What are serums and why are they important, how to use them properly, and which ones are the best for our skin type, we’re going to talk all these things about serums.
Serum is a product that can be applied to the skin after cleansing, but before moisturizing for the purpose of providing strong ingredients to the skin. Serum is very useful for this because it is made up of small molecules that can penetrate deep into the skin and allow high concentration of active ingredients. This makes it a great tool for dealing with certain skin care issues, such as wrinkles and signs of aging.
Benefits of Serums
- Some of the benefits of serums include hydration, it’s a concentrated dose of all these natural good ingredients that really helps your skin nourishment and smooth out your skin.
- It helps with minimizing pores of your skin.
- Even outs blemishes or uneven coloring.
- Basically, anything you’re missing after toning like dryness or acne or pores, it just fills in all those things.
What serums actually are?
So let’s jump into what serums actually are, so with serums it’s kind of contradictory, because they’re moisturizing, but they’re not moisturizers they could have oils in them, but they’re not facial oils, and sometimes the consistency of the serums are like essence, but they’re not essence, but it is definitely a really important step in your skincare routine, because it delivers active ingredients straight into the dermis layer of your skin. It maintains the pH level of your skin to concentrate on targeting for your skin care concerns, they’re typically used to target skin care concerns such as:
- Brightening the skin.
- Reducing wrinkles and acne.
- Delivering a firmer and smoother skin texture.
- Reducing the appearance of big pores.
- Increasing moisture levels to your skin.
Why Serums are important?
Serums are really important because:
- They’re lightweight.
- They’re really fast absorbing.
- They sink deep into your skin.
- They moisturize your skin.
why serums and moisturizers are different?
Nutshell serums are really great because they are super intense but don’t use it as just a moisturizer, because it doesn’t have enough of those nourishing qualities as your moisturizer does, so the reason why serums and moisturizers are different, and why serums don’t moisturize as well as actual moisturizers is because the molecular makeup and combination of serums are a lot smaller, so they sink deeper into your pores, kind of like toners do, and for moisturizers they’re bigger, so they act more as a barrier to keep hydration from leaving your skin because throughout the day your skin does evaporate, kind of like a pool of water, your oil will evaporate, And so moisturizers help to lock that down and keep it in their routine, that’s the biggest difference, but we’ll talk more about moisturizers in our next article.
How to apply Serum?
The proper way to apply serum is obviously to start with a clean cleansed and toned face, so after toning you want to take whatever serum it is that’s for your specific skin concern, so each person will have a different serum, so first of all you want to put like a little pea-sized amount onto your fingertips or your palms, and then just spread it and then just work it in, and you want to start from the cheek area as well as the forehead, because those tend to be drier, and they have more pores, so you want to make sure it sinks in there, and you will realize that serums once again are never greasy, they’re really lightweight and they’re really thin in consistency, magical.
So one way that I like applying serums is I like putting it on the palm of my hand, and I just use my finger to dab and like put it in all the areas it needs to be, and then use my fingertips to spread it, because I know using your palms, the product gets absorbed into your palms a lot quicker, so your fingers it’s like you know serums are pretty expensive, you just want to make sure it just stays on your finger or your face, not on the other parts of your body, and serums are not to be used with a cotton pad, do not do that, your money is flying away like, and one more thing for serums, it is important to always read the packaging, always read the labels, sometimes you can use it daily, you can use it two times a day, sometimes you can only use it two to three times a week, so always read the packaging, and don’t be like me where I used to put serums under the eye.
Types of ingredients
So, let’s move on now to the type of ingredients you should look out for in serums for your own skin type, since serums are little concentrated bottles of magic, they’re also concentrated on targeting specific skincare concerns, so first starting off with Acne Prone Skin.
Acne Prone Skin
If you have Acne Prone Skin, it’s probably a little bit sensitive as well, so you want to look for serums that have vitamin C retinol zinc and salicylic acid, because
- Vitamin C and retinol increases the collagen production, and also brightens the skin, and also it helps to speed up the process of any of those breakouts that cause any darkening or hyperpigmentation on the skin.
- Zinc mostly soothes skin irritation and regulates oil production of skin.
- Salicylic acid which you all probably know about if you have breakout acne prone skin, also known as BHA or bha, the chemical exfoliant, because it helps to really penetrate deep down into the pores, and unclog the oils and the dead skin.
- Niacinamide is really great for acne prone skin, it’s just clear, it hasn’t got any fragrance or anything like that added into it, and you just spread that all over.
- Caudalie Vino pure natural salicylic acid pore minimizing serum, so I actually use this for the pore minimizing part in it, it works, because the ingredients are a bit heavier, because they’re designed to attack that pimple, It’s like extra intense, you have to make sure you read the labels on how many times you should be using in a day, because I would definitely not use things like this or this every single day, because it will cause a lot of drying, and you might even start flaking, you can switch it up like toners you can switch up serums as well.
Dry Skin
So, going on to dry skin, so if you have dry skin that’s in need of some desperate TLC and repair, look for ingredients that have vitamin E and niacinamide, glycolic acid and hyaluronic acid.
- Vitamin E is an important Vitamin and antioxidant that protects the cells from free radical damage.
- Niacinamide improves skin elasticity, and increases hydration levels in the skin.
- Glycolic acid helps to gently exfoliate the skin and remove all the dead cells that are just floating around, it also helps brighten and lighten.
- Hyaluronic acid helps your skin retain all the moisture of your skin, but hyaluronic acid is super good, our body naturally makes hyaluronic acid, so you’re just kind of adding more into it, especially if you have dry skin which is genetic, so don’t blame yourself for dry skin, and oily skin is also genetic, dry and oily are both inherited, so moral of the story just to love yourself and embrace what you have and what your mama gives you.
TLC glycolic night serum
If you have dry skin, if it looks kind of dull, because it’s like covered by a layer of dead skin, I would definitely recommend the TLC glycolic night serum by Drunk Elephant, so this one is pretty intense, the first time that I used it, this is once a week to start only at night, and in the mornings after you use it, make sure you wear sunscreen, if you’re kind of stripping the dead skin, you need to protect that layer of skin, so make sure you protect that with the sunscreen.
Glow serum
Overnight glow serum, it has 10% glycolic acid which helps gently shed the dead skin cells on your skin, and it also has vitamin A, and there’s also soothing and nourishing ingredients like cucumbers and also vitamin A ,C and E, So actually vitamin C and vitamin E, if you ever see them together, they work like best friends, they work really well together in just helping with dullness ,hyperpigmentation and nourishing.
Summery
So, what we’ve learned so far about the basics of skin care is step number one to properly wash on cleanse your face, and the reason why it’s so important to properly cleanse or double cleanse with the oil cleanser, and then a regular liquid cleanser water based cleanser is because you want to make sure before you apply anything onto your skin, all the nasties all the days grime and oils, everything has been properly removed, so that you won’t clog your pores, because clogged pores are what leads to the bane of our system, which is just break out, and then following one is toner just to rehydrate the skin, reset and rebalance the pH levels on the skin, so that everything that you apply on top like serums, can sink better into the skin.
Serums, you can see a lot of more immediate effects, because it is sinking into the skin, and it is applied at night and sometimes in the morning as well, so it stays on for the longest period, whereas like with cleanser its more about getting away the debris, so it’s not like, its more on and off, and so with that, with serums make sure while serums are moisturizing, always apply moisturizers afterwards.
