A change of season usually foreshadows a change in the way your skin feels and acts. Transitioning your skin care routine from summer to fall means a number of things. As the weather cools, your skin dries out faster and thus requires different products than in warmer temps. We’ve rounded up our fall favourites to keep your skin healthy and functioning despite the change in the air.
Step One to Healthy Fall Skin: a Gentle Cleanser
Choose a creamy or non-stripping, gel based cleanser that effectively removes impurities and make-up without drying out the skin. Over cleansing the skin during the drier, colder months could lead to potential breakouts. Drier skin promotes over-production of oil, making it ideal for the appearance of acne lesions.
Step Two: Boost Hydration for Flawless Fall Skin
We highly recommend a hyaluronic acid serum 365 days of the year. During the fall and colder months, your skin will need the extra hydrating properties from your hyaluronic acid serum, followed by a richer skin moisturizer. Moisturizers keep the skin moist by protecting it from TEWL: transepidermal water loss. The richer the moisturizer the better your serums penetrate as it seals them in the skin, and the more radiant, glowing and healthy-looking your skin will be! Swap out your lighter, summer moisturizer for a balm or heavier moisturizer this fall.
Hydrating Products We love: Replenishing Balm from the SG Essentials line, or Collagen Hydrator from PCA, available at SkinGlow.
Step Three: Exfoliate the Day Away
This step is crucial all year long for various reasons. Exfoliating the skin allows more active, nourishing ingredients that are in products such as serums to penetrate and feed the skin with essential nutrients. And by “exfoliating”, we mean using an enzymes-based product that eats away dead skin cells, not your typical beauty counter scrubs that are both harsh on skin and unfriendly towards the environment.
Because of sun and the amount of hours we are exposed to heat and sun during the summer time, exfoliation should be minimal. In your fall skin care routine, exfoliation is ideal to help repair, reverse, and brighten your skin’s complexion. A well-formulated enzyme exfoliant for home use is a must. Exfoliating is also essential in reducing bacteria that leads to breakouts as it removes the dead skin cells that trap oil. Regular exfoliation will help to lift skin discolouration (such as sun spots and acne scars), remove dull, tired, dry skin and encourage fresher, plumper cells to form. This gives your skin a flawless finish ready to receive nutrition from your serums.
Exfoliators We Love:
We recommend our PUMPKIN Enzyme mask by SG Essentials, a clinical skin care mask with a blend of 3 active enzymes: pumpkin, papaya(papain) and pineapple (bromelain). It also features a sugar cane-derived glycolic acid that is known to penetrate pores deeply and easily, making it effective for treating fine lines, acne, blackheads, dullness, oiliness etc.
Step Four: Use Vitamin A in Your Night Routine
Vitamin A is a key part of your nightly skincare routine, as it helps to dramatically reduce the appearance of brown spots caused by the summer sun, lines, and wrinkles. Hands down, vitamin A is the most scientifically proven ingredient for smoothing the texture of the skin. Vitamin A does make your skin more photosensitive, which is why we don’t recommend it for use during the bright summer months, and we prefer using it at night.
Vitamin A Products We Love:
The Intensive Brightening Treatment/Intensive Age-Refining from PCA or Retinol Resurfacing from Alumier (Retinol is a form of a Vitamin A serum).
If you tend to suffer from the mild irritation caused from most Vitamin A products, SG Essentials Clinical AHA & Retinol serum is a blend of 10{3e4c301095baff6523136f18008e393ae3019223c3291045e6040e9285eefa41} lactic acid and 5{3e4c301095baff6523136f18008e393ae3019223c3291045e6040e9285eefa41} retinol that delivers the benefits of a Vitamin A serum while keeping the skin hydrated.
Step Five: Put a Mask On It
You can choose to mask weekly for extra hydration, or schedule a hydrafacial with us that is more advanced than the just the usual microdermabrasion and will deeply cleanse, exfoliate, hydrate and moisturize your skin all-in-one for a healthy, glowing complexion.
Looking for a customized solution to your home or professional skincare needs? We now offer 1 hour skincare and skin consultations. For $25 towards product or services, our qualified experts will review your home skincare routine during a skincare consult, or recommend a series of personalized in clinic treatment and products during a skin consultation. Book here.