Are you overwashing your face?
Debunking the myths about how often to cleanse and exfoliate
FACE cleansing used to be the most boring part of a skincare regimen. Want bells and whistles? Better to look to the pricey moisturiser that comes in a faceted faux-crystal jar. Need targeted skincare solutions? Look to potent serums and masks for results.
But with beauty customers more educated than ever, attention has turned towards the humble face cleanser. Korean and Japanese beauty regimens have introduced double- and even triple-cleansing routines.
Face wash formulas come in a Willy Wonka variety of forms: foams and balms and gels, mousses, milks and clays. Add concentrated and exotic ingredients, and many of cleansers have little in common with the old-school bar of soap.
Don’t get distracted by slick marketing campaigns. According to Barbara Sturm, an aesthetic medical doctor in Germany who has a namesake skincare line, the function of a daily cleanser should be straightforward.
It’s “to remove dead skin cells, oil, dirt and other pollutants from the skin; unclog pores, prevent skin conditions such as acne; and prepare the skin for the next step in your skincare regimen”.
Here are 3 things you need to know WHAT’S WITH TRIPLE-CLEANSING?
Double and triple-cleansing are ideas that sprang from the Korean and Japanese beauty crazes of recent years. The traditional K-beauty scenario involves using an oil-based cleanser to break down make-up. And because some make-up, especially waterproof and longwear formulas, is oil-based it breaks down best with oil.
Then, because the oil cleanser leaves a residue, which is now mixed with the dirt and make-up, you follow it with “a traditional water-based foaming cleanser, which removes the oils and butters that the balms or oils leave on the skin,” said Tiffany Masterson, the founder of Drunk Elephant. Problems pop-up when you start washing with two waterbased cleansers, which can result in over-cleansing.
SHOULD YOU WASH JUST ONCE A DAY?
If you subscribe to Masterson’s theory on skin-barrier maintenance, you should not be washing your face morning and night.
If you have a good skincare routine, you should cleanse at night to get the grime and make-up off.
Then add your serums and moisturisers, and while you’re sleeping,w you’re nourishing your acid mantle.
You don’t want to wash that off in the morning.”
TO EXFOLIATE OR NOT TO EXFOLIATE
Over-cleansing as well as over-exfoliating go hand in hand. Be wary of cleansers loaded with acids.
It’s completely gimmicky to add all those acids, because cleansers are a rinse-off product, and you’d want your glycolic acid, for example, to have the chance to penetrate.
Sturm takes an even more conservative approach, noting the abuse of exfoliators.
You should be exfoliating only once or twice a week no matter the form, she said.
Yet with exfoliating acids (glycolic, lactic, salicylic and more) in so many formulations now, you can easily over-exfoliate without meaning to.
Engelman advises reading the ingredients’ lists closely.
“If you look at K-beauty or French beauty regimens, you’ll notice that exfoliating is only one step, if any,” she said.
“The belief is that if you give your skin everything it needs to perform optimally, you won’t have to help it exfoliate itself.
“The truth is our skin naturally exfoliates itself through programmed cell turnover.”