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What Order to Apply Skin Care Products? | A Step-by-Step Guide for Healthy Skin

To maximize the effectiveness of your skin care routine, it is crucial to understand the correct order in what to apply your skin care products.


Taking care of your skin is essential for maintaining its health and beauty. However, with the myriad of skincare products available in the market, it can be overwhelming to figure out the correct order to apply them. In this article, we will provide you with a comprehensive step-by-step guide on the ideal order to apply your skincare products, ensuring that you make the most out of your routine and achieve optimal results.


Why is the important what order to apply skin care products?


Why is so important what order to apply skin care products? If you do not apply the products in the right order, they will be difficult to penetrate the skin, so you will not see the benefits of the ingredients, so the products will be ineffective. This can also cause some skin problems. For example, applying the serum on the face oil prevents moisture from reaching the skin, causing a lack of moisture in the skin. If care products such as serum, cream, and oil are applied on mineral sunscreens, the sunscreen becomes diluted, loses its effectiveness and the skin becomes vulnerable to the negative effects of sun rays.


What should be considered about the order of use of skin care products?


The structure of the products you use should go from thin to dense. You should start your care routine with water-based products with a light texture, and then move on to oil-based products with a heavier texture. Since oil and water do not mix with each other, if oil-based products are applied to the skin in the first stages of care, it creates a barrier on the skin and prevents the absorption of water-based products applied afterwards. For this reason, after cleaning your skin, you should first use thin products such as tonic, essence and serum and leave creams and oils to the last stages. Sunscreen should be the last step of your care before make-up.


How should there be differences in day and night care?

The ideal day care for skin exposed to external factors such as air pollution, sunlight, temperature changes and blue light from screens during the day should be aimed at moisturizing, preventing and protecting the skin against environmental factors. At night, when the skin's natural repair process takes place, the care routine should primarily focus on repairing and renewing the skin. Oil-based products rich in lipids and proteins can be preferred for evening care.

Application Order of Skin Care Products Step by Step


Step 1: Cleanser (Day and Night)

We usually wash our face with face foam to remove make-up before going to bed at night. Some of us do not need to wash our face when we wake up in the morning because we wash our face at night. However, in order for the products you will use to be best absorbed by the skin, your pores must be open, that is, your skin must be completely free of oil and dirt. Your skin also produces sebum at night while you sleep. For this reason, in order to increase the effect of the products you will use, it is beneficial to purify your pores with a gentle cleanser that does not harm the protective barrier of the skin before your day care.



Step 2: Mask (2 or 3 times a week at Night)

It is often a matter of curiosity at which step the masks should be in the care routine. It is necessary to apply the masks that are rinsed from the skin to the cleansed skin, before the tonic or serum. By applying clay masks in the evening, you can ensure that your pores are cleaned deeply and thus your night cares are better absorbed by your skin. The clay mask example is the most accurate. The reason is that they can be easily removed from your skin with water. Because masks that are not rinsed from the skin replace the serum step.



Step 3: Tonic / Face Spray (Day or Night)

Old-fashioned alcohol-based toners have now been replaced by gentle formulas that soothe the skin. The new generation tonics, which contain moisture-trapping ingredients such as Hyaluronic Acid, have the ability to replace the moisture lost by the skin barrier. If you have dry, sensitive and reactive skin, you can prefer moisturizing and balancing mist instead of acid-containing tonics.


Another feature of the tonics is that they prepare the skin for the next steps of care by providing better absorption of the ingredients to be applied afterwards. After washing your face, apply your toner to dry skin with tampon movements with your hands (applying with a cotton ball will waste some of the product). Wait 5 minutes for the ingredients to penetrate thoroughly before applying anything else to your skin.



Step 4: Eye Cream (Day and Night)

Since the skin around the eyes is thinner and more sensitive, it is more vulnerable to damage caused by environmental factors. Take care to always keep your eye area moist, which is one of the areas where signs of aging are first seen, and for this, include eye creams in your morning and evening care.


To prevent the active ingredients in serums and creams from coming into contact with your eye area and causing sensitivity, apply your eye cream after cleansing and toning your face, before proceeding with the serum or cream steps. At night, you can apply a care to restore this area with a nourishing eye cream with rich ingredients that repair the skin barrier.



Step 5: Serum (Day and Night)

Containing high concentrations of active ingredients, serums reach deeper layers of the skin than other care products, thanks to their fine molecules, and offer intensive care for different skin concerns, from spots to wrinkles. By applying a serum containing antioxidants during the day, you can protect your skin against the damage of free radicals throughout the day.


Serums containing hyaluronic acid, on the other hand, trap moisture in the skin all day long with its water-holding feature. Hyaluronic acid serums, which you can also use in your night care, are very effective in soothing the skin that is dry and prone to irritation due to retinol or acids used in acne treatment. Thanks to its water-based structure, hyaluronic acid can be used easily on oily and acne-prone skin.



Step 5: Face Cream (Day and Night)

Another step in your skincare routine, which is as important as cleansing, is face cream. Regardless of your skin type and skin concerns, make sure to apply a moisturizing cream morning and evening. The first rule for beautiful skin is to keep the skin barrier healthy. All you have to do is to maintain the moisture of your skin. If you can't spare time for long grooming routines, or if a few steps aren't for you, just do this: cleanse your skin morning and evening and then moisturize with a cream suitable for your skin type!


Moisturizing cream's only function is not to moisturize your skin; at the same time, it increases the absorption of the care products you apply before, allowing you to get more benefits from the ingredients. Every skin type needs hydration (oily skin too!) and there is a moisturizer for every skin type. During the day, you can use Hyaluronic Acid-based moisturizers that will keep your skin hydrated all day long without making your skin greasy or heavy.


For a comprehensive anti-aging care, we recommend choosing a night cream that will support the skin's self-repair at night with hyaluronic acid as well as ceramides, vitamins, lipids and proteins. Even if your skin is not sensitive, you can end your night care with a moisturizing cream containing retinol, which is known to increase new cell formation and collagen production.



We hope that this article has been of interest to you and has been useful to you. We would be very pleased if you would share your valuable comments with us.


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