Skincare for sensitive skin

Cleanse gently

Cleansing is a step where you can immediately go wrong with your skincare. Skin should be cleansed with ingredients and products that do not dry out the skin too much. Strong surfactants, high pH and excess rubbing can all irritate sensitive skin and even damage it. Sensitive skin should choose according to the skin’s oiliness either a hydrating gel cleanser, a non-foaming cleansing milk or just an oil-based cleansing balm.

Exfoliating cleansing products, cleansing brushes or other deep cleansing tools should be avoided if your skin is sensitive. Cleansing for too long can also impair the skin. Even sensitive skin can, however, do a double cleanse, if both proudcts are gentle enough.

Avoid strong actives

Sensitive skin should avoid strong active ingredients in all products. High amount of Vitamin C, Retinoids, or Exfoliating Acids are often just too much for sensitive skin. Smaller amounts or gentle alternatives, like Niacinamide are often better fits for sensitive skin.

Avoid common allergens

A person can be allergic to almost any ingredient in skincare. Thus, it can be hard to know all of your allergies or predict an allergic reaction. You should always patch test on your wrist or behind your ear before trying new skincare on your face, to see if you develop a reaction.

Anyone can be unknowingly allergic to an ingredient and allergies can develop by frequently using common allergens. People with sensitive skin should avoid common allergens, like fragrance, essential oils as well as some colorants and preservatives all together.

Avoid common irritants

An addition to avoiding actives and allergens, sensitive skin should also avoid common irritants, like drying alcohols, menthol and some sunscreen filters. Avoiding these can help with skin irritation in people with sensitive skin.

Use soothing ingredients

The list of ingredients to avoid may seem long, but there are also a lot of ingredients that benefit sensitive skin. Panthenol, Centella and Niacinamide are all great for soothing sensitive skin. These can be found for example in the Smuuti Skin Watermelon Dew and Peach Barrier products. Minimizing skin irritation and inflammation will help with immediate discomfort, but also with the overall health of the skin.

Use strengthening ingredients

Keeping the skin barrier intact will help your skin to not react as easily to actives, allergens or irritants. Same techniques apply to preserving your skin barrier, but to repair it, you should use Ceramides, Cholesterol and Fatty Acids. These can be found the Smuuti Skin Peach Barrier Cream.

Use balancing ingredients

In addition to keeping your skin barrier intact, you should also care for your skin’s microbiome. You can preserve your microbiome again with the same  techniques mentioned before, but to strengthen, use pre-, pro- and postbiotics. Fermented ingredients are good for this.

As there are so many kinds of skin sensitivity, not all of these tips may apply to everyone. To many, going fragrance free is enough and some people’s skin keeps reacting to simple touch even after all of these. In case skin sensitivity is bothering you, try tailoring you routing according to these tips to start.