The seasons are changing and summer is here in full force. Make sure your skin is ready for it with these tips on updating your summer skin care routine.
Stepping out into the July heat with a thick scarf on wouldn’t feel great. Covering your skin in heavy, thick creams in summer also wouldn’t feel great!
Your body changes and adjusts with the seasons and so should your health care routine. As the summer ramps up, it’s time to refocus your summer skin care routine to meet the needs of the heat.
Keep reading for tips on how to treat your summer skin the right way!
Summer Skin Care Routine: Head to Toe
One of the first things to remember about your summer skin care routine is that it’s not just about your face.
Commercials for skin care products always show images of young women splashing water on their face. But your skin is the largest organ of your body! Taking care of your skin isn’t just about eye wrinkles and under-eye bags (although you don’t want to forget your eyes either!)
During sandal season, you’ll need to care for your feet more than you do in cooler months.
Sandals are rough on your feet. They offer no support and expose your skin to the elements more than boots. In the summer you’ll have to go out of your way to moisturize your feet to keep them healthy.
Try an over night foot lather to add that extra hydration your feet crave in the summer months.
In general, you won’t want to lotion your body with heavy creams in the summer, but your feet are the one exception. Lather them up and keep them hydrated!
Your feet are taking a beating in the summer months with all that walking in flip-flops. Don’t forget to show them some love!
Protection Is Key
You should absolutely be wearing sunscreen all year round. In the summer, the UV rays will shine a little longer and a little stronger so you do not want to leave the house unprotected.
Nothing ages and damages your skin faster than the sun does. Too much exposure to UV rays can warp and damage your cells. This triggers mutations and can lead to melanoma, the most dangerous skin cancer.
Wear sunscreen with at least SPF 30 on all parts of your exposed skin.
Again–don’t just wear it on your face!
Apply sunscreen to your chest, shoulders, arms, and even legs if you’ll be spending the day outside.
If you want to ensure you don’t accidentally forget your sunblock, use a light lotion with SPF built in. That way you’ll never leave the house without a small layer of protection.
Some sunblocks also have bug repellent added to them! Adding sun protection to your summer skin care routine will help you stay healthy and young looking for years!
Lighter Lotion
In the dry, cool winter months we tend to cake on thick and heavy lotions. That doesn’t work well for your skin in the summer.
The sun and extra trips to the beach and pool can dry out your skin. So you obviously still need to moisturize. But the heavy lotions will feel stifling and hot during the summer.
Your body naturally produces more oil in the summer months, so you won’t need to focus on adding deep level hydration.
Try to get a lotion with natural ingredients like Vitamin C. Vitamin C helps to protect your skin and strengthens it against the damaging effects of the sun.
A thinner, water based lotion will most likely do the trick. Once the weather cools down you can add your thick shea butter back into your routine. But for now, kick them out of your summer skin care routine!
Remember Your Chest and Neck
Sometimes even the most devoted women to their anti-aging tactics forget to take care of their chest and neck.
As the old saying goes, “You’re only as old as your neck looks!” So don’t neglect it.
It’s a good rule of thumb that what ever you do to your face you should do to your chest and neck. Your neck and chest can get just as wrinkly as your face. Your chest is especially prone to developing the discoloration associated with aging.
Use a lotion on your chest and neck that includes natural ingredients that enhance your collagen production, like retinol. This improves the elasticity and strength of your skin.
Exfoliate Everything
Exfoliating your skin will remove all of the dead skin, debris, and waste that tends to gather on the surface. All of this build up can clog your pores which can lead to break outs.
Plus, dead skin buildup just generally makes your skin look dull and lifeless.
Healthy and youthful looking skin has this nasty layer routinely removed so that your skin can breathe. The summer months are especially bad for building up a layer of skin debris because of the extra sprays and sunblocks you’ll be covering yourself in.
A light exfoliation in the morning with a loofa will remove whatever debris and build up have accumulated. Be gentle though! Summer weather can make some people’s skin slightly more sensitive.
This will help your light moisturizers penetrate the skin. Without removing the debris layer, your lotion won’t be able to moisturize your skin the way it should.
Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!
Water is your best friend.
If you take one thing away from this, add more H2O to your summer skin care routine. Simply hydrating your body allows your skin to stay so much healthier.
In the summer months, you tend to sweat more which depletes your levels of hydration. Plus, the higher temperatures will raise your internal temperature and lead to dehydration.
If you’ve never been very disciplined about drinking enough water, now’s the time to buckle down. Getting a full eight 8-oz glasses of water a day will help your body maintain the healthiest level of hydration.
A hydrated body is a healthy body! And a healthy body has strong, luminous, hydrated skin.
Don’t let your skin routine slip to the back burner this summer. The hotter temperatures and stronger UV rays require a different set of techniques to keep your skin healthy and happy.
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