How to Hydrate Skin: 4 Beneficial Tips

While water, rest, and nutrients are essential to maintaining your skin’s hydration from the inside out, radiant skin also needs the love, care, and support you can sew right into the surface. So, how can the skincare products you keep in your cabinet contribute to skin hydration? To start with, follow these four tips for how to hydrate skin throughout the year.

1. Establish a Hydrating, Moisturizing Skincare Regimen

To pave the way for your skin to reap the benefits of an exceptional moisturizer or hydrating skincare product, it’s essential to build a skincare routine that helps to remove dead skin cells and creates a clean, healthy foundation. Basic steps of an essential skin care set may include:

1. Cleansing
2. Exfoliating
3. Moisturizing

   Exfoliate with a Gentle Touch

   Our skin cells are complex ecosystems unto themselves, flat-stacked like bricks, dying and regenerating at an alarming pace—one of the primary reasons we have so much laundry to do on a regular basis. But unlike laundry, exfoliation of the face should always occur under a few conditions:

   • Gentleness – Anything other than your fingertips and the exfoliant itself may be too abrasive and inflict too much damage to healthy skin cells [1].
   • Lukewarm water – Try to avoid using hot water, which can leave your skin dry [2]. One basic principle of skin hydration is to avoid excessive heat. When the temperature is too high, it’s too easy for the moisture that should be retained by your skin to escape into the atmosphere.
   • Chemical over physical – Exfoliators can be either physical, with abrasives that may create micro-tears in your skin, or they can be chemical—dissolving the debris away with acids and other ingredients that often work in tandem with those in moisturizers and cleansers. While some physical exfoliants can be effective, chemical options can offer more of the gentleness factor mentioned above [3].
   • Nights only, and not daily – Depending on the sensitivity of your skin, exfoliate at night with some regularity, but not every day. Too much exfoliation may damage your skin, but it should occur before bed for proper skin regeneration overnight [4].

   If you prefer fewer steps in your routine, you’re in luck—these days, you can find facial cleansers with chemical exfoliants built in. This brings us to our next step…

   Cleanse to Create a Clean Foundation

   Exfoliation shouldn’t be a part of your nightly skincare routine, but it certainly should commence the process when you decide to incorporate it. Otherwise, a refreshing cleanser should follow exfoliation to clear away the dead skin cells of the night, the cosmetics, or the debris of the day. Avoid product ingredients, such as alcohol, that will dry your skin [5]. Instead, look for ingredients in your facial cleanser proven to enhance skin hydration [6]:

   • Hyaluronic acid
   • Salicylic acid
   • Antioxidants
   • Aquaporins
   • Ceramides
   • Urea
   • Glycerin

     Moisturize for Skin Hydration

     After you’ve cleansed your face and neck, the next step is to seal the moisture in so your skin can look and feel fresher, longer. Whether you have dry, combination, or oily skin, it’s important to ensure yours has three main ingredient types [7]:

     1. Humectants – These chemicals include ingredients such as hyaluronic acid and glycerin, which work to draw moisture from the air and from the deeper layers of skin to the surface [8].
     2. Emollients – Emollients can help to soothe dryness and soften the skin, but their other purpose is to help trap in moisture—not to add more. Common emollients include oils, plant butters, and fatty acids [9].
     3. Occlusives – Meanwhile, ingredients like beeswax, petrolatum, and lanolin act as a powerful barrier to seal moisture on the surface of the skin [10]. 

     2. Bask In Moisturizers—And Face Masks

     One of the reasons it's best to apply moisturizer after a rejuvenating face wash is that, ideally, you’ll be doing it while your skin is still a little damp. Did you ever notice that when you let the water evaporate completely, the surface of your skin dries to the point that it seems to stretch tenuously, becoming tight as a drum? This is also known as transepidermal water loss (TEWL), a phenomenon that causes your skin to [11]:

     • Lose hydration
     • Gain vulnerability to abrasive elements
     • Form dry patches, resulting in itchiness

     But what if, every now and again, you hold off on occlusives after your cleansing routine, still careful to avoid TEWL, and give your skin cells an extended amount of time to soak in the hydrating humectants and emollients of a face mask? Take a few minutes, interrupt the flow of your skincare routine, and lay a face mask over your features. 

     Aside from the opportunity to lay back and relax your face under a cool sheet, your skin cells gain the benefits of concentrated, prolonged exposure to hydrating ingredients. Choose from a variety that may hydrate your skin, such as [12]:

     • Sheet masks with hydrating antioxidants – If you store these in the fridge, they may also have anti-inflammatory properties as they can be cooling and soothing on the skin [13].
     • Overnight masks with hyaluronic acid – Hours–long exposure to hydrating ingredients may be especially effective for dry skin [14].
     • Clay, mud, or sulfur masks – These can soak up oils and aid in cleansing, opening the skin to hydration efforts, both internal and external [15].

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     3. Customize Your Hydration Routine For Your Climate And Skin Type

     Your region, your town, and the season itself can all have a profound effect on your skin’s hydration levels. Simply put, humidity is the concentration of water vapor in the air. Humidity is usually higher in warmer areas, but lower in cooler locales, where the drying effects of cold weather may vastly amplify transepidermal water loss. 

     In turn, those who live in notoriously dry places may require a more diligent adherence to a hydrating skincare regimen, especially if you have skin with special needs. Skin types include:

     • Normal – Neither dry nor oily, your skin only requires regular cleansing and moisturization.
     • Dry – Issues with the natural moisture barrier—the fatty lipids that bind skin cells together—come in a wide array of severity, ranging from peeling and flaking to cracking or bleeding. People with dry skin may benefit from a humid environment [16].
     • Oily – Humid climates may, in turn, be nightmarish for these people, whose sebum production operates in overdrive. Shiny appearances and skin slick to the touch may be common burdens [17].
     • Combination – In combination skin, the oiliness of your face’s T-zone, which includes the forehead, nose, and chin, may be oily, while other areas of the face with fewer oil glands may feel dull and dry in comparison [18].
     • Sensitive – Rashes or dryness of the skin regularly afflicts people with an overactive immune system, whose body could be reacting to any number of environmental triggers [19].

       How to Humidify Your Environment

       If you live in a cold, dry, and rarely humid part of the world, chances are you struggle with dry skin from time to time. Many have taken charge of their immediate environs, at least, and invested in personal humidifiers—a prime option to maintain your room’s humidity overnight or throughout the day. Some even have mini desk humidifiers that sit just to the side. Even in a busy office, personal humidifiers can help to ensure that the immediately surrounding air provides the moisture your skin needs to thrive in cold environments. You can also consider:

       • Decreasing the use of the air conditioner, which spews cold air that saps the surrounding relative humidity and dries your skin.
       • Covering your skin when venturing outside, bundling up for extra layers of protection from the moisture-sucking atmosphere.
       • Avoiding long, hot showers that can dry the skin, instead sticking to short, lukewarm showers for better skin hydration [20].

       4. Always Wear Sunblock 

       While sunlight is useful for vitamin D production in our skin, it can also dehydrate it [21]. Ultraviolet rays can accelerate the formation of fine lines, wrinkles, and other signs of premature aging skin—certainly over long periods of time and definitely without protection [22]. 

       A daily moisturizer with SPF, or sun protection factor, is instrumental in staving off the onset of aging in your skin [23]. It’s important to pick the right sunscreen not only for your skin type, but also for your skin tone—one that doesn’t seem too greasy even as it moisturizes your skin and polishes your glow. Remember:

       • Reapply every two hours if outside for prolonged periods, ideally every 90 minutes, as the protection fades. Use wipes to clean and hydrate your skin before reapplying and resealing the moisture.
       • Add SPF to often-neglected areas, such as the lips, ears, and neck, which is especially prone to dry skin.
       • Wear a moisturizer with SPF, even when it’s cloudy or cold outside.

Customize Your Hydrating Routine With PROVEN

Giving our skin the hydration it needs is essential to maintaining proper skin health from the inside out. Like any organic body, a functioning skin system needs to be diligently maintained. Our skin needs to be fed, watered, and supplemented if it is to demonstrate lasting elasticity and strength.

The best way to hydrate skin right away is by adopting a refreshing and hydrating skincare routine. Look for products that adapt to your needs—not the other way around. For that, PROVEN Skincare is the perfect choice. 

At PROVEN, we formulate custom skin care products to give your healthy skin exactly what it needs based on your skin type, lifestyle, and the environment—so you’ll know it’s the right combination of hydrating ingredients from day one.

Refresh your skin barrier with PROVEN today.

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