Many people mistake cleansing to be something that simply cleans the skin and has little more effect, yet they couldn’t be more wrong. It’s one of the most important steps in your skin care routine.
Incorrect Cleansing can result in excessively oily or dry skin, sensitivities or even breakouts. Worst of all it can result in a compromised barrier of skin.
Everyone’s skin is unique & should be treated as such. It’s super important that your cleanser suits your needs – whether you’re oily, combination, dry, dehydrated or sensitive.
- Make sure to use a cleanser that is designed for the face, not the body or an all in one.
- You’re using makeup wipes to cleanse your face:
Makeup wipes don’t clean your skin. They mostly smear around whatever makeup, dirt & dead skin is hanging out on your face, leaving a trail of irritated skin in their wake. Makeup removing wipes – just no. They are often heavily fragranced & PACKED with preservatives to keep ‘em fresh. I LOVE preservatives, but they can be irritating in high amounts when left on skin -& marketing convinced people that they DON’T need to wash off the residue from wipes! - You’re not washing your hands before cleansing:
Here’s a fact: Your hands are nasty! They’re like sponges, picking up bacteria & dirt from anything you touch, it’s so important to wash them right before you cleanse (or touch your skin in any way) - Avoid fragranced cleansers (fragrance/perfume/limonene/linalool/essential oils)
- Look for pH balanced cleanser, close to skin pH (pH 4.5-5.5)
- Don’t use soap on your face. It’s alkaline-even close to pH of 10! Your skin is acidic & needs to stay this way to thrive.
- Avoid SLS – Sodium LaurYL Sulfate. SLES (Sodium LaurETH Sulfate) is a MILDER surfactant & is OK. People often confuse those two & demonise both, when the second one is much gentler & can work good for oilier skin
- Foam cleansers are suitable for people with excessively oily skin.
- Cleansers with Salicylic acid or tea tree oil can be helpful for acne prone skin. But these Active ingredients work better when actually left on the skin😉
- Oh & all the scrub cleansers – those are not for everyday use (I’d say those are honestly not for any use, at all). Creating micro-tears & damaging your skin barrier like that will only agitate the skin condition
- Since we’re here, wash off micellar solution as well, even when the packaging says otherwise😅
- I’ll finish with my ‘fave’ beauty-guru statement – “It left my skin squeaky clean!😍” Run away! Squeaky clean = depleted lipid barrier, you don’t want that.
❤️&💬
Do you have a cleanser you swear by ?