When is Skincare Too Much? | How to De-Influence Your Skincare Routine
What Skincare is Needed for Healthy Skin?
All of our skin is unique, just as we are. Down to your genetic build-up, your skin cells will have a unique shape, unique receptors, produce different levels of different things and have its own needs and wants. Being human, however, we love to look to others to find out what the best thing is – but this can often lead to confusion and an incompatible skincare routine. It’s most important to remember that, chances are, you probably don’t need a fancy skincare routine.
A panel of dermatologists determined that the most important parts of a skincare routine comes down to 4 main pillars for success.
- Cleanser
- Moisturizer
- UV Protection
- Treatment
Cleanser
This is a good investment, even if you like a minimal routine. Aim for a natural, gentle and easy to repurchase formula. If you have oily skin, ensure you are using something with a little exfoliation (to help clear and minimize pores) and for dry skin use something gentle (anything coconut-based is a great investment!).
Moisturizer
This is fairly straightforward – give your skin a little cream to help seal and protect your skin barrier. It’s most important at nighttime, to prevent water loss overnight. It’s most important to find something compatible for your skin – so try something light (gel, barrier cream, hyaluronic acid) for oily skin and give something nourishing for dry skin (ceramides, shea butter, allantoin).
UV Protection
If you do nothing else; always, always wear sunscreen. It’s the most vital step for skin health. It helps seal your skincare routine and provides deep protection against a spectrum of UV damage. If you wash your face with body wash, never moisturize and care little for your skin – you absolutely pass any dermatology test if you wear sunscreen. Invest in a quality sunscreen that you trust and like to wear and use it every day (even if you’re indoors and away from the deadly sun!)
Treatment
Treatment comes down to managing problems that your skin is encountering. If you are struggling with acne, rosacea, dry skin etc – this is the step to helping calm, heal and balance your skin. This is where people can tend to go overboard, however, and end up with a variety of serums, face masks, creams that might be doing more harm. It can be hard to find the balance – with AHAs, Vitamin C, Retinol, Spicules, Collagen, Hyaluronic acid, Tea Tree, Snail Mucin etc etc. Where do we draw the line?
Well, if you are using +6 products daily and still finding problems with your skin – what's going wrong? It’s important to be critical of our skincare products – are they helping you or is something flaring, irritating your skin?
Now, although this guide is to help reduce your skincare routine to manageable levels – more products does not automatically = bad. In fact, dermatologists conducted a test on a ‘simple’ routine versus a more ‘intensive’ one and found that although the simple one was adequate for skin health, the more complex routine improved aging, reduced wrinkles and improved skin tone.
But, on the other hand – there has been a big rise of patients seeking out dermatologists for skin problems, that were found to be caused by skincare products. The most common symptoms were itching (82%) and tightness (50%) with worsening symptoms including redness, swelling and dry skin.
The message here is that the number of products is not what dictates a good or bad routine. It’s ensuring you are doing what’s needed for your skin – rather than getting carried away with trends and what’s popular. Get good, holistic products that you see improvement from and ensure you are whittling out anything your skin doesn’t agree with.
So, we've come up with 3 Main Methods you can try to improve and de-influence your skincare routine. The main importance is ensuring you are picking only what your skin needs, not what ads are telling you it needs.
Detox Method | Reducing Your Routine
This method is important if you are struggling with damaged skin. If you are finding your skin is feeling tight, dry, red or – most important, itchy, it’s time to detox your skincare routine. In this method, we return to those 4 pillars – taking out treatment. We minimize skincare to the three things it really needs on a daily basis, to ensure we have the fundamentals perfect.
Stop using anything that is not your daily cleansers (including a toner if you need), a moisturizer and UV protection. Give your skin barrier two weeks of this – avoiding using additional face masks, creams, serums. This is to ensure that your skin is not reacting to these 3 basics. If your skin is reacting to your moisturizer (and you haven’t noticed), you’re never going to improve your skin goals. We have to return to the basics to ensure, yes, these 3 products are good and improving your skin.
If you have any itchiness, redness or swelling whilst using your 3 basic products – you need to start eliminating these as well. Stop using products until you’ve found your skin baseline. It might be oily, might have acne and an uneven skin tone – but we have to start by eliminating the reaction [i.e. no excess redness, itching, tight feeling or swelling].
Once your baseline is fixed and you're proud and confident in your 3 basics (cleanser, moisturizer and sunscreen) - begin adding back in your favourites, but only 1 new product a week. If any product makes your skin worse, stop using it. If you’ve checked modern ingredients’ lists – each product has an average of 50 different extracts, polymers, chemicals etc. That means there’s 50 opportunities for it to irritate or damage your skin and the detox method is important to ensure that everything you use is friendly to your skin type.
Focus Method | Set a Single Goal
What else can complicate a skincare routine? With treatment – it's trying to treat everything at once! Of course, we want to clear our acne, clear pigment and clear fine lines – but we can’t do it all at once! This is more likely to increase cross-reaction, lead to irritation and set us back.
The focus method means focusing on a single line of treatment. Want to treat your acne? Perfect – only use products that key in on acne treatment (look for tea-tree extracts, azelaic acid, a good AHA/BHA cleanser etc). You set that as your skincare goal – focus on just this. Don’t get sidelined by those cool new anti-aging serums or trying to treat PIH at the same time.
Once you’ve achieved your skincare goal – i.e. acne is under control, they you can switch up to a new skincare concern. Take it slow, monitor what you’re adding to your routine and as always, stop if anything makes your skin worse.
Consistency Method | 6 Weeks Regime
We are an impatient species – we love to see results and quickly. But our skin cycle lasts 6 weeks – meaning if you have a product that is improving your skin barrier, you actually won’t see meaningful results until a full skin cycle later. Studies by dermatologists have shown, consistency truly is key. When participants were given a simple AM/PM routine to follow – with a cleanser and moisturizer, 80% noticed an improvement to their skin in two weeks.
Although skincare can be exciting, it’s best to start simple, start slow and remember that consistency is most important. Keep using your treatments every day, give your skin time to react and adapt to the skincare you’re giving to it and then you’ll start to see stronger, more permanent results.
It's easy to get swept up in new trends and exciting new products (we do it too), but it's more important to ensure you are picking products out only for your skin. If your skin is dry or flaky - chances are you don't need a new exfoliant or exciting sebum-balancing treatment. And ensure you aren't trying to fix multiple problems at once - set yourself a goal and only pick products that will help you reach that goal. Skincare is a journey (with lots of pitfalls) - but we believe in you! Resist that fancy new serum and instead invest in products for yourself.
Looking for something for your skin type? Chances are we might have a little something just for you!
FAQs - Maximizing Your Skincare
How To De-Influence Your Shopping Cart?
In our experience? Reviews! Reviews are a great place to source the general opinion about a new product and if people are actually noticing a difference. Influencers, individual videos and sponsored blogs are less so – as these people are often earning money to display and promote a product, rather than genuinely test it out. Also try to match your skin type! If you have dry, sensitive skin and the people enjoying the product have the same – chances are you’re looking at the right product! The best way to know, however, is to look at products that have stood the test of time. Although the shiny new serum is awesome – if it’s only a few months old, maybe wait on it a bit (try out the serum that people have been using for years reliably and come back to the new one at a later time).
Why Is K-Beauty So Common For Influencers?
We all, at our core, just want to be cute. It’s not a bad wish (and you are cute already, I promise) - but it’s just the right feeling that marketing likes to tap into. K-Beauty is the most viral skincare range, as they often do not opt for traditional ads, instead reaching out to influencers (across TikTok, YouTube and more) to promote, show and demonstrate their products – whilst often hiding that they are ads, rather than traditional content. It’s important to take emotions out of your shopping, we are here for results! Ensure you do your own research before you commit to a new serum, cleanser etc and are stuck with something that doesn’t do anything for your face.
How to Pick Your Skincare Routine?
This can be a lengthy process – but the key is to follow your skin type. If you have dry skin, all the products that are good for you will tend to be different than oily skin. If you are looking for more advice on building an accurate skincare routine – we have different blogs you can check out!
