Published: December 15, 2024
While some people experience dry skin year-round, this often becomes a much more common problem in the winter. The lack of humidity in both indoor and outdoor air means that your skin will constantly be losing its moisture reserves to evaporation. This leads to dehydration, which exacerbates dryness and causes the skin to look dull, rough, and flaky. Redness, itchiness, and sensitivities will also be noticed in severe cases.
It doesn’t help that skin barrier function declines in the winter too – the extra damage that your skin undergoes because of this makes dry skin so much worse.
So, what can you do about all of this? Read on as Bionyx shares some top tips for keeping your skin hydrated in even the driest of conditions so that you can enjoy a soft, smooth, and supple complexion throughout the winter months.
Know Your Humectants
Have you ever wondered what actually makes a skincare product hydrating? It all comes down to humectants. This is a group of ingredients that have moisture-binding properties, enabling them to almost instantly hydrate the skin. The effects of humectants are easily visible, with the skin taking on a plumper and fuller finish after they’ve been applied.
If you want to ramp up hydration, then humectants are what you need. It’s worth spending some time familiarizing yourself with some of the best humectants out there – this makes life much easier when shopping for new skincare products.
Chances are that you’re already aware of some of the more famous humectants. Hyaluronic acid, for example, has been in the spotlight lately while glycerin has been a popular humectant for years. However, there are also plenty of others to choose from – peptides, collagen, and many plant oils all offer humectant properties too.
If you want to ensure that the products you’re using are as hydrating as possible, pick formulas that bring multiple humectants together, just like the Bionyx Alloy Platinum Synergizing Serum. It contains all of the humectants mentioned above, along with some vitamin C. This antioxidant is revered for how it helps with the appearance of everything from wrinkles to discoloration, yet many don’t realize that it has been proven to improve skin hydration levels too!
Trap Moisture in With Occlusives
While giving your skin plenty of hydrating humectants is key in the winter months, it doesn’t take long for that newly acquired moisture to start evaporating away. To prevent this from happening, you need to trap that moisture in. How? With occlusives.
This group of ingredients consists of fatty substances that are known for forming a thin film over the skin’s surface. Not only does this help to keep the skin feeling safe from environmental damage but it also blocks moisture from evaporating quite so quickly. This then keeps your skin hydrated for much longer.
There are a number of different occlusive ingredients out there, with shea butter being hailed as one of the best. What makes this ingredient stand out from many of the other occlusives is the fact that it functions as a humectant too, making it a game-changer for dry skin.
With shea butter, as well as other occlusives, usually being thicker in consistency, it’s best applied in the form of a moisturizer, such as the Bionyx Rhodium Essential Day Cream. In addition to shea butter, this cream also contains sunflower seed oil – another great occlusive. Meanwhile, it will also work to soothe the feeling of irritation that often accompanies dry skin.
Hydrate in Layers
Applying a single hydrating serum and then locking that in with an occlusive-rich cream will undoubtedly go a long way in helping your skin feel less dry. However, if you really want to maximize hydration, you should ideally be saturating your skin with humectants in layers. Each new layer that’s applied will push the previous one deeper down. This concept, which is also known as hydration sandwiching, is becoming increasingly popular due to how effectively it hydrates the skin.
How exactly do you go about doing this?
After cleansing your skin, apply a hydrating toner. The Bionyx Rhodium Facial Toner would be a great choice. Once again, you’ll find sodium hyaluronate in this formula, giving you another layer of this super-hydrating ingredient. Glycerin and castor oil provide hydration too while niacinamide helps to keep your skin barrier feeling bolstered.
Then, follow up with a hydrating essence, or go for two hydrating serums instead of one. Top it off with a hydrating and occlusive-rich face cream and your skin will feel hydrated to such a deep level!
Go Easy on Your Dry Skin
Dry skin is pretty fragile, meaning that it’s very vulnerable to damage. This is partly down to how dry skin doesn’t produce enough sebum, especially in the winter. Sebum acts as a physical barrier between your skin and the environment, providing some extra protection. It also helps to slow down moisture loss, keeping your skin better hydrated too.
Since your skin is lacking in sebum, the last thing you want to do is remove what little sebum you do have. Unfortunately, this is surprisingly easy to do if you’re using the wrong cleanser…
In the winter months, your cleanser needs to be gentle and moisturizing. Avoid any formulas containing sulfates or other harsh ingredients that will dry your skin out. Instead, pick hydrating blends, such as the Bionyx Rhodium Mousse Cleanser. It still produces a beautiful lather but it won’t strip away your skin’s sebum reserves.
The same applies to your choice of exfoliator too – keep it gentle in the winter. A product like the Bionyx Rhodium Complex Facial Peeling would be ideal. Make sure that you don’t use it too often though! While you may be tempted to exfoliate more in the winter months in an attempt to slough away all of those flakes that seem to quickly gather on your face, this will only make your dry skin even worse. Instead, don’t exfoliate more than once or twice a week.
Provide Extra Hydration in the Evenings
Dry skin is usually desperate for some extra hydration at all times. However, its need for moisture drastically rises each evening. Why? Because moisture loss increases while you sleep. This is why people with dry skin often notice that their skin feels at its driest in the mornings.
The good news is that you can counter this by giving your skin some extra moisture each evening. How? Start with a rich and ultra-hydrating night cream, such as the Bionyx Rhodium Night Recovery Cream. This moisturizer is infused with shea butter, which, as mentioned earlier, is both a humectant and an occlusive. It contains other hydrating plant oils too, as well as oat protein and colloidal platinum.
When your skin could do with an even bigger moisture boost, consider adding a hydrating face mask to your evening skincare routine. The Bionyx Alloy Magnetic Synergy Mask is filled with ingredients that dry skin loves. Between hemp seed oil, marula oil, coconut oil, and baobab oil, along with peptides and hydrating botanical extracts, it will leave your skin feeling softer and more supple pretty much straight away!
Treat Yourself to a Humidifier
As we discussed earlier, one of the main reasons why winter is so harsh on your skin is due to how dry the air around you is. While you may not be able to do much about the humidity levels outdoors, the humidity level in your home is something that you have a little more control over, so long as you purchase a humidifier.
Humidifiers, as the name implies, increase humidity. They basically add moisture back into the air, meaning that the air is no longer so dry. As a result, the rate at which moisture evaporates out of your skin slows down. This then means that your skin is kept hydrated for longer, at least while you’re indoors and around your humidifier!
Shield Your Skin From UV Damage
It’s easy to forget about sun protection in the winter. After all, you can sometimes go days and barely see the sun! However, even on those dark and cloudy winter days, UV rays are still around and are continuing to damage your skin. If you happen to be somewhere that’s snowy or icy, this puts you at even more risk. Those reflective surfaces cause UV rays to bounce around and hit you from every angle!
You’re likely familiar with some of the damage that UV rays can cause. Wrinkles, dark spots, and, of course, skin cancer are commonly cited as the biggest problems. However, those UV rays also contribute to dehydration. They damage the skin’s protective barrier – the same one that’s responsible for keeping moisture locked into the skin. This then allows the dry winter air around you even better access to your skin’s moisture reserves, leaving your skin drier and more dehydrated than ever.
This is why sun protection needs to be a key part of your winter skincare routine. Make sure that you consistently use it each day to avoid all of the issues that UV damage creates.
Hydrate From Within
It’s true – the amount of water that you drink has no bearing on how dry your skin is/how much sebum it produces. Plus, the water that you drink is sent to your major organs first – your skin is the last to receive it and often doesn’t see that much of it. This is why topical hydration is so important.
With that said, failing to drink enough water will cause your entire body to feel dehydrated. When this happens, it’s not just the outer layers of your skin that suffer from a lack of moisture – those deeper layers will end up dealing with the consequences too. If you thought that your dry skin was bad before, it will become so much worse if your whole body is dehydrated!
Prevent this from happening by ensuring that you’re drinking your eight glasses of water a day. Try to eat plenty of water-rich foods too as these will give your body some extra hydration.
Winter Skincare With Bionyx
Dry skin is an extremely common problem in the winter. However, if you’re proactive with your approach and keep your skin consistently hydrated and moisturized, you’ll be able to get through the season with skin that looks soft and dewy!
Click here to boost your winter skincare routine with more bestselling products from Bionyx.