What Skincare Products Do I Need? Simple Daily Skincare Routine Guide

How to layer skincare products is a question that occurs to many but is rarely answered effectively. It may even be a more elusive answer than the one to the question “what skincare products should I use?”

After all, do some skincare products improve each other's effects if used beforehand? Do others reduce effectiveness? Or does this all matter way less than one would assume?

These questions are made all the more difficult by the fact that our skin tends to react in different ways, and a reliable answer for one person isn’t necessarily the best route forward for somebody else.

As a result, the most reliable path of action is usually to try out different things and measure the results until you find what works best for you.

With that said, there are some essential skincare products nobody should be without, and some fundamental rules that should always be followed.

Let’s take a look at some of them:

Cleansing

This step involves two main points - one is washing your face, and the other is using a good quality cleanser. Both are necessary and should be done twice a day, morning and night. In many ways, cleansing is the most important part of any skincare routine, because no matter which product you use, the results will be severely impaired if they are being applied on contaminated skin and dirty pores. It also isn’t a good idea to use a cleanser after other skincare products, as the cleanser will remove the bulk of the other product and dramatically reduce it’s results. With that in mind, cleaning your face thoroughly and then applying a good quality cleanser should be the first skincare step you take every day - even if you’re doing nothing else that day.

Immediately after cleansing, once your cleanser has dried, our AHA serum can help boost results and leave your skin clear and fresh looking thanks to its combination of inflammation-reducing AHAs, gentle exfoliation and glycolic acid. This helps ensure you have completely cleansed the surface of your face by cleansing pores even more deeply, removing dead skin, evening out skin texture and leaving you looking clean and youthful.

Serums

While the cleansing process is a catch-all that should ideally be done by everybody, the serum stage varies a bit based on your own unique skin type and the issues you’re trying to improve. Serums tend to be filled with very concentrated amounts of ingredients and can be used to mitigate whichever specific issues are common to your skin. 

For example, if you regularly suffer from dry skin, a good quality hyaluronic acid serum will go a long way towards strengthening the top layer of your skin and holding in moisture.

Anti aging serums or retinol based serums can also be highly effective at reducing fine lines and wrinkles, if this is more your priority.

If you don’t have any specific issue or complaint you want to handle, it’s still always a good idea to use a high antioxidant serum to protect your skin from environmental aggressors.

Eye Creams, Moisturiser and Sunscreen

Technically, anyone can survive an eye cream. It’s nothing that ever feels like a necessity until you actually start to suffer from eye wrinkles, under eye bags or crow’s feet. If you find yourself in that position, then something with peptides and hyaluronic acid would be ideal.

With that said, using an eye cream early will help keep the skin around your eyes smooth, supple and elasticated, preventing this from happening while also protecting you from free radicals, sun damage and more - so if you do have the time and can afford to use an eye cream daily, there is no reason to skip over it.

Moisturiser and sunscreen, however, are a must.

In fact, if you use one skincare product and absolutely nothing else, we’d say it should be sunscreen.

After all, exposure to sunlight can age the skin more quickly and can be behind most skin complaints such as dry skin, patchiness, wrinkles, textural imbalances, changes to pores, redness and more. Wearing sunscreen everyday protects you against all this, keeps your skin healthy and youthful, and can even reduce the risk of skin cancer.