Now the winter months have rolled around, your skin may be feeling a bit dry, dehydrated and lifeless. It’s totally normal for your skin to change throughout the seasons, and winter often means your skin will be drier than usual. Never fear though, there are lots of tweaks you can make to your skincare routine to help it during the winter, and make sure your skin is wedding ready. In today’s blog post, I’m going to share the products and techniques I’ve found most effective during the winter.
If you don’t have a skincare routine already, you can download my Beginners Guide to Skincare here.
*This post contains affiliate links
Avoid Harsh, Stripping Cleansers
To be honest, I recommend avoiding harsh foaming cleansers all year round, but it’s especially important to bare this in mind for your skincare routine in the winter. As your skin will naturally be more dry when it’s cold, you will want to opt to cleanse your skin with something that is moisturising and hydrating. Look for cleansers with oil, balm, milk or cream formulas. Anything that says it is foaming or mattifying is going to dry out and strip your skin (sodium lauryl sulfate is a key ingredient to avoid, also known as SLS).
My top recommendations –
Super Facialist Vitamin C+ Cleansing Oil
Kate Somerville Goat Milk Moisturising Cleanser
The Inkey List Hyaluronic Acid Cleanser
Beauty Pie Japanfusion Pure Transforming Cleanser
Get Yourself a Hydrating Mist
Mists are a great way of giving your skin a little extra boost of hydration! A spritz before applying your hydrating serums can increase their effectiveness. When it comes to winter skincare, the more layers of hydration the better. They’re also lovely to keep with you throughout the day for quick rehydration on the go (some even work over makeup). Look for mists with hydrating ingredients, such as hyaluronic acid or glycerin.
My top recommendations –
Beauty Pie Japanfusion Energy Essence Mist
Charlotte Tilbury Magic Hydrator Mist
Use a good hyaluronic acid serum
Personally I think hyaluronic acid is beneficial in most people’s skincare routines, especially in the winter. It’s a humectant, which means it pulls water into the skin and helps to keep it hydrated. Hyaluronic acids and mists work hand in hand to help as much hydrating goodness penetrate into your skin as possible. Despite it having the word acid in the name, it’s actually a very gentle ingredient and will be suitable for most people’s skin. You can use hyaluronic acid morning and evening after cleansing or misting (just make sure your face is damp for best results). There are loads of products available on the market to suit all budgets.
My top recommendations –
The Ordinary Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 Serum
Beauty Pie Triple Hyaluronic Acid Serum
Be careful with exfoliating products
Most skin types will still be absolutely fine using their exfoliating skincare products during the winter. However colder weather and central heating can have a stripping effect on your skin’s barrier, so if your skin is sensitive it is something to bare in mind. Exfoliating skin with a compromised barrier, is only going to make things worse and your skin much harder to repair. If your skin becomes sensitized, or gets irritated stop using any chemical exfoliants or retinol products to allow your barrier to repair itself. You’ll want to keep your skincare routine really simple until it’s feeling better (just cleanse, moisturise and SPF), and you can also get soothing barrier repair products.
My top recommendations –
Beauty Pie Happy Face Extreme Relief Cica Moisture Cream
Dermalogica Ultracalming Barrier Repair
Ren Evercalm Overnight Recovery Balm
Use a heavier moisturiser
You might find that your skin needs heavier products to keep it moisturised during the winter. Depending on your skin type, heavier creams and oils (or a combination of both) could be beneficial to your skin. If you find heavier moisturisers are too much for your skin during the day, just use a heavier moisturiser at night instead. If you’re really dry or dehydrated, occlusive moisturisers can help to prevent trans epidermal water loss (basically when water evaporates out of your skin and into the air, making you more dehydrated) by forming a protective layer over your skin. Ingredients such as shea butter, beeswax, petrolatum and dimethicone are all occlusive. Be warned though, if you suffer from acne or are prone to your skin getting clogged you might want to skip occlusives.
My top recommendations –
Beauty Pie Super Healthy Skin Daily Moisture Lotion
Keep up with using your SPF
Just because its not warm outside, doesn’t mean that the suns rays aren’t doing damage to your skin. I recommend using an SPF of 30 of higher all year round. Consistent use of SPF helps to prevent signs of aging, pigmentation and most importantly reduces your chance of skin cancer (lets face it, it’s much easier to try and prevent these things than trying to cure them). A good tip I learned from skincare guru Caroline Hirons is that if you can read a book without a light, you need to wear your SPF.
My top recommendations –
ISDIN Fusion Water Magic SPF50
Beauty Pie Featherlight UVA/UVB SPF50
The Body Shop Skin Defence SPF 50
Different things are going to work for different peoples skin, so finding what works for your winter skincare is going to take a bit of experimentation. However if you do feel more dry and dehydrated as the weather cools, these tips are great, easy steps you can take to give your skin a bit of a boost. If you’re a bride in the lead up to your wedding, hydration is key to get the best out of your wedding makeup, so show your skin some love and keep it hydrated and protected this winter.
Want to learn more about makeup and skincare? Check out my lesson options here.
Looking for a makeup artist for your wedding with a skincare lead approach? Enquire about your date here.