Skin type is basically boiling down your skin properties into categories to figure out what products or regimens will work the best for you. One thing that I will say time & time again is that skincare is such a personal journey and 1) one thing that works for someone will not necessarily work for you and 2) it’s a journey, not a destination — your skin changes as you age, so the products you loved five years ago might be complete misses for you now. That’s why I am so into skincare. It is always going to be a puzzle, and I love a good challenge!
If you want to figure out what the best skincare routine or products are for you, first you need to think about some key traits: skin oiliness and sensitivity. In this video, I walk you through how I go about determining my skin moisturizing / oil production as well as talking about how to identify skin sensitivity. It should be a pretty straightforward situation, but of course, I am always open for questions!
Briefly, for identifying your skin type:
Do you notice that your skin gets oily or very oily by the end of the day?
Is the oil in concentrated areas (your forehead, nose, chin) or evenly distributed throughout?
When you try out a new product, do you break out? Do you have some minor redness? Is it totally fine no matter what you put on it?
Are there specific ingredients that you have found are successful in treating whatever it is that you want it to?
All of these questions will help you get to the identification of oily / combo (oily/dry) / or dry skin. And make no mistake! Dry skin does not mean dehydrated skin. Dehydrated means that it is lacking water and that can occur with any of the skin types here. There are certainly products that help out with dehydration (those high in hyaluronic acid, glycerin, or other “swelling” humectant products that will help retain water around the skin barrier so that your skin can drink up the water that it lost.
Once you have identified your skin type, you can find specific products that fit the needs of your skin. For example, for oily skin, I would recommend gel (Allies of Skin Molecular Amino Cleanser), foam (Caudalie Instant Foaming Cleanser), clay (Dermalogica Active Clay Cleanser), or enzyme powder washes (Tatcha Rice Polish). These will help get rid of all of the excess oil, leaving your skin feeling fresh. Those with dry skin will benefit more from cream cleansers (Cerave sells a very budget-friendly one!), micellars, and oil (Farmacy Clean Bee) cleansers because they provide more moisturizing properties without being overbearing on stripping the skin of essential oils. The toners and serums that you use are highly specific to the various targets that you’re looking to achieve. But for the moisturizers, for oily skin, you can find those that are oil-free, like the Kiehl’s Oil-Free Moisturizer or Farmacy Daily Greens or even the Tatcha Water Cream. For dry skin, the Tatcha Dewy Cream works wonders, as do the Biossance Squalane Repair Cream and YTTP Deep Moisture Cream. For most products nowadays, the product description online will explicitly say what skin type they are meant for. If you ever have any hesitation, go through the description and read reviews on their website to see if people with your skin type have actually seen any benefits from this particular item. I find that to be extremely helpful!
I hope that this guide has been helpful for you to figure out why you need to know your skin type and also how to identify it. Happy to chat more about these topics as well!