“I don’t think I have a good cleansing routine!”
I often hear this statement. Or, “I’m not very good with my cleansing routine.”
But what is a good cleansing routine?
A good cleansing routine for one person is not necessarily good for another.
A good cleansing routine has many different factors for each individual person. If you read different glossy magazines each one will tell you something different you should be doing to have the perfect skin.
I am not going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing. This is down to your personal needs, time and finance. What works for me are simple guidelines to a basic routine, if you would like more information please contact me and I can answer your questions.
Cleansing Your Face
How do you wash your face?
I personally think the longer it takes to do your skin care routine the less likely you will do this on a long term basis. If my skin care takes longer than 5 minutes, I guarantee I will not keep up with it. So a nice face wash with a face cloth, wash on, wash off is perfect for me.
Do you wash your face morning and evening?
Cleanse your skin first thing to freshen up, and wash off the make-up or dirt and grime from the day’s pollution is a sensible routine to follow.
I prefer a good face wash, I like to use water to wash off my face wash. My face wash of choice is Alumier MD Purifying Gel Cleanser, no need to use a toner after, and it feels nice and fresh.
After the face wash, a moisturiser that suits your Skin Type is always good to help with your skin’s PH balance.
If you have any concerns with your skin i.e. ageing, pigmentation or acne, it is always good to use a serum under your moisturiser to help combat the problem.
I suffer from redness around my mouth and nose (due to poor choices in makeup years ago) and now I use Calm-R to help tone down the redness.
Serums can help with specific problems you may be concerned with. This is because they contain highly active ingredients, concentrated for the specific issue it has been designed and tested for.
It’s also fine to build up serums if you have more than one concern.
Evening Routine
Always cleanse your skin at night before you go to bed, or if you’re too tired then when you get home from work.
Cleansing in the evening ensures that you wash all the makeup off from the day. And if you have been outside, washing off all the dirt and pollution. After cleansing in the evening, a retinol serum for anti-ageing is best applied then. As retinol is an ingredient that works best out of sunlight.
WARNING Please do not use face wipes. Wipes will only move the daily pollution or make-up around your skin and not take it off. Most wipes also contain tiny beads of plastic that are bad for the environment and killing sea life.
Cleansing Your Body
There is a huge debate over how often should you have a shower.
If you google this, there are many arguments for whether you should shower once a week, twice a week, or daily. But they do all say, make sure you strip wash daily.
Now I’m not going to get into this debate, my blog is my opinion and I prefer to shower every morning, it helps to wake me up and get me prepared for the day. Though washing hair is not a daily thing, as my hair is way too soft for that!
Cleanse your skin with a good shower gel. Soaps are alkaline, so you can strip away the oil from your skin. This causes it to feel tight and can dry out over time. Soaps also harbour a lot of bacteria on them. I have recently found a daily body scrub that you can use in the shower, that helps with ingrowing hairs. Its base is coconut oil, which leaves silky smooth skin, which means for quickness it’s not necessary to put body lotion on after.
However, I like to moisturise my skin after every shower or bath as water can sometimes make the skin feel tight. This can happen after a really hot shower or bath, the hot water can strip the natural oils from your skin causing dryness and can flare up eczema too. For normal skin an emollient is good and for dry skin, body oil is good to restore some oils into the skin
And what about your feet?
Another comment I hear a lot is, “I don’t like my feet, they’re ugly!”
My response is always, “What do you do with them?”
Most people don’t like their feet and therefore do not touch them. Now, they are not going to get better by ignoring them.
You moisturise your body and face regularly, why not your feet?
Your feet are the most used part of your body, why not treat them to a bit of TLC.
Have a regular pedicure. But also take 30 seconds to pop a bit of body lotion on them daily and I assure you you will see a difference within a week.
As you can tell, I try not to take too long on a good cleansing routine. I am a mother of two small children and run an aesthetic clinic. I want the best routine in the fastest time.
If you would like help to define your perfect routine or would like to know what products are best for your Skin Type – or do you want to know your Skin Type?
Book for a consultation and I can help with these questions.