Skincare journal
Why Your Skin Changes in Winter, and What to Do About It
Cold air holds less water, indoor heating holds even less, and the combination is why skin that behaved all summer turns tight and flaky in January.
Every year, some time around the middle of November, skin that spent the summer behaving perfectly well starts feeling tight by lunchtime. Cheeks go red. Foundation clings to patches that were not there in September. Nothing about your routine changed, and yet everything about your skin did.
What is actually happening
Three things at once, which is why winter skin is more stubborn than it looks.
Cold air holds less water. This is physics rather than skincare. Warm air can hold a lot of water vapour, cold air very little. When outdoor humidity drops, water moves from the more humid place to the less humid place, and your skin is the more humid place. It loses moisture to the air simply by being outside.
Indoor heating makes it worse. Heating a room warms the air without adding any water to it, so relative humidity falls further. A centrally heated house in January can be drier than the outdoors. You are not escaping the problem by coming in, you are swapping one version of it for another.
Wind strips the surface. Anyone who walks regularly on the heath around Verwood, or along the coast, knows this one already. Wind removes the thin layer of humid air that normally sits against the skin, so evaporation speeds up. That is why a windy walk leaves cheeks red and tight in a way a cold still day does not.
What most people call winter dryness is usually dehydration, which is a lack of water rather than a lack of oil. That distinction changes what fixes it, and it is worth understanding properly.
The mistakes that make it worse
Hot showers. The most understandable and most damaging winter habit. Hot water dissolves the lipids that hold moisture in your skin. Warm rather than hot, and keep your face out of the direct stream.
Exfoliating more, because the skin feels rough. Completely logical, completely wrong. The roughness is a barrier that is already struggling. Exfoliating it harder removes more of what little protection is left. Cut back to once a week and the roughness usually improves within a fortnight.
Layering on a thick cream over dry skin. An occlusive moisturiser seals in whatever is underneath. If the skin has no water in it, you are sealing in nothing. Apply onto damp skin, with a hydrating serum first.
Dropping the sunscreen. UVB drops considerably in a British winter. UVA does not drop nearly as much, and it passes through cloud and glass. It is also the wavelength most responsible for the lines and pigmentation people spend money trying to reverse. The SPF piece covers this in more detail.
What to change, and what to leave alone
Small adjustments beat a full overhaul, because replacing five products at once means any reaction is untraceable.
- Richer moisturiser at night, keeping your usual one for the day if it still feels comfortable
- Add a hydrating serum underneath, applied onto damp skin, if you do not already use one
- Exfoliation down to once a week from whatever you were doing in the summer
- Something for the lips and the eye area, which are thinner skinned and show it first
- Keep the SPF exactly as it was
If your house is very warm, a bowl of water on a radiator does more for your skin than another serum. Unglamorous and genuinely effective.
Where a facial fits
Winter is the busiest time of year for facials, and there is a real reason for it rather than just Christmas. A treatment does two things home care struggles with.
It rebuilds hydration in one go, through a mask working on prepared skin, which is a level of water delivery you cannot match with something you apply and walk away from. And it improves circulation through massage, which is what lifts the grey, flat look that winter skin develops.
The Prescription Facial is the right treatment for this, specifically because of the mask and the longer massage. Every four to six weeks through the coldest months makes a visible difference, and the frequency piece explains why that interval.
The short version
Cooler showers. Less exfoliation, not more. Hydrating serum onto damp skin, richer cream on top. Keep wearing sunscreen. Get the barrier supported rather than stripped.
Skin that struggles every winter is not a permanent state. It is a seasonal problem with a seasonal answer, and by about April it usually sorts itself out on its own.
Skin gone tight and flaky since the heating went on? Describe what it is doing and you will get a plan for the treatment and for the routine at home.
Common questions
Cold air holds less moisture than warm air, and indoor heating dries the air further. Your skin loses water to the environment faster than it can replace it, which shows up as tightness, flaking and redness. Hot showers and wind exposure make it worse.
Usually yes, but only slightly. Switch to a richer moisturiser, cut exfoliation back to once a week, and keep using SPF. There is no need to replace everything, and doing so often causes reactions of its own.
Yes. UVA levels are lower in winter but they are not zero, and UVA passes through cloud and window glass. It is the wavelength most responsible for visible ageing, so daily SPF matters all year.
