What are the perfect morning skin care routine steps? I’m gonna show you what they are and they are surprisingly very simple.
If you’re like most people, you go to the department store or the drugstore and you see so many products out there. It’s really hard to tell what works, what should you do, what shouldn’t you do.
There are people who are doing 20 steps in skincare, just in the morning. You don’t have to do that and today I’m going to talk about very simple but very effective morning skin care routine steps.
This is everything that you need to do from an esthetician perspective. You can buy products at the drugstore pretty inexpensively and get great results.
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Morning Skin Care Routine Steps
Ste 1: Cleanse
The first step that you need to do, not surprisingly, is to cleanse your skin. Not all cleansers are made equal. Do not use common bar soap on your face. This is something that a lot of people do, a lot of guys do. I used to do that myself.
The problem with bar soap is it’s very drying and it can leave a film on your skin.
Instead you want to use a cleanser that is made for facial skin and there are typically two types of cleansers to look for.
If you’ve got oily skin then you want to get rid of a little of that oil, you want to control that oil and I usually recommend using a foamy cleanser.
I use a marine complex cleanser, which is a foaming cleanser that can help to control oil in people who have oily skin.
There are a lot of other foaming type cleansers on the market. If you’re looking for one, that’s what you want to look for.
If you’re on the opposite side, if you’ve got more sensitive skin or if you have drier skin, then you want to look for a more hydrating or a more moisturizing type of a cleanser.
You can use a gentler cleanser made of the green tea. It is a little more hydrating, a little more moisturizing. It’s better for people who have more combination skin or drier or sensitive skin.
There are other brands out there that have these types of more milky types of hydrating types of cleansers. So choose the appropriate cleanser for your skin type.
Step 2: Tone
The second thing that you want to do ideally is tone your skin. This is a step that you could conceivably skip.
Back in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, and unfortunately it’s still happening today, people would use astringent and these are alcohol-based toners that you put on your skin, typically with a cotton ball.
Because there was so much alcohol in it, it made your skin feel cold and clean and fresh, kind of that squeaky clean feel.
The problem with these astringent and the classic toners is that the alcohol strips your skin not only of the oil but it also strips your skin of and kills the bacteria on the surface of your skin, your skin’s microbiome.
There are two things wrong with this.
The first thing is that when you’ve got really oily skin, it makes sense you think why don’t I just remove all the oil from it, isn’t that going to make it better? So you use an alcohol-based toner to do that. Unfortunately what can happen is it can create the opposite effect.
By removing all the oil from your skin, your skin will notice that there’s no oil there and it will react by creating more oil. Even though you may think that removing the oil is going to be good, it may feel like that in the short term, but in the long term, it can actually create more oil on your skin.
That’s why I don’t recommend these types of astringent because it can cause the oil to actually get worse.
The second thing I mentioned is the microbiome. There’s a microbiome of trillions of bacteria that live on the surface of our skin. These trillions of bacteria, like the microbiome inside your gut, can help create your skin to have good health to it.
When you’re applying alcohol and killing that bacteria, you can then get rid of that beneficial bacteria, allowing bacteria that is not so beneficial to take over.
So avoid alcohol based toners!
Where toners however can help is in restoring the pH of the skin. So it’s not necessarily bad to use a toner. You just want to use a right type of toner.
The ideal for a toner is that it reestablishes the pH of your skin, to allow it to become slightly acidic, because sometimes the cleansers will actually cause it to go more in the basic direction. The toner can then reestablish that pH to keep your skin healthy. That’s what a good toner does.
Take a look at your toner and make sure that there isn’t alcohol as a main ingredient of it.
Step 3: Antioxidant – Vitamin C/E
Once you tone your skin and you reestablish that pH, this next step is super important. This is possibly the most important step in the morning.
You want to apply an antioxidant to the surface of your skin.
What ideally I recommend is a vitamin C and vitamin E combination. What does all of this mean?
What you want to do is apply an antioxidant because it will protect your skin against free radicals. Free radicals are basically these damaging molecules that damage your skin and damage you from the inside as well.
Antioxidants basically fight these free radicals. They protect your body against free radicals and the oxidation process that free radicals can create.
The most common antioxidant that you can find is a vitamin C. Make sure if you get vitamin C that it is in a container that doesn’t allow light in. Ideally it should be in this amber bottle.
Sometimes inexpensive vitamin C formulations can already be oxidized and you take them out and they’re already brown. That means it’s oxidized, it doesn’t work.
So ideally you want to use a vitamin C that is in a amber type of a bottle or something that does not allow light in because then you know that it’s not going to be oxidized and it will still be effective.
Studies show that if you combine vitamin C with vitamin E, you can get a synergistic antioxidant effect.
What this means is that by combining the two antioxidants, the effect is not the combination of the two, but it’s much more than that.
That’s why SkinCeuticals has a serum called the C E Ferulic that is super popular. You can find other ones at the drugstore as well.
There aren’t a lot of companies that make the combination. If you can’t get the combination and let’s say you can’t afford the SkinCeuticals, then I would encourage you to at least use a vitamin C.
Most skin care companies have a vitamin C serum. Use that one even. If you’re not getting the E, you’re still getting that powerful antioxidant for your skin.
Step 4: Eye Cream
You want to apply an eye cream. There are a lot of eye creams out there. Ideally I recommend one with a minor amount of retinol to help with tightening the skin. One that will be good to moisturize your skin as well.
Don’t skip this step!
Step: 5 Sunscreen
The final step is you want to apply a sunscreen and ideally you want it to have an SPF of 30 or more.
This is what the American Academy of Dermatology recommends. A broad-spectrum sunscreen, greater than 30, will block 97% of the sun’s rays.
Important thing with sunscreens when you’re talking about your face, you often hear dermatologists and plastic surgeons recommend zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. These are physical sunblocks that work really well to block the UV rays from penetrating and getting to your skin.
But the problem with these is that, even if they are micronized, meaning put in small amounts, they still can leave a whitish hue on your skin.
If you’re at the beach and you’re applying it on your kids, good idea, not a bad deal if they’ve got a little bit of white issue on their skin.
But if you’re wearing this every day and you’re at work and it causes your skin to look funny, then you may not want to do that.
Look for products that contain avobenzone. It is a chemical sunscreen that will blend in with your skin and not leave that type of a film.
The products that you want to avoid when you’re talking about sunscreen are products that contain oxybenzone and octinoxate. These are known to be potential hormone disruptors and they can disrupt the coral reefs as well.
So stick with avobenzone sunscreen for the face. That way you can put makeup over it and you’re not going to have that whitish hue.
That is the perfect morning skincare routine.
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Rebecca is a licensed aesthetician and certified laser technician with almost 15 years experience in the dermatology. Her life-long passion is making people look good and happy.