There are a few basic principles of proper skin care that are essential.
Obviously, everyone has different skin types and can alter the basics or add certain steps that will suit their own specific needs.
But to start, it’s helpful to follow a few simple guidelines of a standard and effective skin care routine, and from there you can perfect it to fit your own unique skin type.
Step 1: Exfoliate. Exfoliation should be the first step of any basic skin care routine. It’s important to be gentle and aware of how much your skin can take in terms of frequency here. If you over-exfoliate, use too rough of a formula, or exfoliate too frequently, your skin could pay the price with irritation and unsightly redness. When done properly, exfoliating is an important step that opens up your pores and lets them breathe. It also rids your skin of dead cells and encourages cell turnover, as well as helps your skin to more efficiently absorb serums and creams.
Step 2: Cleanse. This is a step that can be implemented into your morning and evening routine, as long as you’re using a gentle cleanser for both. You can use the same cleanser both morning and night, or choose one that’s night-specific for your PM routine and a standard gentle cleanser for your AM routine.
Step 3: Treat. After your skin has been exfoliated and cleansed, it’s ready to be treated for whatever issues you’d like to address. This is the time to pop on an acne/rosacea treatment, corrective serum, eye cream, toner, etc. This step will be most beneficial as part of your nightly routine, so in the morning you can feel free to skip this step and move straight to moisturizer.
Step 4: Moisturize. When it comes to moisturizing, be sure to use a lightweight moisturizer with SPF as part of your morning routine. We should be wearing SPF every day, even if we don’t plan to leave the house. The reason for this is that damaging UV rays can still impact us when indoors. As for a nightly step, you can switch out the lightweight SPF moisturizer for one that’s deeper penetrating for overnight repair.
Keeping these basics in mind, it’s easy to start perfecting your daily and nightly skin care routines and commit to staying consistent with them.
Now that we’ve learned the breakdown of a standard routine, let’s take a look at some of the tips to achieve your best skin ever during quarantine.