feeling like their skin is extra dry or they are breaking out more than usual or their products aren’t working as effectively as they once did, the first thing to evaluate is if your cleanser is thoroughly cleansing and also leaving your skin in a proper state to layer more products. If your cleanser is too harsh, your skin will feel dry and tight after rinsing and you may notice redness and sensitivity. This is leaving your skin stripped of moisture and vulnerable to reacting negatively to the rest of your routine. If your cleanser is not thoroughly cleansing enough, product or extra oils that linger on your face can harbor bacteria and your skin can start breaking out.

 

Skincare serums and exfoliants promise a lot of things - how can you tell if it’s doing what you want it to do? Always, always, always follow the instructions on the product. They will often give you clues on when in your routine to use the product, if your skin should be damp or dry, and how long to keep it on/how often to use it. It is always a good rule of thumb to allow the product to have time before and after application to interact with your skin - this especially applies for exfoliating acids, retinol agents, and vitamin c. The reason for this is because these products have differing pH balances, which is good and helpful, but the concern is not mixing the products too quickly as to destabilize the formula.

 

In the early 2000s it was very popular for skincare brands to promote ‘oil-free’ products to avoid breakouts. While it had begun with the best intentions, it started a trend of demonizing oil in skincare which arguably caused more issues for the health of our skin. The fear of breaking out would stop people from properly moisturizing or moisturizing at all. Individuals who deal with the overproduction of oil (often have blackheads and whiteheads, enlarged pores, less fine lines and wrinkles) can benefit from moisturizers with less oil content, but they still need hydration in order to help regulate the oil production. The oil in moisturizers most commonly act as occlusives, which is a function that helps our skin retain hydration for longer periods of time. This is especially helpful for the health of our moisture barrier and prevents our skin from over-producing oil to compensate for lack of hydration.

If you have questions about your routine, send us a note through our skincare consultation form!