It’s very important to know your facial oil and water skin type if you want your skin care products to do the very best for you that they can. If you use the right products for your skin type, you’ll be able to achieve the skin you’ve always wanted. But if you use a product with a vehicle not appropriate for your skin type, even though it has the right active ingredient in it, it may not only fail to help your problem, but it may make your problem worse! Let’s dive deeper!
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Using skin type appropriate products is one of the most important parts of creating your skincare regimen. And it’s actually the vehicle that the active ingredient is dissolved in that determines if it’s appropriate for your skin type. As a quick reminder, the active ingredient is the ingredient actually affecting change on your skin, such as glycolic or vitamn c. The vehicle is the solution it’s suspended in, such as a serum or cream. But I’ll come back to this in a bit.
So first, your facial oil and water skin type is very simply determined by the relative balance of oil and water on your skin. That balance results from the activity of your skin’s oil glands that make oil, and the activity of different, unrelated sweat glands that make water. That balance determines which of the four facial oil and water skin types you have.
If your cheeks feel tight or dry or appear flaky, you have dry skin. If your T-Zone appears oily, feels oily, or you breakout with acne, then you have oily skin. If you have dry skin in your cheeks and oily skin in your T-zone at the same time, then you have combination skin. And if you have neither dry skin nor oily skin, than you have normal skin, and we’re all jealous!
Simple right? It is, but there’s a slight twist. The relative needs of your skin and its oil and water balance can actually change in different seasons depending on whether it’s warm or cold outside and whether the humidity is high or low. So in warmer more humid weather, you usually need a lighter vehicle while in colder dryer weather, a heavier vehicle is more appropriate.
So the next time you select a new skincare product, make sure that it’s appropriate for your skin type. And better yet, find a brand that offers the same actives in different vehicles – like a glycolic cream and a glycolic serum – so you can change products accordingly with the seasons while using the same actives to always maintain the skin you want.
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