If you want beautiful, flawless makeup, you need to take care of your skin, and the best way to take care of your skin is with a skincare routine.
No matter what’s going on in your genetics, great skin is a personal endeavour, not something you can get solely through DNA. However, there’s a lot of information out there about different skincare routines - the oil cleansing method, the Korean 10-step skincare routine, multi-masking; every year brings forth a new ingredient or method to try in order to get the best skin of your life.
Before you start on one of those routines, though, you need to understand the basics.
This is a personal preference, but most people find skincare routines soothing! If you’re not one of those people, then there are other reasons you can opt to choose: taking care of your skin means fewer wrinkles when you’re older, an easy way of taking care of hormonal or stress-related breakouts, and a way of making yourself look younger with the proper care.
Trying new products is fun! But there’s no need to do any of that if you’re happy with your routine. For some, skincare is a hobby as much as it is a form of self-care, but there’s absolutely no need to think of it any differently than you do now.
That depends on what you’re looking for! While pricier products may have higher concentrations of some prime ingredients, it doesn’t mean that cheaper products don’t! Mostly, this is a matter of personal preference and budget.
Now that’s over with, let’s start talking about the basics.
You can’t apply your products to a dirty face: think of it like putting on fresh, new makeup over last night’s smudged mascara and creasing eyeshadow. Applying your products before actually cleansing your face just negates the effects of your skincare in general, which means all those lovely, hydrating ingredients are going to waste.
Why? Well, your skin sheds a lot of dead skin-cells quite frequently. Cleansing helps to exfoliate and remove those dead skin cells from your face, leaving you with fresh, clean skin that can finally breathe. Besides dead skin cells, there are other things a good cleanser removes: sweat, excess oil which can clog your pores, general dirt and makeup that your makeup remover couldn’t get off.
Dry skin? Opt for cleansing milk if you can; it’s less stripping than a gel-based or foaming cleanser, and can gently exfoliate your skin without removing a ton of moisture. Oily skin? Gel-based cleansers are great for breaking down excess face oil and leaving your face clean. Normal? You’re lucky - you can pick and choose whatever one works best for you! That goes for you too, combination skincare girls, though we always recommend that you opt for a gentler cleanser for your dry patches than a stripping one for your oily patches.
Now that your face is clean, you need a toner. This helps restore your skin’s pH balance, and also enables your other products to absorb better. Different toners will have different ingredients, so it’s best to opt for the ingredients that you think you might not get through your moisturiser.
For example, do you have oily, clog-prone skin? You might want to go for a toner high in alpha and beta hydroxy acids: this can help remove dead skin cells and minimise dullness.
Dry skin? Hyaluronic acid is a miracle-worker ingredient for dry or dehydrated skin that desperately needs an added boost of moisture.
Suffering from rosacea or irritation? Find something with anti-inflammatories: we love rose water for this, and green tea is a good ingredient as well.
This is important: don’t overdo the scrubs. While it may feel cathartic to buff away at your skin until it feels squeaky clean, that’s precisely what you don’t want. Cleansed skin should never feel tight after cleansing, and overdoing it on the scrubs may damage your moisture barrier, which will lead to excess oil, which can lead to breakouts.
That said, scrubs are important! Scrubs, when used once a week, can help exfoliate your skin and brighten your complexion. This is because it takes off the upper layer of dead skin buildup, which will smooth out and brighten your complexion. Only exfoliate your face once a week - you shouldn’t need any more than that!
Luxury and efficiency all in one, even people who don’t like skincare love masks. It’s the ultimate in #self-care routines, and with the wide variety of masks available to choose from, it’s easy to get caught up in multi-masking and forget why you’re doing it: for the best skin of your life!
Face masks are a good way of treating your face to extra ingredients you might not get in your routine. They can help hydrate, remove excess dead skin, pull out impurities - whatever you need! It’s just important to make sure that the mask you pick has the benefits that you want to achieve (note: there’s nothing wrong with buying more than one, and rotating them out according to what you require!)
Need some gentle exfoliation and hydration? Honey and oat masks are excellent for this, as oat can provide a polishing effect that’s far, far gentler than a scrub.
Dealing with a breakout or two? Charcoal-based masks are excellent for clearing up congestion!
Similar to scrubs, try and keep your mask usage down to just the one time a week, to prevent your skin from drying out from overuse.
The thinnest, most fragile part of your skin is your eyelid and the area around your eye. This means that it’s the first place you’ll start to show signs of ageing, so it’s important to start using eye cream frequently to minimise the appearance of wrinkles. Make sure that whatever cream you use for your eye is specifically called ‘eye cream’ - this is usually a gentler formula which can be safely used around your eye area.
Now comes the specific part of your routine: serums. We’re all about cherry-picking your routine and making sure whatever product you have fills in the gaps that other products won’t address, and this extends to serums as well. Serums are highly-concentrated formulas that penetrate into the epidermis of the skin and affect your face at a deeper level than just sitting on the surface.
We definitely recommend including at least one antioxidant serum to help fight against the effects of pollution, which can dull your skin and start breakouts. For other issues, we recommend:
Of course, there are more serums than these available, so don’t worry if these don’t work for you!
A moisturiser helps to seal in hydration and lock in all the ingredients that you’ve just painstakingly layered onto your skin. It helps reduce the loss of water through the outer layers of the skin, and can also help improve the function of the upper layer of facial skin. If you don’t want to tangle with any other skincare, at least make sure you have a good moisturiser.
Similar to cleansers, different skin types will need a different moisturiser texture to reap the best benefits. Here’s what we recommend as a general rule of thumb:
Need more skincare advice? We’re constantly learning and keeping up with what’s happening in the skincare world, so check back here frequently or visit our Facebook page to stay tuned in to everything we’re finding out!
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