Cleansing is usually part of a skin care routine. A standard morning regimen begins with washing your face, followed by moisturizer to hydrate and sunscreen to protect. Before bed, cleanse the skin again and exfoliate once or twice a week to remove lingering grime and dead skin.
Goldenberg's go-to recommendation for timing between serums and moisturizers is about one minute. This wait has the same reasoning: Sixty seconds — give or take — gives each product a moment to delve into your pores.
Moisturizing your face at night helps keep your face properly hydrated while also keeping your skin soft and youthful looking. However, while moisturizing your face overnight seems simple enough, you must apply the moisturizer properly to avoid ending up with a greasy pillowcase and dry skin.
You should always use a moisturizer at night. Some people avoid using night cream to let their skin breathe, but this is far from the truth. Avoiding using a night cream offers no positive benefit to the skin. When skin is bare, any existing moisturize evaporates right out of it.
Rogers recommends using a physical sunscreen with zinc and to apply it after your moisturizer. “Zinc is safe, effective and provides the broadest protection against UVA and UVB rays.”
Just as you should cleanse your skin twice a day, your face is calling out for moisture at least two times a day—in the morning and at night. You want to moisturize after every time you cleanse. This way, you can lock in moisture and keep skin from drying out.
Clogged pores are the most immediate sign of over moisturising. Too much moisturiser or heavy formulations can clog your pores, because of which you end up with blackheads and whiteheads.
You should absolutely moisturize your skin even if you have active acne. It's an absolute myth that moisturizing your face will worsen your acne. In fact, moisturizers are necessary to keep acne-prone skin as relaxed as possible.
Moisturisers can also stick dead cells to the skin's surface, she claims, and the oils can clog pores, contributing to acne and rosacea.
"Skin's oil production peaks at midday, and there is less oil production at night. Therefore, when you lose that protective layer of natural oils, your skin loses more water, so it's important to replenish the water loss with a moisturizer overnight," says Sobel. "While you are asleep the skin goes into renewal mode.
For one, moisturizer helps relieve dry skin and maintain sebum production. It also provides a slew of other benefits for your skin. Not only does it help your skin stay young, but moisturizer also reduces other blemishes and acne you're having trouble with. Therefore, moisturizer is more good than bad for acne.
Aesthetic dermatologists have observed that habitual, daily moisturising over a prolonged period can actually age the skin. This induced ageing occurs because the same fibroblast cells which produce GAGs (the skin's moisturiser) also produce collagen and elastin, which help maintain the skin's elasticity.
As a general rule, face nourishers like serums, moisturisers and oils should be applied starting with the lightest formulas. Serums are thin and full of active ingredients you want to drive deep into your pores, so start with them before you move on to fuller-bodied creams.
“When you use moisturizer every day, you run the risk of making your skin older, not younger,” he said to Refinery29. “If you apply a lot of moisture, skin will become sensitive, dry, dull, and interfere with natural hydration.”
You could develop more wrinkles.
That's right: Leaving moisturizer out of your routine today could lead to deeper wrinkles later on. "When the skin barrier is compromised, which is what we see when it becomes dry, there's actually a low-grade chronic inflammation that occurs in the skin," warns dermatologist Dr.
“When the imbalance of water, lipids, and proteins is altered using moisturisers, the skin's ability to act as a strong barrier to protect our inner organs will be weakened,” he explains.
As the back of the bottle says, you should always apply moisturizer to clean skin—and for maximum results, shortly after cleansing, before your skin is totally dry. Moisturizers are most effective if you use them while your skin is still damp because damp skin absorbs the product more readily.
Also your product should last you a few months not a few weeks — running through product quickly indicates you might be using too much of it. Some signs you may be over-moisturizing are clogged pores, blackheads, bumpy skin and excess oil.
“By over-moisturizing, you can cause the skin barrier function to weaken and risk clogging pores,” explains Sobel. Add those together and you get both dry skin and body acne — the allover equivalent of combination skin.
Be sure to moisturize your face at least 1 – 2 times daily. Also, take advantage of the 3 best times to apply moisturizer, which are in the morning, after showering/cleansing/swimming, and before bed. Doing so will ensure that skin is protected, optimally moisturized, and hydrated.
Moisturizers should be applied to clean skin after you cleanse your face, as they prevent skin from drying out post-wash. They're also most effective when applied to slightly damp skin, as they seal in moisture.