9 Biggest Skincare Mistakes You Can Make
9 Biggest Skincare Mistakes You Can Make
As an owner of extremely sensitive, dry, and at the same time acne-prone skin, I started my skincare journey quite early. It’s been many years of trial and error, but I managed to arrive at a point where my skin looks and feels great, and I even get compliments on it, which feels so strange and yet amazing at the same time!
However, many mistakes were made before I got to this point. Looking back I cringe about some of the things I was doing which clearly were causing the majority of my skin issues, yet that wasn’t obvious to me back then.
If you have any skincare concerns yourself (they don’t have to be the same as mine), I bet you will find some of the below insights useful! They’re all quite simple things to implement, but they can really make a world of a difference.
Let’s get to it! Here are the top 9 skincare mistakes most people make (and how to fix them).
1. You are not religious about sunscreen
I know you may be tired of hearing this, but that’s just how important sunscreen is!
Applying sunscreen daily helps to reduce the risk of skin cancer in the future, and it is THE best and cheapest anti-aging product you will find!
Yes, it is an additional step in your routine and you can need to test a few distinctive sunscreens before you find one that looks and feels correct to your skin, but it’s far actually one of the maximum important things you may do on your skin.
Here are some sunscreen rules you want to recognise:
- Apply enough of it. You need to be liberal with your sunscreen. Forget about the ‘pea-sized amount’ – this is more of a ‘1/4 teaspoon’ situation.
- Reapply it. Ideally, you would reapply sunscreen throughout the day, to keep your skin protected.
- You need it every day, regardless of the season – this includes the cold months too.
- If you stay indoors but spend time by the window, you should also apply sunscreen.
2. Not cleaning things that touch your face
How regularly do you press your smartphone screen in your cheek, or touch your face after the use of the phone? Do you touch your face with dirty palms all day?
Have you used the equal towel for your face and body for every week in a row? How regularly do you convert your pillowcases?
These are all very easy ways to transfer dirt and bacteria onto your face, which can cause acne.
Good hygiene practices can really help keep your skin clean.Try regularly changing your pillowcases, cleaning your phone screen, using a separate face cloth, and changing that regularly as well, and don’t touch your face as much as you can help it.
3. Applying skincare in the wrong order
Let’s communicate approximately making use of products inside the incorrect order! It may not seem like a big deal, but in case you’re no longer layering successfully, your merchandise may not be doing their job as well as they could.
The trendy rule? Go from lightest to heaviest.
Start along with your thinner, water-primarily based merchandise like serums and toners to be able to without difficulty sink into your pores and skin. Then, observe up with heavier lotions and oils to seal the entirety in.
And usually end with sunscreen in the morning—it’s the final layer before stepping out the door!
Applying your products inside the right order guarantees you’re getting all of the advantages, and that your skin is absorbing the goodness from each step.
4. Using makeup wipes
For YEARS I thought that makeup wipes is the best and easiest way to remove makeup from your skin at night. Oh boy, how wrong was I…
Makeup wipes aren’t effective at casting off makeup or dust from your face. Yes, you study that right.
It may look to you like your makeup is being removed when you’re wiping your face with one of these wipes, but it doesn’t get completely dissolved and lifted off of your skin.
What makeup wipes do is they just push the dirt around your face. Some of it comes off, but a good amount stays behind, even if you can’t see that.
That’s why you should always cleanse your skin with a good quality cleanser (it doesn’t have to be expensive) and wash it off with water or use a wet face cloth to carefully wipe everything off. Double-cleansing is even better.
Either get a bunch of gentle microfibre face cloths or disposable face towels to help you with cleansing.
5. You start multiple new products at the same time
I love a very good skin care haul, however after shopping, I regularly sense tempted to place all my new skin care merchandise on my face that equal day. Let me tell you, that could be a massive mistake!
Your skin is precise and it might be touchy to a specific ingredient. It may not take nicely to a product, but it might love a different product.
So if you introduce multiple new products to your routine at the same time and something starts to break you out, it will be nearly impossible to know which product is responsible for that.
That’s why you should only introduce one new skincare product at a time, and give yourself at least a couple of weeks to really see how your skin reacts to it, before introducing any other new products. This will make it a lot easier to see what works and what doesn’t work for your skin.
6. You haven’t got the basics right
Very often we get distracted by serums, actives, exfoliators, essences, mists, anti-aging products, and other fancy things while actually, we haven’t gotten the basics right yet. By the basics, I mean the three most important things that should be present in everyone’s skincare:
- Cleansing
- Moisturizing
- SPF
If you don’t get these three things right, nothing else matters.
You might have the most expensive and the most hyped-up serums, but if you’re putting them on skin that hasn’t been cleaned properly, you’ll probably break out. You might even blame this new product, but actually, you just need to start cleansing your skin more carefully.
You might be cleansing your skin the right way, but if you don’t provide it with moisture after that, it may end up dry and dehydrated.
Lastly, you might nail the first two steps, but if you don’t protect your skin by applying sunscreen daily, you might undo all the good things you’re doing for your skin and you’ll also start to see aging signs sooner rather than later.
These are the foundations of any good skincare routine. I always go back to these three things when something isn’t working or my skin gets irritated, and soon I can see positive results. Get the basics right!
7. Over exfoliating
When it comes to active skincare ingredients, I see many people getting too excited and making mistakes.
By ‘actives’ or ‘active skin ingredients’ I mean skincare that has been specifically formulated to address a certain concern or skin problem, such as acne, aging, pigmentation, and so on.
Some examples of popular actives include different acids such as AHAs, BHAs, hyaluronic acid, also retinol, niacinamide, and different vitamins – A, C, and E.
When you first introduce actives in your beauty routine, you should research which ones can or cannot be paired with one another, and start slow, increasing the frequency of application if your skin is doing well.
These kinds of products can be very potent and sometimes drying or irritating, therefore you want to take caution.
The last thing you want is a damaged skin barrier or irritation from using too many actives too often or not sticking to instructions when it comes to combining different ingredients.
8. Not using occlusives for dry skin
Do you have dry, sensitive, irritated skin or dry patches?
Then this skincare hack is for you! One of the first-class suggestions I ever got for my dry terrific sensitive pores and skin changed into to feature an occlusive layer after moisturizing my face at night time.
Occlusives are ingredients in skincare that shape a defensive layer on top of your skin. This occlusive layer acts as a barrier that helps save you moisture loss, retaining the pores and skin hydrated for longer.
Occlusive ointments are heavy and they don’t completely soak up into your skin, but when you have infection or your pores and skin is extremely dry and simply wishes that hydration boost, layering occlusive on pinnacle of your ordinary moisturizer may be virtually remarkable in your pores and skin!
You will see a difference in the morning.
9. Washing your skin in the shower
If you wash your makeup off in the bathe – that is for you.
I’m sorry, I realize it’s smooth and convenient, but if you want your showers warm, you’re creating a not unusual skincare mistake and also you want to keep away from it at all prices.
Using very warm water to cleanse your pores and skin can strip your pores and skin of its herbal oils and disrupt the moisture stability.
This can cause contamination and drying, similar to whilst your pores and pores and skin is sunburnt.
To hold your pores and skin searching and feeling healthy, favor to cleanse your face over the sink with lukewarm water in place of in a hot shower.