We recently shared a post on Instagram where we talked about cleansing and how it is a super important step, especially when it comes to the use of active skin serums. We’re here to double down on that post by elaborating on the points we made.

Cleansing is a vital part of any skin ritual, arguably the most important, because without any sort of cleanse, how can we hope to maintain any level of clean?! Let it be said, splashing your face with water won’t do.

When it comes to supercharging your serums, though…

It’s All About Access

Cleansing the skin is something that we do to remove. Remove make-up, remove dirt, remove grime, remove sun protection… we could go on. 

There are lots of ways to cleanse the skin from straight up oil, balm-to-milk, cream and gel cleansers… again, we could go on.

When you plan to include an active serum in your skin ritual, however, the type of cleanser that you select can be the difference between your serum being “so good”, and that very same serum being distinctly average, or even bad. This is where access comes into play.

Access is not an industry term, we made it up to try to explain this very important consideration for cleansing and serum use. You see, when using skin serums one of the main things that we are trying to do is to influence the skin. We’re almost always trying to introduce ingredients that in order to be effective need to be able to reach the skin’s surface where they can penetrate deeper to do their work.

For that to happen…

It Must Emulsify

When choosing a cleanser that can work well alongside an active serum, it must be able to emulsify. Emulsification in the context of skincare is the ability for a skin cleansing product to be able to break down dirt, oils, grime and other contaminants on the skin. It should also be able to be removed from the skin easily once emulsified without leaving any trace of the product or the contaminants that it broke down.

We certainly can’t speak for everyone, but any cleanser that leaves that ‘icky’ feeling of there still being some product on your face once you have removed it is not for us. What’s worse is that when using an active serum post cleanse, your cleanser of choice could be cutting the access of the actives in your serum to your skin, decreasing the performance of your serum.

You must Exfoliate

Having a ritual that keeps your skin clean is an absolute must - after all, what good could come from skin that is not clean? - but when it comes to skin that is healthy and blossoming, we can go further by exfoliating. 

We told a small fib when we said that ‘you must exfoliate’. Truth be told, you don’t have to, but the difference between skin that is exfoliated often and skin that isn’t is night and day. You see, expired cells can and will hang around on the skin. They’re not a great representation of the healthy skin on your face, so if you don't exfoliate, you can expect your skin to look like you don’t exfoliate. You can also expect to be giving your serum products less access to the healthy skin on your face, cutting their performance, and that is precisely the opposite of what we want to be doing.

So there you have it. Two lovely pieces of food for thought if you’re getting into active serums and want to get the absolute most bang for your skin.