What Is Skin Exfoliation?

No matter how often you wash your face, your skin will still accumulate dead skin cells and various types of waste products.

Unless this waste is removed, it will continue to build up on the surface of your skin causing it to appear dull, sluggish and tired.

Fortunately there is an easy way to prevent this from happening, whilst at the same time keeping your face looking young, fresh and healthy.

It’s called skin exfoliation.

What Is Skin Exfoliation?

Skin exfoliation is a beauty care routine which removes dead skin cells and other waste products from the surface of the skin.

Usually this is done with some kind of facial scrub, where the skin is literally scrubbed with an abrasive cream or lotion. Exfoliation can also be done using various chemicals or enzymes.

After you have exfoliated your skin, your face will feel a lot smoother and have a more refined texture.

Exfoliation can therefore help to remove rough and uneven skin patches, giving your skins surface a more uniform appearance.

Providing you have exfoliated correctly for your skin type, your face should glow and appear radiant afterwards.

How To Properly Exfoliate Your Skin

The first guideline when it comes to facial exfoliation is to be gentle. The skin on your face is a lot more delicate than skin on other parts of your body, so it needs to be treated with care.

If you exfoliate too hard, or use exfoliating creams too often, you could end up doing your skin more harm than good.

How you exfoliate largely depends on your skin type. For some skins such as oily skin or acne skin you may need to exfoliate every few days.

However you should still avoid exfoliating too much, otherwise you risk disrupting the delicate pH balance of your skin.

Other skin types such as sensitive skin need to be exfoliated far less frequently, because this type of skin can easily become irritated and inflamed by exfoliating too often.

You will know when you have used an exfoliating product too much because your face will appear red afterwards and it may peel or flake.

If this ever occurs to you after an exfoliating treatment, a good remedy is to apply Aloe Vera or chamomile tea directly to your face.

Both of these are excellent at soothing the skin and reducing the inflammation and redness caused from too much exfoliating.

If you exfoliate your skin on a regular basis, you may even want to buy yourself an Aloe Vera plant so that you can apply some fresh aloe directly after every facial exfoliating treatment you do.

When To Exfoliate Your Skin

It doesn’t matter what time of the day you exfoliate, so you can do it whenever is most convenient for you.

To start, cleanse your face and then apply the exfoliating scrub, cream or whatever you are using (you should always cleanse first before exfoliating when doing a facial).

When you are done remove the exfoliant, and then continue with your regular skin care routine by toning and moisturising your face.

Combined Exfoliants

You may find that some exfoliants are included in certain cleansing products and in moisturisers. Whilst this certainly makes life more convenient, be careful about using these because most skin types do not benefit from daily exfoliation.

If you do decide to use a combined product, such as a cleanser with a chemical or physical exfoliant, make sure you do so for only two or three days each week otherwise you risk damaging your skin.

The best way however is to use an exfoliant in a single product and only on the days you need to.