Skincare: discover your skin type and what works best for you

Hey guys!

Today I thought I’d do a post on skin care. It took me a while to discover my skin type and what worked best for me (and what did not work at all!).

Although your skin can look after and renew itself, you should take good care of it to strengthen the skin’s healthy processes and protect it against external influences. While your daily skincare regime restores the balance to your skin, you should also do an intensive skincare treatment once a week, to support your skin with a little extra attention. Considering that influences such as stress, daily life and changes of the seasons alter your skin’s balance, this extra, deeper treatment provides valuable stimuli for your skin’s renewal (which happens every 28 days): used once or twice a week, depending on what you need, it rounds off the skincare concept and regulates your skin’s natural functions.

Daytime skin care

During the day, our skin needs moisture and protection against environmental influences. Therefore, you should follow the harmonizing trio: cleaning, toning and moisturising. Cleaning removes dirt and dead skin cells without drying your skin. Toning activates the skin’s metabolism and stimulates a clear, rosy complexion as it gets the blood flowing to your face. The right skincare product (and I’ll talk about that in a second) harmonises, regulates and protects the skin.

Night Time Care

Night is a time to rest. The skin uses this rest period to renew its cells and expel excess metabolic products. With that in mind, the skin needs to be able to breathe freely rather than being protected against outside threats. This is why you shouldn’t be applying any oily night time skin care to your skin: you should focus on applying a soothing/cleansing cream first and following that with a tonic, serum or treatment. This will result in you waking up to a rosy, radiant complexion the next morning.

Intensive skin care

In our hectic everyday lives, these little extra pampering rituals make us happier in our own skin. Give yourself the attention you deserve through a liberating deep cleansing or a little extra care once or twice a week! If you have something like a Clarisonic, this is ideal to deeply clean your skin, removing all the dead cells your daily routine isn’t able to remove by itself. If you are like my and can’t afford one (or just won’t), then you should do a proper exfoliation with a product that’s right for your skin type and apply a mask that meets your skin’s needs.

Determine your skin “type”

First of all, it’s imperative to say that I don’t believe your skin can be categorized simply as a “type”. I prefer to call it “condition”, since it changes several times throughout your life with age and seasons. I leave you with different types of skin conditions and how they present themselves so you can find out which one is yours, if you haven’t already.

• Normal skin: fresh, velvety, rosy, firm, fine-pored, non-sensitive, very slightly oily T-zone, blemish free (how I envy you “normal skin” people 😛 )

• Dry Skin: fine-pored, low oil content, dehydrated, premature wrinkling, taut feel.

• Extremely Dry, Sensitive Skin (in desperate need of protection!): fine-pored, thin-skinned, extremely low oil content, highly dehydrated, premature wrinkling, taut feel, increased itching and flakiness.

• Sensitive Skin: redness, flaky, possibly also constantly reddened cheek/nose areas (visible blood vessels), itching and flakiness.

• Sensitive Combination Skin: sensitive, redness, oily T-zone, large-pored, possibly blemished, dry cheek area.

• Combination Skin: blemished T-zone, large-pored, quickly becomes oily, blemishes.

• Blemished, Oily Skin: large-pored, quickly becomes oily, blemishes.

• Mature Skin: declining elasticity, wrinkling, increased dryness, possibly constantly reddened cheek/nose areas (visible blood vessels), thin-skinned, dark spots (menopause-induced, age spots).

Hope you find this post helpful 🙂

Love,

Alice ❤