Most of us found ourselves with a lot more free time than usual in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic cleared our social calendars and forced us to stay at home. One silver lining to this is that you might have had some extra time to spend on your self-care.
If this is the case, you may have started to invest more time, money, and energy into refining your skincare routine. Or maybe you’re just thinking about doing so. I’m going to share my top tips for this with you, so you can get your best possible skin in 2021.
The first step is to assess your current routine, so you can work out what is and isn’t working. Look up all of the products in your collection to see if they contain helpful and high-quality ingredients that are going to help you get the results you’re looking for. It’s also worth checking how long certain products last and whether you have any that are past their best. There’s a little symbol on most skincare and cosmetics products that looks like a little open pot of face cream. This should tell you how many months a product will last once it’s been opened.
Any good-quality and fresh products can stay in your routine but get rid of any that aren’t quite right or that you’ve had for too long. You can then start adding in extra products to replace your old ones, or to fill gaps in your routine.
Everyone’s skin is different, so it’s important that you don’t just follow a skincare routine that you’ve found in a magazine or on YouTube. Instead, it’s best to assess your own skin type and whether you have any particular concerns or conditions you need to target.
For example, if you struggle with dry or dehydrated skin, finding the best possible moisturising products should be your priority. Hydrating serums, such as those containing hyaluronic acid, are great for this. And you can also up the hydration factor with a rich night cream. This will help to give your skin all of the moisture it needs while you sleep, so you wake up each morning looking hydrated and refreshed.
Hyperpigmentation is a particularly common complaint among black women, so you might also be looking for ways to fade any dark spots left behind by breakouts or sun exposure. Retinoids can be great for helping to fade existing dark spots, and you can usually buy mild treatments over the counter or get a prescription for stronger products if nothing you’ve tried has worked. Vitamin C can also really help to reduce hyperpigmentation, so incorporating a vitamin C serum into your routine might help to give you some fantastic results. Just remember that everyone’s skin is different, so you might need to try a few different products before you find one that works for you.
When you’re looking to give your skincare routine an overhaul, it can be tempting to get rid of everything you’re using and start with a completely new batch of products. But, when you introduce too many new ingredients to your skin in one go, it could react quite badly. Plus, you won’t know which products are helping and which ones are causing a problem.
So, instead of changing up your entire skincare regime at once, strip it back to the basics — cleansing, toning, and moisturising — then introduce any new products slowly. Skincare products can often take around 30 days to really work, so it’s best to give each of them around four weeks of use before deciding how you feel about them. Of course, if you get a particularly bad reaction, such as a rash or stinging sensation, you should stop using a new product immediately. But, if you’ve simply started using something and aren’t quite sure whether it’s doing its job, it might just need some time.
There’s a common misconception that black skin doesn’t burn in the sun, and that black people don’t need to wear sunscreen as a result. However, this isn’t true, and you should be protecting your skin with an SPF every single day.
Not only can you get skin cancer from too much sun exposure, but it can also make dark spots worse. So, if you’re using lots of lotions and potions to try and fade your hyperpigmentation but aren’t wearing a sunscreen every day, it’s unlikely you’ll see the results you want.
You don’t just need to take this extra step on sunny days, either. If it’s light outside, your skin is being exposed to the sun’s rays. So, even on rainy and cloudy days, you should be protecting your face with a broad-spectrum SPF product.
You’ll want to top up your SPF throughout the day, too — roughly every couple of hours. So, make sure you always have a spare bottle in your bag!
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