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How to Master Your Winter Skincare Routine
Winter skincare can be tricky. At this time of year, your skin has so much to deal with. Between the cold temperatures, bitter winds, and lack of humidity, it’s hardy surprising that many people notice various skin concerns flaring up once the colder season rolls around.
The good news is that you don’t need to spend every winter battling with your skin. Instead, implement the following tips from OROGOLD and you’ll quickly master your winter skincare routine, ensuring that you’re giving your skin all that it needs to look soft, smooth, and radiant throughout the season.
Use a Gentle, Moisturizing Cleanser
Once the weather starts turning cooler and the air becomes drier, your skin begins to cut back on sebum production. This is partly why dryness is such a common problem in the winter months. Without enough sebum to coat and condition the skin’s surface, the skin ends up rough and dull.
The positive aspect of this reduction in sebum is that you won’t need to cleanse quite so vigorously. The cleanser that you were using in the summer when sebum production was at its peak, will no longer be necessary.
Instead, now is the time to switch to a gentler cleanser – one that will still clean your skin but without removing all of those sebum reserves so that your skin still has some natural lubrication.
Ideally, you also want a cleanser that will moisturize and soothe your complexion, just like the OROGOLD 24K Mousse Cleanser. It creates a decadent lather that clears away dirt and other impurities while its plant extracts and oils help to keep the skin feeling replenished. Since this cleanser doesn’t contain any harsh surfactants, you can safely add it to both your morning and evening skincare routines.
Layer Your Hydration
Hydration is extremely difficult to maintain in the winter months. Why? Because when you’re surrounded by dry air, the moisture in your skin evaporates into that dryness, resulting in dehydration. In the winter, dry air is everywhere. Not only is the air outside lacking in humidity but indoor air, which is usually artificially heated in the colder months, is exceptionally dry too.
This means that hydration should be a focus of your winter skincare routine. While a single hydrating product may have sufficed in the summer, you’ll likely need a few of these in the winter months.
We would recommend starting with a hydrating toner or essence before layering on a couple of hydrating serums. The OROGOLD 24K Nano Ultra Silk Serum would be a great one to start with. Kelp and seaweed extracts function as humectants, drawing moisture to the skin. Meanwhile, oils from sweet almond, sesame, wheat germ, and sunflower will lock that moisture in, slowing down evaporation.
Focus on Your Skin Barrier
As we just mentioned, the dryness in the winter air causes the skin to lose moisture at a much faster rate. However, it’s not just the dryness that contributes to this. Your skin’s natural protective barrier is responsible for sealing the skin’s surface and trapping moisture within. Sadly, in the winter months, skin barrier function declines. This leaves your skin more susceptible to moisture loss, which is then exacerbated by the dryness. It also means that your skin will be more prone to sensitivities due to how irritants will have an easier time getting past your weakened skin barrier.
How can your winter skincare routine help to counter this?
With the use of products that keep the skin barrier feeling strengthened and supported, just like the OROGOLD 24K Overnight Cream. This moisturizer contains a plethora of barrier-loving ingredients, including shea butter, vitamin E, hemp seed oil, peptides, and oat extract. Add this cream to your evening skincare routine and you’ll wake up with skin that feels wonderfully smooth and soft.
Be Careful With Potent Actives
As you now know, your skin barrier isn’t at its best in the winter months. In its weakened state, it’s no longer quite as capable of defending the skin against irritants. This is why the skin can often become more sensitive in the winter.
Due to this, many often find that the winter weather causes their skin to no longer tolerate the active ingredients that it was happily receptive to in the summer. This is a particularly common occurrence with retinol, a powerful vitamin A derivative. It’s a great ingredient for tackling the appearance of aging, dullness, and roughness, which is why we’ve used it in the OROGOLD 24K Multi Vitamin Night Nourishment + Retinol.
If you’re able to continue using retinol and other potent actives in the winter without any new problems, then go ahead and do so. However, if your skin starts to tingle or burn when you’re applying products containing powerful actives, this is a sign that your skin barrier is struggling and you need to tone things down a bit.
Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that you have to completely give up on those ingredients for half the year. Instead, look for gentler forms of those ingredients. With retinol, for example, you can still gain the same visible results by using retinyl palmitate, except that they’ll take slightly longer to become apparent. Give the ingredient a try with the OROGOLD 24K Rose Gold Radiant Silk Cream.
Tone Down the Exfoliation
While exfoliation is a key part of any skincare routine, it’s important to be aware of what this actually does to your skin. Each time you exfoliate, you remove the dead cells from your skin, which is, in most parts, a good thing. The downside to this is that those dead cells form an integral part of your skin’s natural barrier. Sure, once you remove them, they’ll soon be replaced by other skin cells that die off. However, until that happens, you’ll be leaving your skin temporarily more vulnerable to damage and dehydration.
Since your skin barrier is already weaker in the winter months, exfoliating too often will prevent it from recuperating in between. This is why it can be helpful to cut back on exfoliation. If you were exfoliating three times a week in the summer, try dropping this down to two. Likewise, if your skin is sensitive and you were only exfoliating once a week over the summer, dial this down even more to once every ten days or so.
It’s also crucial that you use a gentle exfoliant in the winter so that you don’t disrupt too much of your skin barrier each time you exfoliate. The OROGOLD 24K Multi-Vitamin Deep Peeling + Mandelic Acid would be a great choice. Although it’s gentle, it does such a great job of removing dead skin and clearing out the pores while leaving the face looking bright and revitalized.
Keep Going With the SPF
Now that winter is here, you may think that you can put away your sunscreen until the weather warms up again. However, this would be a very bad move…
Just because the sun doesn’t feel quite so hot doesn’t mean that its UV rays have disappeared. During the day, they’re always around, even in the midst of winter. In fact, if it’s snowing or freezing, UV damage can actually increase. UV rays bounce off snow and ice. This means that rather than the danger coming solely from above, your skin will be hit by those rays from every angle.
This is why SPF needs to be a key part of your winter skincare routine too. Ideally, look for a sunscreen that also hydrates the skin while imparting antioxidants, just like the OROGOLD 24K Skin Tone SPF 30. This SPF moisturizer works well year-round, protecting the skin from sun damage while also giving it a silky-smooth finish.
Add an Eye Cream to Your Skincare Routine
We’ve already talked about how the skin can really struggle with dehydration and sensitivities in the winter months. However, did you know that your eye area is even more susceptible to these problems?
The skin that surrounds the eyes is much more delicate than the skin elsewhere on the face. Why? Because it’s about 50% thinner. This means that it’s even more affected by dehydration, sensitivities, and all of the other problems that the winter season throws at it.
While pampering your eye area with your facial skincare products can help, it would also be wise to add an eye cream to your skincare routine. These will be tailored to tackle the unique visible skin concerns that the eye area experiences, making them worth the investment and the extra time.
If you don’t already have a go-to eye cream, check out the OROGOLD 24K Intensive Eye Formula Cream. With peptides, caffeine, jojoba seed oil, and numerous antioxidant-rich plant extracts, it will keep your eye area feeling supple and firm.
Make Time for Masks
Although face masks may not be an essential part of a winter skincare routine in the way that some of the other products we’ve featured are, they can most definitely be very helpful. Face masks are usually brimming with beneficial ingredients, providing an intensity that other skincare products can’t compete with.
The best face mask to add to your winter skincare routine would be the one that best meets your skin’s needs. For example, if dehydration is an issue, go with a hydrating sheet mask, such as the OROGOLD 24K Deep Tissue Rejuvenation Mask & Collagen Eye Renewal Mask. On the other hand, if your skin feels dull and congested, try the OROGOLD 24K Kelp Caviar Transforming Mask.
If you don’t have time for face masks, a leave-on mask would be a good alternative. A product like the OROGOLD 24K Rose Gold Hydro Mask can be applied as part of your evening skincare routine and then left on your face overnight, giving it hours to soak in and work its magic.
Create the Perfect Winter Skincare Routine With OROGOLD
Although winter skincare can be difficult to navigate, the tips that we’ve shared above should put you on the right track. Keep them in mind as you build your winter skincare routine and you’ll be able to keep your skin looking and feeling its very best throughout the colder months.
Click here to boost your winter skincare routine with more bestselling products from OROGOLD.
