How To Choose Skincare – The Best Skincare Ingredients For You

How to choose skincare which is right for you? Picking the correct ingredients which will tackle your skin concerns can feel a little bit like blind dating sometimes. You both turn up to dinner, only to discover that this serum is for mature skin looking for a thick boost of hydration, but you’re a spot-prone hooman and you know straight away that it’s not going to be a match. 

Unfortunately, sometimes you still have to sit through the aperitifs before you can make your escape – or you might end up using the product anyway, despite it not being suitable for your skin because – well, you’re here now, so you’d best make the most of it. 

That’s not something that we want for you. We want all of your meetings with skincare to be love-at-first-sight sort of events… Or at least that you’re okay with it until it starts to have a positive impact on your life. With that in mind, we wanted to discuss what we think of as the most important ingredients for tackling each different skin concern. When you next investigate the ingredients on the back of your skincare packaging, you’ll know just what effect each ingredient will be making on your skin. 

The Skingredients range (clue’s in the name) is super focussed on just what ingredients are inside each bottle. This is the most important thing to us. We want to provide clarity on just what you can expect from each product. 

How To Choose Skincare For Your Skin Concern

Is The Core 4 Right For Me?

The Core 4 is our For-Every-Hooman (except Skin Protein, which isn’t suitable for the pregnant hooman or the hooman planning a pregnancy), balanced skin meal with the vitamins, antioxidants, good fats and other nutrients your skin needs to be healthy. It’s your essential, bread-and-butter routine, and it’s good to understand how the rockstar ingredients in Skingredients can help to tackle your particular skin concerns, or if you might be well to consider adding another product to your routine to hyper-charge it.  

The Core 4 consists of PreProbiotic Cleanse, Skin Veg, Skin Protein, and Skin Shield. They’re all full of rockstar ingredients, as is the Mix + Match range. So let’s show you exactly what we mean. 

REDNESS

Vitamins A, C and E, Antioxidants and Anti-Inflammatory Ingredients

YOU CAN FIND THEM IN: Skingredients Skin Veg and Skin Protein

Skingredients Skin Veg is packed with antioxidants in the form of botanical and vegetable extracts, including liquorice root extract. This botanical extract is ideal for stopping the creation of pigment by stopping the pigment creating enzyme in its tracks. It also helps to lighten pre-existing pigment.

Apart from this it also contains cucumber fruit extract, which is soothing, cooling and calming, as well as broccoli extract, which is an antioxidant and helpful in cell regeneration. 

Skingredients Skin Protein is a vitamin A, C and E rich serum. It’s an essential building block for skin health, but apart from this, it also contains polygonum cuspidatum root extract, which helps to relieve skin redness. Vitamin A speeds up skin renewal, and is sometimes used to treat rosacea as it reduces redness in the skin. Vitamin C is also a skin brightening antioxidant.

SENSITIVE/ SENSITISED SKIN

Prebiotics and probiotics, Antioxidants, vitamin A, PHA 

YOU CAN FIND THEM IN: PreProbiotic Cleanse and Skin Veg

Sensitive skin is skin which has always been reactive, while sensitised skin is that which has become sensitive through environmental factors. PreProbiotic Cleanse contains two important prebiotic and probiotic ingredients. Take a deep breath, they are: oligosaccharides and lactobacillus. Well done, the hard bit is now over. You might be familiar with lactobacillus from yoghurt packages, but in this cleanser, it helps to boost the skin’s natural moisturising factor, and both ingredients help to support the skin’s natural microbiome!

Skin Veg contains vegetable extracts such as radish, broccoli, cucumber and tomato,  which provide antioxidant support to your skin. Antioxidants help your skin to repair itself, and help by protecting your skin from free radical damage, which could inflame or irritate sensitive or sensitised skin. 

ACNE, BREAKOUTS, BUMPS, BLACKHEADS, OILINESS, KERATOSIS PILARIS 

Salicylic acid

YOU CAN FIND IT IN: Sally Cleanse

Keratosis pilaris is a common skin condition which you might know by its more colloquial name – chicken skin. It looks like tiny red bumps on the skin and can occur on your thighs and arms particularly. Skingredients Sally Cleanse contains 2% salicylic acid, which can enter the blocked pores and dissolve the blockages within, which will reduce the appearance of KP!

Congested skin is skin which is going through a flare-up of breakouts. Acne is a skin condition characterised by persistent breakouts, which can range from mild to severe. If your acne does not improve over time, you should seek the advice of healthcare practitioner, as you may need medication to cure the condition. 

However, for managing congestion and breakouts, certain ingredients are really helpful. 

The salicylic acid content of Skingredients Sally Cleanse is ideal for cutting through excess oil and for penetrating deep into the pore, clearing out blockages like old SPF, makeup, oil, or pollution. Sally Cleanse can help to dissolve this excess oil and avoid breakouts and congestion. 

Be sure to use Sally Cleanse as directed, once a week to begin with and no more than three times a week when your skin has become used to it!

Vitamins A, C, and E are all extremely useful in tackling acne. Vitamin A is commonly prescribed to treat ace, and in Skin Protein, it takes the form of retinyl palmitate, the fat form of vitamin A. Vitamin C can be helpful in tackling inflammation, which can often occur with breakouts. Vitamin E can be helpful in healing acne scars and is anti-inflammatory too. 

DRY SKIN/ DEHYDRATED SKIN

Vitamins A, C, and E, hyaluronic acid, Pre and Probiotics, ceramides

YOU CAN FIND THIS IN: The Core 4, Skin Good Fats

The Core 4 routine in its entirety would be helpful to anyone seeking to improve the appearance and feeling of their dry skin. 

PreProbtioic Cleanse helps to support the natural microbiome of the skin, as well as gently exfoliating with the PHA gluconolactone. For those with sensitive skin that doesn’t play well with harsher exfoliating acids, PHA is much gentler due to its large molecular size which means that it goes into your skin much slower than smaller molecules like glycolic acid. The pre and probiotic ingredients in this are also very skin soothing – absolutely key when dealing with dry skin. 

Skin Veg contains sodium hyaluronate, which, as we have said, is a humectant which can bring moisture to your skin, and deeply hydrate your dry skin. 

Skin Protein contains vitamins A, C, and E, which all contribute to good skin health. Vitamin A can help to fight inflammation, which might otherwise be an issue when dealing with dry skin, as well as providing the building blocks for good skin health all round. 

Skin Good Fats is a ceramide-rich cream which can be used pre-SPF during the day and after serums last thing in the evening. The ceramides, or lipids, in this product, help to repair skin barriers. This is a skin barrier which has been stripped by environmental factors such as cold or wind, or by over-exfoliation, or harsh products. It also contains shea butter glycerides, which gives all the moisturising and soothing benefits of Skin Good Fats without the comedogenic factor. 

PIGMENTATION

Vitamins A and C, Liquorice Root Extract

YOU CAN FIND THIS IN: Skin Protein, Skin Veg

Skin Protein contains vitamins A and C, which can both tackle pigmentation. Vitamin A encourages skin proliferation and can also protect your skin against sun-related pigmentation. Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant, and can slow down the enzyme which produces melanin (the stuff that makes skin pigment) from over-producing and going to town creating pigmentation on the surface of your skin. 

Skin Veg contains liquorice root extract, which stops the pigment creating enzyme in its tracks, and helps to lighten pre-existing pigmentation in the skin.

PREMATURE AGEING 

Vitamins A, C, and E, antioxidants, pro-collagen peptide, SPF

YOU CAN FIND THIS IN: Skin Protein, Skin Veg, Skin Shield.

Skin Protein’s combination of vitamins A, C, and E are a perfect recipe for ongoing skin health and can also be helpful in avoiding premature ageing in the skin. It’s also got pro-collagen peptides in it. Pro-collagen peptide assists in collagen synthesis. As we age, the collagen levels in our skin decrease, which leads to skin losing its elasticity and ability to ‘snap back’ into place. Pro-collagen peptides helps to decrease the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, and prompts skin to produce more collagen. It helps to diminish visible signs of skin ageing.

Antioxidants do their bit to protect your skin from the effects of free radicals. These are the pesky unbonded molecules which are introduced into your body through environmental factors or lifestyle choices, where they wreak havoc on your unsuspecting cells. Antioxidants help by pairing off with free radicals and neutralising free radicals. This helps to slow the rate at which we (and our skin!) ages. The Core 4 is chock full of antioxidants, but Skin Protein and Skin Veg are particularly helpful in this.

One of the greatest factors for extrinsic ageing however, is sun damage, which is why Skin Shield SPF 50 PA+++ is absolutely key. It’s the end of your daytime routine, and as we all know, SPF is not optional – it’s an everyday product. Sun exposure can take the form of UVA or UVB, and we are also exposed to HEV and infrared light daily as a result of life in the 21st century, which is why it’s key that we protect ourselves continuously from sun and light damage, as this can degrade the collagen in our skin and lead to us age before our time!

There is a skingredient for every skin concern – and remember, if you’re still unsure about which products might be the best match for you, you can also email us at hello@skingredients.com and get in touch with a member of the team – or slide into our DMs on any of our social media platforms!