Basic Daily Skin Care Routine: Start With The Essentials

1. Cleanser - daily: Always, always treat your skin with utmost gentleness. Use a cleanser that doesn't leave your skin feeling tight and 'stripped'. If it does, ditch it as it's doing you harm. Find one that suits your texture preference. Use that at night, and wipe the night away in the morning with a mild, dermatologically approved cleansing micellar water.

2. Toner - daily: This is often skipped, but a toner helps to remove any dirt and cleanser residue, balances your skin's pH (so it functions properly) and preps it for moisturiser, allowing it to penetrate deeply. If you’re really not a fan, then double cleanse with micellar water to wipe away the residue.

3. Moisturiser - daily: This is vital, as moisturisers prevent the water in your skin evaporating by forming a protective barrier on the skin's surface. If water is allowed to escape, the skin becomes dehydrated, and it can't perform its functions properly, which leads to problems like acne and premature ageing - and who wants that?
   
   Smart moisturisers contain extra ingredients like antioxidants (vitamins A, C, E, green tea, resveratrol, co-enzyme Q10, etc.) to fight environmental ageing, hydrating ingredients (hyaluronic acid, glycerine, honey, urea) - which help your skin boost its own moisture supply, and even sun protection. These are the ones you want, girls.

4. Sunscreen - daily! In SA, this is not negotiable, unless you want to end up with blotchy pigmentation and look wrinkled before your time, without even considering the chances of getting skin cancer, which are pretty good. Don't skimp here. Look for a sunscreen with the words UVA and UVB protection, broad spectrum and UVA in a circle on the packaging.
   
   Smart sunscreens also offer added skin care benefits with specialised treatment ingredients for your skin condition, antioxidants, tints, etc.

5. Exfoliator - it depends: Use this according to product instructions - from daily to once weekly. We used the word exfoliator here rather than scrub on purpose.
   
   Scrubs are physical exfoliators that buff off old, dead skin cells on the skin’s surface to reveal fresh, new skin underneath. They’re often made from fine nut particles, which can scratch your skin, or ‘plastic’ microbeads, which have been found to be harmful to the environment (but many now include eco-friendly alternatives).
   
   We prefer chemical exfoliators, which use ingredients such as fruit acids/AHA, BHA/salicylic acid or glucosamine to gently ‘melt’ the glue holding the old cells onto skin, so it sloughs off the old.

Best Daily Skin Care Product Essentials For Your Skin Type

The Intermediate Skin Care Routine - Up the Ante

1. Cleanser
2. Toner
3. Moisturiser
4. Sunscreen
5. Exfoliator

6. Eye Cream - daily. By your mid-twenties, this should become a staple, as the eye area is the first place to show signs of ageing as fine lines and dryness, because of the thinness of the skin. Treat it with extra TLC and apply gently using your ring finger to pat it on without tugging.

7. Face mask - once weekly. Treatment masks are super-concentrated to give your skin a boost of what it needs - hydration, anti-ageing, soothing sensitivity, deep-cleansing for oily skin, etc. You can use different masks during the week (e.g., one soothing/hydrating, one anti-ageing/pigmentation, etc.).

8. Anti-ageing treatment - nightly. From your mid-twenties on, you'll want to look at adding a treatment with anti-ageing ingredients to your night-time routine. This is when the skin repairs itself from daily damage, so you want to give it a little extra helping hand. Look for treatments with vitamin A (like retinol) and other powerful anti-ageing antioxidants and ingredients, but always use these at night as retinol makes your skin more sensitive to UV damage. And using a sunscreen now is even more of a must.

Best Intermediate Skin Care Products For Your Skin Type

Advanced Beauty - Skin Care Routine For the Pros

1. Cleanser
2. Toner
3. Moisturiser
4. Sunscreen
5. Exfoliator
6. Eye Cream
7. Facial mask
8. Anti-ageing treatment

9. Targeted treatments

• Serum - as needed and instructed. Serums are the super-intensive treatments containing optimum levels of antioxidants and other ingredients, designed as a short, sharp shock treatment to address skin issues. They are used at change of season to repair seasonal damage, after illness, if you’re burning the candle at both ends, etc., or as an anti-ageing/deeply hydrating/intense acne/sensitivity soothing treatment during flare-ups. You get the picture. Follow instructions carefully because of the intense concentration of ingredients.

• Spot treatments - as needed. When a big zit surfaces on your chin, nose or cheek, or a dark blotch becomes very noticeable on your face, you may feel that everyone is look at it rather than you. You can target these specifically on the area with concentrated treatments that help speed up the healing process, or fade dark marks. There are even specific undereye dark circle and wrinkle treatments.

Best Advanced Skin Care Products For Your Skin Type