Dry Skin Fix: How to Properly Layer Hydrating Skincare Product
Your guide to hydrated skin! It’s all about choosing the right products and ingredients and layering them correctly. After reading this blog post, you won’t have to worry about dry, dull, itchy, or dehydrated skin anymore 💧
First, I go over the correct skincare items and layering steps, and then I list my favorite cleanser, essence, serum, lotion, and oil. Enjoy!
scrub me secret: an item that I didn’t list below (mainly because I talk about it so much in other blog posts), but I use it often, and I love how refreshing and hydrating it is, is the Josh Rosebrook Hydration Mist. It’s fabulous!
The Correct Order To Layer Skincare for Ultimate Hydration
I’ll give you the quick list here and then dive deeper into each category below!
We want to start with the items with small molecules and a lighter weight texture/viscosity, then we layer on lotions, oil, or balm. Thats the best way to ensure everything sinks in and works how it should.
Start with clean skin
Hydration mist or essence
Hydrating Serum - apply while skin is damp from the previous product
Facial lotion
Facial oil or balm
It all starts with the right cleanser
The right cleanser gets your skin clean without stripping all your important oils. Creamy and non-sudsing cleansers are best for sensitive and dry skin types. Gel cleansers that foam up or foamy cleaners are good options for combination or oily skin types.
You’ll want to avoid using cleansers that are too harsh for our facial skin, as they can dry you out, make your skin sensitive, and unbalance your skin’s barrier. Avoid using body cleansers or hand soap on your face. Avoid facial wash with sodium lauryl sulfate, fragrances (essential oils are fine), parabens, Polyethylene Glycols, and denatured alcohol; these are ingredients that damage the skin’s barrier or are known irritants.
scrub me secret: Double cleansing at the end of every day is the best way to get your skin super clean without stressing it out. This blog post linked here talks about double cleansing using a pre-cleanse oil followed by a facial wash.
Why it’s important to keep your skin barrier healthy and balanced
When our skin’s barrier becomes unbalanced from cleansers that are too harsh, contain bad ingredients, or aren’t right for our skin, it doesn’t function how it should. Serums and hydrating products can’t absorb and work as they would for healthy skin. That’s why it’s essential to use the correct cleanser and toner, and avoid over-exfoliating your skin.
scrub me secret: for my blog post about over-exfoliation, click here! Oftentimes, you are using your AHA, enzyme products, or physical exfoliants too much
Hydration mist or essence
Hydrating mist or essence delivers droplets of hydration to your skin to properly prep it for receiving serums and hydrating products. When we give our skin this type of hydration immediately after cleansing, it adds hydration and moisture that helps the following serums and lotions cling to and absorb into the skin. Think of it like wetting a dry sponge before you use it; it needs the moisture to absorb other things.
The difference between hydration mist and essence? A hydrating mist is a super lightweight product that you can spray directly onto your skin to add hydration. Common hydration mists contain rose water or distilled water as the base and have other added ingredients. A hydrating essence is similar, but slightly more viscous in texture, and often has more concentrated ingredients. Essences are meant to be applied with clean hands or a cotton pad. My favorite essence has added glycerin for more skin softening properties.
Hydrating serum
Secret scrub tip: Apply a hydrating serum to your skin while it is still damp from the mist or essence. This will help more hydration lock into your skin. I always suggest patting your serum onto your skin instead of rubbing it around.
A hydrating serum contains ingredients that help lock hydration into our skin cells, keeping skin soft and plump. Serums have smaller molecules than lotions, creams, and oils. This means they travel deeper into the layers of our skin. Some of my favorite hydrating ingredients are aloe, hyaluronic acid, tremella mushroom extract, and beta-glucan.
Water-based lotion vs. facial or balm
An oil-based facial balm or facial oil product provides your skin with nourishment, healthy moisturizing oils, and offers healing benefits. A water-based facial lotion or cream gives your skin hydration from H2O molecules. Most facial lotions contain other ingredients that help retain hydration. To sum it up, a facial oil or oil-based balm will give you deep nourishment, and a water-based facial lotion will give you the hydration you need to fight dehydrated skin. Both are necessary for soft, hydrated, healthy skin!
How do you know what’s an oil-based item and what’s a water-based item? Check out the ingredient information and look at the first few ingredients. If you see water, aloe, rose water, or a hydrosol, then it’s a water-based product. If you see oil in the first few ingredients, listed before anything water-based, then your product is oil-based.
Water-based lotion
Water-based facial lotion, gel, or cream has larger molecules than serums and mists, so they sit on the skin and slowly absorb into the top layers of skin. This helps lock in all the hydration you applied before, and adds moisture and hydration to the surface that is longer-lasting than a serum or mist.
scrub me secret: want to get scientific? Smaller molecules (like glycerin or low molecular weight hyaluronic acid) can pass through the stratum corneum (the outermost layer of skin) and reach the deeper epidermis. This is where they attract and bind water, helping to plump the skin from within. Larger molecules are too big to go beyond the surface, but they’re still incredibly valuable. They act as moisture magnets, helping to reduce transepidermal water loss (TEWL) by creating a barrier that traps hydration.
Facial oil or balm
The final step! If you read the “water-based lotion vs. facial oil” section above, you already know that facial oils and balms don’t contain hydrating (water-based) ingredients like the mists, serums, and lotions do. But they do contain healthy fats, nutrients, and moisturzing Ingredients that make skin soft and strong. A facial oil or balm also creates a protective layer that traps in all the important hydration that was applied previously. We want to pat a facial oil or balm onto our skin, like we would a serum. I like to warm up the product by rubbing it into my hands and then patting it onto my decollete, neck, and face.
To function properly and feel its best, skin needs hydration, oils, and healthy fats. Thats why we layer our skincare like this ✨
My Favorite Hydrating Products
My favorite product from each one of these categories 😍. I choose items that have ingredients that are good for our skin and body. Our skin is our largest organ, and it absorbs so much! That’s why I’m always so intentional about the items I choose.
scrub me secret: sensitive skin types rejoice!
Creamy Cleanser
Josh Rosebrook Complete Moisture Cleanse - This creamy cleanser foams just enough to make it the perfect texture for a facial cleanse. It’s optimized for pH balance, so our skin can absorb our hydrating products best. It has ingredients like aloe vera, honey, turmeric, rose hip, and so many other great botanicals.
Hydrating Mist or Essence
Good Molecules Sakura Hyaluronic Acid Boosting Essence - This hydrating essence adds deep hydration and antioxidants to our skin. It makes my skin feel super soft and healthy, and it never irritates.
Hydrating Serum
Josh Rosebrook Hydration Concentrate - So many amazing hydrating and skin-strengthening ingredients in this serum! Aloe, hyaluronic acid, chamomile, green tea extract, and cacao extract, just to name a few. It’s also a super lightweight, fast-absorbing product that doesn’t leave skin sticky at all.
Facial Lotion
Kinship Supermello Gel-Cream - I really love the texture and feel of this facial lotion. It absorbs quickly but leaves you feeling really hydrated. I think that makes it great for a wide range of skin types.
Facial Oil
scrub me nourishing serum - A facial oil I’ve been making for over 10 years. A blend of non-pore-clogging jojoba, grape seed, and argan, plus carrot and lavender, is the perfect healing and skin-protecting blend.
My Favorite Hydrating Mask
Josh Rosebrook Hydration Mask - This hydrating and moisturizing blue tansy mask is so softening, calming, and healing. I love using it for facial massage as well as a sleep mask or a daytime mask.