Getting Started With Skincare – How To Make A Skincare Routine
Skincare is not Everest, even if it can seem like that. If your resolution for 2020 was to get your overflowing vanity table under control, improve your pre-existing routine – or even start from scratch if you’ve struggled to figure out what skincare routine suits you, then we’ve got you covered.
Skincare is an area where choice can seem almost limitless. Walking into your local pharmacy or department store can see overwhelming when you’re faced with bottles and tubes galore, but we’re here to assure you that it doesn’t have to be so complicated.
When it comes to getting started with skincare, you might wonder how to make a skincare routine which will work for you, and your lifestyle.
The Skingredients Core 4 is your essential skincare routine, composed of four essential products which form your routine, start to finish – no messing about. It’ll take you less than 5 minutes morning and evening, and no need to mess around with a hundred bottles – just four products, simple as.
How To Make A Skincare Routine
When it comes to maintaining a good skincare routine, consistency is key, and it’s better on balance to feed your skin the good stuff that it needs every single day. Sometimes, we might need to boost certain ingredients in our routine to keep our skin nourished as it needs, but in general, keeping to the same routine makes good skin-sense.
A good skincare routine consists of three to four main steps. These are cleansing (with a pre-cleanse and double cleanse), pre-serum, serum, and then topping the whole routine off with a broad-spectrum SPF. It’s as easy as that – but don’t worry, we’ve got more details to share with you, and we know just how to make a skincare routine work for you.
What Is the Core 4?
You might have guessed by us now that we really feel that the ingredients are more important than the products themselves – that’s why we called the range Skingredients! We never mean ‘everyone needs a serum’ – but we do think that everyone needs a vitamin A serum, you know? It’s the ingredients which tackle your skin concerns, so they’re super important, and we made sure that we got all the essentials into our Core 4 range.
The Core 4 consists of the 01-04 Skingredients products – PreProbiotic Cleanser, Skin Veg, Skin Protein and Skin Shield. These four products are your essential, bread and butter, balanced meal for your skin, and a perfect place to start when it comes to creating a balanced skincare routine for your 2020.
Step 1: Cleansing
Cleansing is one of the most important steps in your routine. By cleansing your skin, you remove any pollution, excess oil, old SPF, makeup, or the general grime of day-to-day living from your skin. This stops this material from linger and blocking your pores, which can lead to congestion and breakouts.
Cleansing also prepares your skin to take in the nutrients which will follow in the next steps of your routine. Active cleansers, like salicylic acid or glycolic acid are also super helpful in tackling whatever skin concerns you might be looking to address, such as dull or congested skin. You can learn more about active cleansers here.
How To Cleanse with Skingredients
Cleansing is easy peasy lemon squeezy (although don’t squeeze anything on your face – that’s a commandment) with Skingredients. First of all, we recommend grabbing your trusty Cleanse Off Mitt, the 00 in the Skingredients range. Soak this in warm water, and glide it in gentle circles from the edges of your nose outwards, taking particular care on your eyes (the Cleanse Off Mitt is also a master at the art of removing mascara too, just FYI). Make sure you get all the way up your forehead and right around your nose, too.
This step is called the pre-cleanse, and does exactly what it says. It pre-cleanses the face, and ensures that in combination with the double cleanse, your skin will be completely cleansed and ready to absorb serums.
After your precleanse, apply a euro-coin sized amount of PreProbiotic Cleanse and work it into your damp skin carefully for 60 seconds. We advocate cleansing from your nipples all the way to your hairline, so make sure you get every spot. You can use the clean side of your COM to help you cleanse away all of your product when you’re finished. Now you’re fresh and clean and ready for your serum!
Step 2: Pre-serum
Why do I need a pre-serum and a serum? So you might ask. The main point of a pre-serum is to help the products which will follow to penetrate even better into your skin. It’s particularly handy to know that when using a heckin’ great serum like Skin Protein, it’s being absorbed as much as possible!
Happily, pre-serums (like our own Skingredients Skin Veg) also contains plenty of good stuff too, which you might otherwise be missing from your routine. Skin Veg contains vegetable extracts such as liquorice root, tomato extract, and brocolli root – all powerful antioxidants. It also contains cucumber extract for soothing, cooling and hydrating, and radish root ferment filtrate, which works as a light exfoliator. It’s also got pro-coll-one+ which encourages the synthesis of collagen in the skin to lessen the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, as well as gluconolactate – a PHA to assist in product penetration.
Our pre-serum has all the goodness of a serum with the added benefit that it’s going to help your vitamin A serum penetrate much more effectively into the skin. So you can see that pre-serums are handy as part of a routine, as well as bringing you a lot of good stuff just by themselves!
How To Pre-Serum With Skingredients
In the case of Skingredients, our pre-serum, Skin Veg, is water and hydration for your face. Apply one pump of 02 in the Core 4 range, Skin Veg, after cleansing, and massage it into your skin using light tapping motions.
Skin Veg contains a rich variety of fruit and veg extracts which are antioxidant (meaning they help to combat free radical damage), soothing, hydrating, brightening and all-round knockouts.
Skin Veg is anti-inflammatory (ideal for congestion-prone hoomans) as well as being hydrating and soothing. It’s well-loved by MUAs as it creates a radiant, dewy base. It’s also an Irish Times Top Skincare Pick of 2019!
Step 3: Serum
A serum is the nerdie preference. Serums are an ideal way to deliver powerful ingredients into your skin. While moisturisers are great for surface hydration, serums help your skin to make its own hydration. Serums generally have a smaller molecule size than a moisturiser, which is how they penetrate so well into your skin. They are a great way to deliver nutrients into your skin, depending on what specific skin concern you are seeking to tackle, and a little often goes a really long way.
How To Serum with Skingredients
Skingredients Skin Protein is 03 in the Core 4 range, and is the substantial bit of your skin-meal. It is a vitamin A, C and E rich serum, suitable for almost all skin types and concerns! If you graduate to a new level of nerdiness, it’s also ideal for mixing with other serums, too!
To apply Skin Protein, pump out one measure of the serum, and apply to your face, neck and décolletage. Don’t forget your eyelids, your ears, your lips and all the way to your eyeballs and hairline.
Skin Protein contains two forms of vitamin A and C, and one form of vitamin E. Vitamin A helps to speed up skin renewal and re-educates the skin, as well as restoring it. It’s a powerful antioxidant and hugely helpful in anti-ageing too!
It also contains pro-collagen peptide which helps to reduce the appearance of wrinkles, and also regulates the overproduction of sebum, and encourages the skin to exfoliate itself.
Nerdie tip: Pump Skin Veg and Skin Protein into wet skin for even better results!
Step 4: SPF
If it’s nighttime, at this point, you can pull on that eye-mask, because post-serum, it’s bedtime, baby. However, it it’s morning, then SPF is an absolute must.
Even in the winter?
Even in the winter.
Even if I work in an office?
Even if you work in an office.
Even if I don’t see natural light from one end of the week to the next?
Even then! (side-note: are you okay, hun?) We always say that SPF is for everyone, unless you are a cave-dwelling hooman who lives in uninterrupted darkness.
A broad spectrum SPF keeps your safe from UVA, UVB and even HEV and infrared light – that is, light from your computer screens or from our electric lights. Skin damage causes premature ageing, and sun damage is no joke.
How to SPF with Skingredients
04 in the Core 4, we finish up our routine with Skingredients Skin Shield SPF 50 PA+++. This is a broad spectrum SPF, which is a lightweight, mineral SPF with niacinamide, vitamin B3 and vitamin E. It forms a dewy base ideal before makeup, or on its own. It’s got a faint peach tint so it doesn’t make you look ghostly, and it also prevents photo flash-back.
Apply half a spoonful to your face, neck, chest, ears and any other exposed skin, by pressing it onto the skin. You want it to rest just on the surface of your skin, as it’s going to shield you from the sun.
Basic Skincare Recap
So, a skincare routine morning and night – less than five minutes each time.
In the morning, pre-cleanse with the COM, double cleanse with PreProbiotic Cleanse, apply Skin Veg, then Skin Protein, and top it off with Skin Shield as your SPF.
Do it all over again at night, but no SPF required.
So there you have it – three to four products, and an ideal basic skincare routine to feed, nourish and protect your skin. You can now graduate onto the Mix + Match range, including Sally Cleanse and Skin Good Fats, and incorporate these into your routine, should you wish.
Sally Cleanse is a salicylic acid-based cleanser, ideal for congestion prone skin and suitable for use up to three times a week. It contains 2% salicylic acid, which chemically exfoliates your skin to clear pores of any debris and helps to prevent and tackle breakouts!
Skin Good Fats is a ceramide-rich moisturiser, ideal for mature, or dry, irritated skin looking for a bit of comfort and rehydration. You can put it on after your serums in the evening if you prefer to use a night-cream in your routine – but it’s not recommended for very congestion-prone skin.
Hopefully now you’ll agree with us – skincare doesn’t have to feel like Everest, after all!