Daily Routine

People always want to know what the best skin care routine is. And without really knowing someone, looking at their skin, and learning about their lifestyle and what they want, it’s hard to just spout a routine that will be great for them. But I came up with this graphic a couple of months ago and I share it with clients often. This is a pretty run of the mill routine. Of course, it’s a lot of steps and we can shorten it up as needed. But let’s talk about it.

Washing your face in the morning isn’t really necessary for most people. When we wash our face at night, and we get off all of the dirt and oil and make up from the day, our face shouldn’t be getting dirty overnight. Of course will wake up with a little bit of oil on our skin, but facial oil really isn’t the problem for most people. Now if your skin is excessively oily, then washing your face in the morning is a pretty good idea. But especially if your skin is really dry, washing your face in the morning is completely OK to skip. If you just want to splash some water on your face when you wake up or get your face wet in the shower, that is perfectly acceptable. You don’t have to use a cleanser every single morning. Which is great, because then you will use less product which means you will be spending less money. But I do recommend a couple of sprays with your toner just to help balance the pH of your skin. After you have it cleanse your skin either with a cleanser or water and spritz to your skin with a toner, 3 to 4 drops of a vitamin C serum as what comes next. I could do an entire blog post on vitamin C serum‘s and I probably will at some point. Right now, all I’m going to say is that not all vitamin C serum‘s are created equal, so it’s really important to find a serum or a brand that you can really trust. Vitamin C is so good for anti-aging, it helps to brighten your skin, it helps to even your skin tone, it helps to lighten dark spots, it helps to minimize fine lines. Vitamin C does so much! I cannot over emphasize how important a quality vitamin C serum is in your anti-aging routine. Or really just any kind of a skin care routine. Vitamin C is just phenomenal! Then, if you have any breakouts, this is when you’re going to use any kind of a spot treatment that you have. Anything with salicylic acid is going to get into the poor and clean it out. So if you’re looking for a good spot treatment, make sure it has salicylic acid as one of the first five ingredients. And as far as ice cream goes, I am always kind of back-and-forth as to whether I want to recommend it or not. I feel like the majority of eye creams out there are just a re-branded moisturizer. Re-branded an overpriced moisturizer at that. Lastly, of course you wanna make sure you’re using your moisturizer and your sunblock every day. Sunblock is another thing that I cannot over emphasize the importance of. I always tell people that it is the least expensive thing you can do to get the best results. And you know the saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s a whole lot cheaper to prevent sun damage then to try to reverse it. And son damage is the leading cause of premature aging. It’s the one thing the ages is the fastest. Between the sun spots, the fine lines and wrinkles the breakdown of collagen and elastin which causes our face to sag. Just wear the sunscreen. Your face will thank you for it!

So that takes care of our mornings. At night I really love a solid double cleanse. Especially if you’re wearing make up. The first cleanse should be an oil based cleanser. Though, that is a general rule of thumb, not a hard and fast rule. But I like a good oil cleanser because I don’t know if you remember from chemistry class however long ago that was for you, there was a saying that, “like dissolves like”. So the oil in the oil cleanser, is going to dissolve your oil based make up, which most make up is oil based, it’s going to dissolve the dirt and oil from the day, and just all of the environmental junk that gets stuck on our skin. And then after that initial cleanse, you can go back with your more targeted cleanser. The cleanser that is more specifically suited to your skin care needs. Maybe it’s some thing with extra vitamin C, or some thing that has peptides or salicylic acid or glycolic acid. There’s so many different cleansers out there for so many different skin care goals. And then after your cleanser of course you’re going to use your toner. And for a while, I kind of went through a phase where I thought toners were marketing. But I think that they are very necessary. When we wash our face our skin just gets so tight. And that tightness is a result of the pH balance of our skin being thrown off by the water and the cleansers. So that toner is going to help restore that. It’s also going to get rid of any minerals that were in the tap water itself so that doesn’t clog our pores. And, honestly, it just feels so good! Next up I have the controversial eye cream. Honestly, use it or don’t use it. Unless someone changes my mind, I’m going to say it doesn’t matter that much. And then we have our nighttime serums. My favorite is some sort of a retinol. Retinal, or vitamin , is going to be a really strong anti-aging component. There are prescription retinol’s that are the strongest. It’s called Tetranoin, and that is the gold standard of topical retinoids. So if you can get your hands on that, by all means! 100%!!! Retinol‘s are going to help to exfoliate your skin, they are going to soften lines, help fade pigmentation issues, it actually helps to stimulate collagen and elastin production in your skin. So along with vitamin C, vitamin a is so important in a well rounded skin care routine. And it should only be used at night, because it is pretty harsh on the skin. It can be pretty sensitizing. So you definitely want to make sure that you are using a broad-spectrum SPF in the daytime because it can make you more sensitive to the sun. And if you have any other anti-aging serum‘s or serum‘s that you want to use, now is the time to use it. Followed by your moisturizer, and then I love love love using an oil on top of my moisturizer at night. It just helps lock everything into your skin, and leaves you feeling so hydrated and amazing. If you are not going to bed looking like a glazed doughnut, I don’t even know what you’re doing. 😂

So that’s it. In a nutshell, that is a well-rounded specifically anti-aging skin care routine. Especially for someone who has no real skin concerns. There are so many other products and ingredients and things that we could talk about. Like hyaluronic acid, vitamin E, CBD. There are so many great things to incorporate into your skin care routine and that’s why it’s really important to talk to a professional, someone who knows the ingredients who understand your skin care goals and what you’re trying to achieve. So that they can help you put together a routine specific for you and your needs. And if you are not interested in doing a 10 step routine every morning and a 10 step routine every night, again that’s where an aesthetician comes in. They are going to help consolidate and tell you exactly what you need to be doing to give you the best results for your skin.

So, with all of that said, I wanted to let you know that from now until the very end of August I am offering a free 15 minute consultations. If you want to swing by the studio and ask me specifically what kinds of products you should be using to achieve your skin care goals, then click the button below and we will get you taken care of. Because it doesn’t matter what I do in the treatment room if the skin care that you’re using at home isn’t on point you’re not gonna see the results that you want to see. Because what I do one time a month is not as important as what you do two times a day. So, go to www.Vagaro.com/facegraceesthetics and book that 15 minute consultation. If you would rather just chat over the phone, shoot me a message at filterfree@facegrace.org or visit my website at www.facegrace.org. We’ll chat soon!