The Best Skin Care Routine For Dry Skin On The Face

Do you experience dry, scaly skin that often becomes tight, flaky and itchy? No matter how much moisturizer you slather onto your face, you never seem to get relief? It’s a common experience, but this doesn’t make dry skin on the face any less uncomfortable or embarrassing. Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can deal with this – we’ve come up with a skin care routine for dry skin that will clear away dead skin and replenish loss of moisture so that you can feel confident and radiant again.

6 Dry Skin Symptoms You May Notice

Take a glance at the following symptoms to identify if you have dry skin:

The skin on your face and body feels very tight after showering, swimming or contact with water
Generally, your skin has a rough, sandpaper texture
The skin around your lips or on your face is flaking or scaly
Fine lines or cracks are developing
You experience dryness that’s painful, itchy, or scaly
Deep cracks form on your skin

how to treat dry skin infographic

How To Get Rid Of Dry Skin

Dry skin can be exacerbated by external factors like hormones, environmental stress and seasonal changes. Here are some easy ways to keep dry skin soft and supple.

1. Moisturize

Moisturizers are a no-brainer for dry skin care. Oil-based ointments, creams and lotions that are rich in essential fatty acids (EFAs) compensate for dry skin’s lack of oil and lipids. They lubricate the skin’s surface as well as fortify the skin’s moisture barrier to replenish and seal in much-needed moisture.

“When choosing moisturizer for dry skin, aim for a heavier moisturizer and look for ingredients like hyaluronic acid … » explains Dr Hooman Khorasani, Dermatologic and Cosmetic Surgeon. “These are known to keep skin hydrated. Other ingredients to look for might be shea butter and lactic acid, which provide hydration and exfoliation.”

Pro Tip: Apply moisturizer while your skin is still slightly damp to lock in extra hydration.

2. Watch Your Water Temperature

Extreme temperatures exacerbate an already dry complexion by stripping the skin of essential oils. Joshua Zeichner, M.D., tells SELF: “The water in your shower should be the temperature of what you would imagine a heated pool to be – approximately 84 degrees F.” If hot showers are non-negotiable, limit them to no more than 10 minutes to keep dry skin protected.

3. Use Gentle Ingredients

Like extreme temperatures, harsh cosmetic ingredients can impact the skin’s moisture barrier, causing dryness and irritation. To protect your skin, avoid products that include chemical ingredients like parabens, petrolatum, mineral oils, propylene glycol or sodium lauryl sulfate.

4. Protect Your Skin In Winter

Dry winter air also adds to skin dryness. During winter months, there is less moisture in the air, which causes the moisture in your skin to evaporate more quickly. To compensate, Harvard Health recommends using a humidifier and setting it to around 60%, which is sufficient to replenish lost moisture in your skin’s top layer.

5. Adjust Your Diet

You can enhance your skin’s ability to retain moisture by adding healthy fats to your diet. Omega-3 and omega-6 oils support skin health by fighting inflammation and bolstering the skin’s moisture barrier. Foods rich in healthy fats include salmon, flaxseed, walnuts and sunflower seeds.

Now that you know how to treat your dry skin, you can also consider a number of gentle products helpful for relieving dry skin on the face. One of the best ways to tackle it is by tailoring your skin care routine to include moisture-rich products that replenish and repair. We recommend the following routine to heal and soothe dry skin so that you can feel back to your normal self.

Dealing With Dry Skin On The Face? Your 5-Step Routine

If flaky skin is cramping your style, smooth things over day to night with these Eminence Organics solutions.

1. Cleanse

Lathering up with harsh soaps or strong fragrances can exacerbate dry skin. There’s also a chance that the foaming cleanser you’re using is stripping your skin of its natural oils. Instead, use a rich balm or oil.

As a first cleansing step, purify your dry skin with a gentle, oil-based cleanser. Eminence Organics Product Support Representative Alicia Hawthorne recommends Wildflower Cleansing Balm. Formulated with poppy seed oil and elderflower, this balm replenishes moisture and relieves redness. But don’t over do it and use an exfoliator every day.

2. Exfoliate (Weekly)

Alicia encourages exfoliating dry skin weekly to “take care of any flakiness!”. For this type of complexion, a gentle exfoliant like Strawberry Rhubarb Dermafoliant is your best bet. Containing lactic acid, rice and chickpea flour, this physical and chemical exfoliant clears dead skin cells and smooths rough, dry skin. The presence of salicylic acid gently exfoliates and removes impurities to brighten the skin’s appearance and shrink the appearance of pores.

Product Picks

Wildflower Cleansing Balm

Wildflower Cleansing Balm

VIEW PRODUCT

Strawberry Rhubarb Dermafoliant

Strawberry Rhubarb Dermafoliant

VIEW PRODUCT

3. Tone

A toner is needed to balance your skin’s moisture and pH levels after cleansing, and to remove any impurities that the cleansers may have missed. Think of toner as the “conditioner” to your cleanser. A product like our Stone Crop Hydrating Mist includes conditioning ingredients like stone crop, lavender and jasmine to restore moisture and nourish dry skin. Once you’ve cleansed your skin, apply one to two sprays onto the face and neck, or you can apply it with a cotton pad, avoiding the eye area, and leave it on.

4. Treat

When it comes to choosing an oil, concentrate or serum for dry skin, Alicia recommends reaching for a product that is rich in both fatty acids and anti-inflammatory ingredients. Her suggestion is Facial Recovery Oil, which includes calming and nourishing oils that are healing for dry skin. This luxurious face oil is formulated with precious herbs and oils, including clary sage oil and sage leaf extract, to soothe and renew the skin.

5. Moisturize

When the temperature drops, the cold strips your skin of the essential moisture it needs to stay supple. As soon as you shower or wash your face, apply a generous layer of moisturizer and spend a good amount of time massaging it into the face. Choose an oil-rich cream that replenishes moisture and repairs your skin’s lipid barrier. Our Coconut Age Corrective Moisturizer includes deeply moisturizing coconut oil and shea butter. Shea butter, in particular, is an excellent emollient for the skin; it is high in triglycerides and fatty acids which restore and retain moisture.