How Often Should You Change Your Skincare Routine? Skincare routine changes are kind of like Goldilocks: Change them too often, and you might upset your skin — but if you don’t change them enough, you’ll be out of sync with the seasons, clogging your pores by using a winter cream in summer. To help you out, we’ve compiled a guide explaining how often to introduce new products, how long to wait to see if a new product works, and when to change your skincare routine seasonally. Then we’ll wrap up with some tips for tracking changes in your skincare routine.
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How Often You Should Introduce New Products
When you get a lot of new skincare products or a new travel size skincare kit, it can be tempting to try them out all at once, but this can backfire on you. Introducing multiple products at once can upset the balance of your skin, leading to breakouts, oiliness, or excess dryness. And if one of the new products does trigger a reaction, you won’t know which one was responsible for it!
Instead, you should aim to introduce no more than one new product to your routine per week, and ideally you should wait two weeks in between introducing new products. This will allow your skin plenty of time to get adjusted to the new product and allow you to easily identify if the new product is causing a reaction or not. Sometimes products might not cause an allergic reaction right away, so it’s best to give it a little time to see if your face is going to have an issue or not.
How Long You Should Wait to See if a Product Works
Some skincare products just won’t work for your skin no matter how long you use it. So how long should you test out a new product before you decide that it’s not working for your skin? While it may seem like a long time to wait, you should give all new skincare products at least four to six weeks to see if they work. If you are on a prescription topical medication, your dermatologist may direct you to test it out for even longer.
The reason for this is that it takes your skin approximately four to six weeks to completely replenish itself and replace every skin cell. It takes at least one full skin cycle to see if a product is making a difference in your skin or not. This also gives you enough time to get through the skin purging phase, which can occur when you start using a new product and also last up to six weeks. Skin purging occurs when you start using a product that increases the skin cell turnover rate, such as a retinol or a chemical exfoliant. This skin cell turnover can bring old cells, dirt, sebum, and more to the surface, clogging pores and temporarily causing breakouts as your skin adjusts. Once the skin purging cycle completes, your skin will calm down and you should start to see a difference in your skin.
When to Change Your Skincare Routine Seasonally
Most people’s skin becomes more dry in the winter and more oily in the summer, which means that switching up your skincare routine with the seasons can be a good idea. Most people will need to change their skincare routine at least twice a year: once as the spring turns into summer, and again as fall turns into winter.
That being said, some people like to have four distinct phases to their skincare routine, one for each season: spring, summer, fall, and winter. This means that they switch up their skincare routine four times a year instead of just two. Switching up your skincare routine that often can make it tricky to introduce other products, however, so you need to take that into account.
If you want to match your skincare to all four seasons, then you don’t have to do a hard reset on your routine every three months. Some products can carry over from fall to winter and from spring to summer. To keep from overwhelming your skin, it’s best to simplify your skincare routine whenever possible and avoid unnecessary swaps. Transitioning a 3-step skincare routine will be a lot easier and faster than transitioning a 10-step skincare routine!
Tips for Changing Your Skincare Routine
To track how products are working (or not working) for your skin, we recommend keeping a skincare log of your symptoms. You might also want to track what you eat and drink, as well as your monthly cycle, since changes in diet and hormones can play a big role in your skin health. This will allow you to determine if any changes are the result of the new skincare products that you introduced or other lifestyle changes.
You might also want to take pictures of your skin on the day that you introduce a new skincare product so that you can visually measure changes over time. This is especially helpful for people struggling with acne, rosacea, and other skin conditions that may flare up with the introduction of a new product. Taking pictures will allow you to track your condition over time to determine if it gets better or worse with the introduction of a new product. It will also help you capture any skin purging reactions and see whether or not they clear up during the four- to six-week waiting period.
We hope this guide gave you practical information about how often to change your skincare routine! Let us know your other top tips for changing up your skincare routine in the comments below, as well as your expert advice for weathering skin purging reactions.
