Published: December 15, 2023
It doesn’t take much for rosacea-prone skin to flare up, resulting in a face that looks flushed, red, and irritated. Many turn to skincare products as a way to counter this but, unfortunately, this can sometimes make things worse since certain products and ingredients are infamous for triggering rosacea.
So, what’s the solution if you want your rosacea-prone skin to look calm, clear, and healthy? Here’s a Bionyx skincare routine that you can follow to help your skin look and feel its very best.
Cleanse With a Gentle, Non-Foaming Cleanser
Every skincare routine should begin with a cleanser, and this applies to rosacea-prone skin too. Ideally, you should be cleansing your skin twice a day. This is something that many people with rosacea avoid doing, opting for a single daily cleanse due to how their skin already feels so irritated. However, cleansing twice a day will ensure that your skin is free of the bacteria and environmental impurities that can often cause flare-ups.
The key to cleansing without further irritating your skin is to use a gentle, non-foaming cleanser, such as the Bionyx Rhodium Mousse Cleanser. Foaming cleansers tend to make use of harsh ingredients to create their thick lathers. Those foaming agents have a propensity to dry out the skin. A mousse cleanser, on the other hand, still forms an indulgent lather but in a much gentler way. Our formula is infused with amino acids to leave your skin feeling even stronger!
In addition to using a gentle cleanser, be gentle when applying it. Avoid scrubbing or rubbing rosacea-prone skin, as this will only irritate it. Instead, use a light touch with your fingertips. Make sure that the water that you use to wash your face is lukewarm, rather than hot. Hot water is a known rosacea trigger, so you want to prevent your face from coming into contact with it as much as possible.
Soothe Your Freshly Cleansed Complexion With an Alcohol-Free Toner
People with rosacea-prone skin are often advised not to use a toner. This is down to how so many toners contain astringent ingredients or alcohol. Toners were initially created for people with oily skin, as a way to dry out excess sebum. As you can imagine, this won’t do much good for sensitive, rosacea-prone skin.
However, times have changed, and so have toners. Rather than being designed to counter oiliness, there are now many toners out there that serve other important purposes too. From rebalancing the pH level on the surface of the skin to providing an extra layer of hydration, people with rosacea-prone skin should be taking full advantage of all of these benefits.
How do you find a rosacea-friendly toner? Look for a formula without alcohol or added fragrances. Instead, you want to be seeing ingredients that will hydrate your skin and calm your complexion, such as niacinamide, sodium hyaluronate, and glycerin. These ingredients will soothe the feeling of irritation while providing a range of other benefits. All three can be found in the Bionyx Rhodium Facial Toner, which has a short but sweet ingredient list that rosacea-prone skin will appreciate!
Again, be gentle when applying your toner. Some people choose to use a cotton pad to do so but you may want to opt for your fingertips instead to prevent irritating your skin.
Apply a Rosacea-Friendly Serum
So many of the serums out there contain potent ingredients in high concentrations, which would be bad news for rosacea-prone skin. Powerful active ingredients will only lead to irritation and sensitivities, causing your rosacea to flare up.
However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use a serum. Instead, the key is to find a rosacea-friendly formula, meaning one that calms, soothes, and balances the complexion while reducing the feeling of inflammation or irritation.
This is something that the Bionyx Alloy Platinum Synergizing Serum excels at. Again, this fragrance-free serum doesn’t have a particularly long ingredient list, which is important when dealing with rosacea-prone skin. However, the few ingredients that it does contain, with the list including peptides, vitamins, and sodium hyaluronate, will ensure that your skin feels balanced and content.
Since this serum contains vitamin C, introduce it to your skincare routine slowly. Start by using it once a day every couple of days, before gradually increasing this.
Many people with rosacea-prone skin stay away from vitamin C, believing that it will only cause irritation. However, in this formula, a stabilized form of vitamin C is used to prevent the feeling of irritation. Introducing the ingredient in the correct way, as we just explained, will also help your skin to learn to tolerate and accept the ingredient. It’s worth taking the time to do so, with several studies proving that vitamin C is capable of reducing the appearance of rosacea symptoms.
Slather on a Rich Moisturizer
Some people with rosacea-prone skin suffer from dryness, whereas others experience oiliness. Whatever your situation may be, including a moisturizer in your skincare routine is a must.
Research shows that a moisturizer can really help to improve the look of rosacea. Even if you’re using a specific rosacea treatment, keeping your skin moisturized while doing so will bring you better results.
This is not only due to how a moisturizer helps with moisture retention, which keeps skin cells feeling healthy, happy, and able to function optimally, but it’s also down to how a moisturizer forms a barrier over the surface of the skin. This acts as an extra shield between your skin and the environment around you. From bacteria to pollutants to any other rosacea triggers that may be out there, your skin will be less susceptible to the appearance of flare-ups if you keep it moisturized.
When picking a moisturizer, go with a formula that contains fatty acids. These will keep your skin barrier feeling fortified and resilient. Studies show that fatty acids are also capable of reducing the feeling of inflammation in the skin. With rosacea being an inflammatory skin disorder, fatty acids are definitely the way to go!
Plant oils and butters are fantastic sources of fatty acids. Shea butter, in particular, contains an unusually high level of these compounds. You’ll find shea butter in both the Bionyx Rhodium Essential Day Cream and the Bionyx Rhodium Night Recovery Cream. The latter is a richer formula that also contains a few extra hydrating ingredients. This will give your skin the extra moisture that it needs while you sleep.
Don’t Forget About Sun Protection
Research shows that for 81% of people with rosacea-prone skin, sun exposure is a big trigger. This is down to a few reasons…
Firstly, sun exposure causes new blood vessels to grow in the skin. This shows through on the surface of the skin as redness and patchiness.
UV radiation also leads to inflammation, something else that kicks rosacea into action. It doesn’t help that the sun also raises the temperature of the body, with heat being another common rosacea trigger.
All in all, the sun is bad news for people with rosacea-prone skin. This is why it’s so important to have a sunscreen that you can safely use each day. ‘Safely’ is the key word here because the ingredients used in chemical sunscreens often irritate rosacea-prone skin.
Mineral sunscreens are the alternative. These formulas physically block the sun’s rays from hitting the skin. This means that not only will you be safe from UV radiation but you also won’t have to deal with your skin heating up in the way that it would with a chemical sunscreen.
Look for a sunscreen with an SPF of 50. Although SPF30 is usually recommended, your rosacea-prone skin needs a little extra protection. A broad-spectrum formula is vital too as this means that the product will protect against both UVA and UVB rays. Of course, make sure that all of the ingredients used in that sunscreen will play nicely with your skin. If you spot any common triggers, such as fragrances, alcohols, or menthol, look for a different product.
Exfoliating Rosacea-Prone Skin
People with rosacea often avoid exfoliation, and this is understandable. It doesn’t take much to aggravate the skin, and exfoliators are notorious for doing so.
However, exfoliating can actually benefit your rosacea, so long as it’s done correctly. By removing the dead skin cells, dirt, and other impurities that have built up on your skin and in your pores, you’ll be able to help your skin barrier feel better balanced. In the long run, this will reduce the appearance of your rosacea symptoms.
Of course, one wrong move and you could end up with another flare-up, so you need to tread lightly when picking an exfoliator. Physical exfoliants, such as scrubs, should be avoided at all costs. Instead, you’ll need to go for a very mild chemical exfoliant. Start off by using it once every ten days or so. If your skin seems to be able to handle that without any problems, you can increase how often you use it. However, don’t be tempted to exfoliate more often than twice a week, as this will only end up severely damaging your skin barrier.
Soothing Your Complexion With a Face Mask
Usually, people with rosacea-prone skin try to keep their skincare routines as minimal as possible so as to avoid causing a flare-up. However, if your skin has been acting up and you’re looking for way to calm your complexion down, a face mask could be exactly what you need.
Just like when choosing all of your other skincare products, you need to pick your mask wisely. Avoid masks that dry out the skin or that contain irritating ingredients.
Instead, look for formulas that focus on the skin barrier and provide hydration. Hydrogel masks, like the Bionyx Platinum Facial & Eye Mask Routine, tend to do this well. This fragrance-free mask contains a number of ingredients that feel indulgently soothing, such as algae extract, hyaluronic acid, collagen, and chitosan.
Final Words
Caring for rosacea-prone skin can be tricky, but a good skincare routine can really help. Keep things simple, focus on giving your skin the ingredients that it needs to feel calmer and stronger, and you’ll be able to keep the appearance of flare-ups at bay.
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