The Ultimate Guide for Beginners of Skin Care

When creating your first skin care program, please keep it simple, put a simple daily life together – and stick to it.

The most important skin care advice is to keep it simple, start with your basic knowledge, and then expand as needed. The basic knowledge should always include the following three steps in the following order:

Step 1: Cleaning

The general rule of thumb here is: clean your skin twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Cleaning in the morning will help remove sweat or grease left on the pillow and hair during beauty sleep.

There is a common exception to the rule of twice a day: dry skin. If your skin tends to be dry, use plain boiled water in the morning.

However, cleaning your skin at night should not be compromised or skipped. At the end of the day, it is important to clean, not only to remove the skin care products and cosmetics applied in the morning, but also to remove the excess oil, sweat, dead skin cells, pollutants and other debris accumulated on the skin all day long.

When choosing facial cleansers, beginners should choose mild and moisturizing facial cleansers. Any skin type can tolerate moisturizing facial cleansers. In addition, look for a fragrance free product with the least ingredients (to avoid irritation) and containing ceramide and glycerin to restore and maintain the skin barrier.

Step 2: Moisturizing

Next, use a moisturizer or moisturizing product. We generally recommend oil-free, fragrance free moisturizers because they are well tolerated in all skin types, from acne prone to sensitive.

In addition to these parameters, you can also look for a moisturizer containing other ingredients for specific needs, while solving specific skin problems. The general list of skin care ingredients is a very long and changing list, so for the purpose of this article, the following are some top ingredients related to moisturizers:

Hyaluronic acid: make skin plump and restore lost moisture.

Ceramide: critical to skin barrier strength and overall health (important for patients with dry skin and eczema).

Vitamin C: Provides antioxidant protection and overall skin whitening.

If you have oily or acne prone skin, don’t think you can (or should) bypass the use of daily moisturizers. Excessive washing without proper use of moisturizing cream can actually lead to excessive production of oil on the skin.

No matter how greasy your skin feels or is prone to acne, it will become dry without moisturizing. Dry skin is irritated skin. Those with oily skin should look for non acne moisturizers.

Step 3: Protection

Sunscreen is your first line of defense and protective measure against skin cancer. If you don’t do anything else to your skin, sunscreen is the most important.

Select SPF 30 or higher sunscreen and apply it every day (even if it is cloudy), always as the last step in the skin care program.

There are two ways to choose which type of sunscreen to use: chemical or mineral based. Mineral sunscreen acts as a shield, blocking the sun’s rays from penetrating the skin, thanks to ingredients such as zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.

Once you have a basic routine, you can start adding additional steps here and there as needed.

A good starting point is to exfoliate, add additional steps once or twice a week, and use α- Hydroxy acid (AHA) or β- Hydroxy acids (BHA), which remove excess accumulations on the skin surface in different ways.

You can also choose two different exfoliation methods: physical and chemical. Chemical exfoliators are very suitable for inducing cell renewal, increasing collagen formation and improving darkness. Physical exfoliation is to manually remove dead skin cells, excess oil and accumulations through facial scrub.

Sensitive skin types may want to avoid physical exfoliators because they can irritate the skin and cause blood vessel rupture.

You can rotate other daily additional steps including essence and facial mask as needed. Facial essence is an efficient and lightweight skin care product for external use, which is formulated with higher concentrations of active ingredients (such as vitamin C and hyaluronic acid) to address more specific skin problems.

Remember these important tips:

Less is more

Reducing your skin care plan and sticking to the key and important active ingredients will serve you better than doing too many things. Insist on using products with few ingredients and no spices, and try new products one by one, so that you can see the skin reaction.

Patient

If a new skin care program does not seem to work immediately, you should know that patience is necessary when it comes to skin care (please note if any product promises immediate results). Don’t do too many experiments. Before the conversion, give your skin a chance to get used to the product or active agent for at least two to three months.

 

Of course, the exception here is that if skin care products cause any type of irritation or allergic reaction, in this case, please stop using them immediately.

Consistency is key

Be consistent, it has to do with the patience part. Like many things in life, keeping consistent and going through the same skin care procedures every morning and evening is the key to producing and maintaining practical effects. Bottom line: Believe in the process (and your own skin) and stick to any plans you make for yourself.