Look after your skin today
You’ll wear it everyday for the rest of your life.
Are you serious about looking after your skin?
Then a good skincare routine should be your new best friend.
Just think about what happens to leather shoes without being conditioned.
Hopefully you’ll see where I am heading with this, after all the last thing you want is your skin looking like toughened, tanned cowhide.
The point? Your delicate skin needs regular care and protection, to keep it fresh and youthful, it’s a fluid dynamic river of shifting conditions; that is influenced by emotions, environment, diet and lifestyle.
Below I’ll walk you through the holy grail of your skincare routine, to ensure optimal penetration of those active ingredients.
SKINCARE ROUTINE GUIDE
Before you begin, I advise determining your skin code, which will be the first step in your skincare routine.
START WITH A FRESH BASE
Cleansing your skin to remove surface dirt and oil, allows beneficial ingredients to absorb more effectively.
Opt for gentle cleansers. Miracle cleanse is a great place to start, that will keep your skin happy and balanced. The gorgeous bouquet of honeyed essences and phytonutrients, also means you get to kick start your day with a beautiful cleansing ritual.
Moist and warm equal’s absorption, so if your skin is warm it will absorb what you put on it much more efficiently, and the active ingredients will penetrate better when they are dissolved.
CAUTION: Avoid foaming cleansers that contain astringent surfactant’s that will strip your skin, and don’t be tempted to wash your face with hot water, because excessive heat can accelerate skin ageing.
GET THE GLOW
Exfoliants help to break down the build-up of keratin, again this will help ingredients penetrate deeper.
Do you love the idea of exfoliating but don’t know where to begin? Then head over to my glossary of articles on exfoliation, designed to help you reveal luminous, glowing skin.
CAUTION: Avoid scrubbing bubbles, harsh ingredients and exfoliating granules that are not totally spherical in shape can irritate your skin and cause tiny micro tears.
MOISTURISE & HYDRATE
Moisturising is a really important step of your skincare routine.
A good moisturiser will be formulated with ingredients, especially selected for your specific skin type.
Oily: Avoid heavy oily bases; an oil-free or mattifying moisturiser is ideal for this skin type.
Combination: Balance is important, so avoid adding anything excessively oily which will only add to shiny areas, a light weight lotion is ideal.
Dry skin: A cream cleanser rich in omega oils is great for treating a dry skin.
Sensitive skin: You want to calm, soothe and remove inflammation, so avoid irritating ingredients such as alcohol, fragrances, dyes, and preservatives.
SERUMS AREN’T A GIMMICK
Serums are often water based for instant absorption; the active ingredients of these potent formulas penetrate deep into the cellular layers.
We believe that your skin is a dynamic organ that is forever changing. Our serums referred to as skin shots, are designed to be customised with your moisturiser depending on what your skin requires at the time, treating different skin conditions from blemishes, fine lines, premature ageing, all the way through to an upset acid mantle and impaired barrier function.
SLIP SLAP SLOP
As silly as it sounds, these three simple steps could just save your life.
You need to let sunscreen be at the top of your daily skincare routine, to prevent sun damaged skin.
And remember, even on the cloudiest of days ultraviolet light is extremely strong, so make sure an SPF is your year-round beauty bag essential.
CAUTION: If your suffering from skin sensitivity keep your SPF factor low and reapply more often, because the higher the SPF the higher the chemicals.
YOUR EYES ARE WINDOWS
The skin around your eyes is thinner than anywhere else on the face, 2 mm to be exact, this is why you want to treat them like the delicate things they are.
Use a specifically formulated eye cream as part of your skincare routine, and no rubbing or pulling here.
CAUTION: Apply on top of the orbital bone and all the way around the eye.Check out this vogue video that will tell you how to apply it correctly.
BEAUTY SLEEP
Adding a serum or cream at night won’t make you immortelle, but it will certainly give your skin a healthy boost, working wonders while you sleep.
The time you sleep is the time your skin revives, this is when the skin does the bulk of its repairing, regenerating and restoring.
Therefore night serums and creams are focused on moisturising and recovery, containing slow absorbing ingredients that are designed to penetrate over the course of several hours.
A+ retinol complex is specifically formulated to help reverse signs of premature ageing while you sleep, when your skin requires it the most.
Don’t forget eye cream, it is equally important I find!
What products do you recommend?
Hi Emma
Thank you for your message. Whilst I rarely endorse products it’s more about how to care for your skin depending on the skin type or the condition, the information you can find here https://thenakedchemist.com/skin-code/. In saying that products I really like on the market are bio elements great for customisation found in both New Zealand and America and clear skincare products found in Australia and New Zealand i hope that helps
Nice information, thank you Samantha
A lovely well written skin sense article 10 our of 10 Samantha