As avid makeup and beauty junkies we all know that the key to a great makeup application is the perfect canvas. Getting your skin in tip top condition is the most important step to getting the look you want. Because of this I like to invest a little extra time and money into my skin care. My go to time of day for treating my skin is at night, after dinner, at least 30 minutes before bed (so all the products have time to sink in to my skin rather than my pillow case).
What’s the cardinal sin of skin care? Going to sleep with your makeup on. Makeup clogs pores, there’s no way around it, even with fancy primers. You want that stuff off your face before you hit the sheets, so cleansing is a must. I cleanse twice just to be sure it’s all gone. I start off with Garnier’s Micellar Cleansing Water. We’ve all read the rave reviews on this product so I won’t go into much detail here. This takes off the bulk of my makeup with 2 cotton pads soaked in the product (one for the eyes and the other for the face).
Next I go in with a cream/lotion type cleanser, the kind that doesn’t lather. I have pretty dry skin these days so I’m gravitating towards creamier cleansing options. At the moment I’m using the Pure & Natural Cleansing Lotion by Nivea because I really do like the brand, and it’s at the drugstore, readily available and affordable. This cleanser contains bio aloe vera and bio argan oil. I did a quick google search to discover what the ‘bio’ part meant without much success, so I’m guessing it’s just altered argan oil and aloe vera to work with the other ingredients. Either way, these provide some extra hydration to the skin during cleansing, which is a win for me.
I follow up with the Pure & Natural Cleansing Toner from Nivea. I see this as my cleansing test, If there’s any makeup I’ve missed during cleansing, this will pick it up. I’m not in love with this as a toner, it’s full of alcohol so it tends to be a bit drying on my skin, but I also don’t want to skip the toner step. Plus I paid for it, so I want to finish it up before I look for other options more suited to my skin type. If anyone has any good suggestions for non-alcohol toners, leave me a comment!
Up next is the treatment phase of my skin care, otherwise known as serums. If you read my blog regularly, you’d know I hauled the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair serums for face and eyes recently – I’ve been using them nightly for about 2 weeks now and I love them! These serums are packed with antioxidants and hydrating ingredients that my skin adores. Estée Lauder claims that this product maximises the skins natural nighttime renewal process, resulting in smoother, more hydrated and stronger skin. I’m not sure about the stronger skin claim, but it does make my skin feel smoother and well hydrated. This stuff gets a big tick of approval from me, and I’ll definitely repurchase (even if it’s crazy expensive).
Lastly we have the moisturisers. For my face I’m using Philosophy’s Miracle Worker Overnight. This is marketed as an age-resetting, anti-wrinkle cream with a rare marine algae extract that’s supposed to target age-accelerating proteins, along with peptides and vitamin C to support collagen in the upper layers of the skin. This is just an okay night cream, I wouldn’t say any of the anti-ageing benefits actually work (the packaging wouldn’t keep any of these ingredients stable anyway, it exposes them to light an air every time you use it), though it does hydrate my skin. I won’t be repurchasing this one though, I’ve had better hydration from my previous Q10 night cream by Nivea.
Finally is my Creamy Eye Treatment by Kiehl’s. Even the skin around my eyes is dry, arguably the driest spot on my face, so I need something heavy duty under my peepers. This eye cream does the trick. It’s thick and creamy in the jar, though it smoothes out under the heat of your fingers and absorbs quite well. It leaves the skin around my eyes well hydrated and ready for makeup application the next day. My only qualm with this is that it is purely for hydration purposes, there’s no anti-ageing benefits in this cream, which is a bummer. I’m still going to repurchase and keep it as a deep hydrating treatment for under they eyes, but I feel that I need to find something else to use that has more anti-ageing qualities.
That’s everything I use on my face every night. There’s definitely some tweaking still to be done with this routine, but overall I’m pretty happy with my skin’s condition. The only problem I have right now is that the cold weather is making my skin drier than normal. I need to find myself a good hydrating mask to use a few times a week to give my skin the hydration boost it needs.
Until next time,
xo, Nifty.
Nifty Natter 