Keeping Skin Hydrated in Winter

Cold air and frigid winds can strip moisture from skin as can dry indoor heat—why wintertime is harsh on skin. Keeping skin hydrated in winter is easy if you follow some simple steps and look for key ingredients, namely humectants, in your skincare products.

There’s no reason to suffer from dry, rough skin in winter. Using the right products morning and night can keep skin soft and smooth. Hydrated skin is more youthful looking skin.

Simple Steps to Softer Skin

Skin needs lipids and moisture to stay soft, supple, and youthful looking. There’s less moisture or humidity in the air—both indoors and out—during the cold-weather months. This lack of moisture and depletion of lipids from the outermost layer of skin or strateum corneum triggers dry, rough, scaly, and sometimes itchy skin.

To slow down this loss of moisture, follow these simple steps to keeping skin hydrated in winter:

Turn down indoor heat, and add humidity back into the air. The hotter the temperature is indoors, the less moisture there is in the air. Turning down your thermostat to between 68°F and 70°F will help as will running a humidifier to add moisture back into your air. Humidity levels are best between 40 and 50 percent (a home hygrometer, or humidity monitor, can measure humidity in the air).

Use warm, not hot, water to wash skin. Whether you’re in the shower or just washing your face, the water should be warm, not hot. Hot water can strip the skin’s surface lipids that help to seal in moisture. Also, avoid taking long showers for the same reason. Five to ten minutes is ideal.

Change up your skincare routine for the season. The same products you use during the spring and summer months may irritate your skin during the winter months, why I always recommend to my patients that they change up their skincare routine for the season. Avoid using toners and astringents with alcohol as they can dry out skin in winter, and apply moisturizers with humectants in winter twice daily. Look for hyaluronic acid, a humectant, in skincare products.

Drink enough water. Just because it’s cold outdoors doesn’t mean you need to drink less water. In fact, you need to drink even more water to keep skin hydrated from the inside out. Drinking enough water will help make up for skin’s moisture loss in cold-weather months, keeping skin hydrated in winter.

Humectants Are Essential in Winter

Humectants are ingredients that retain and attract moisture. The skin contains natural humectants like hyaluronic acid, keeping the skin plump. This explains why injecting fillers such as Juvederm and Restylane, which are made of hyaluronic acid, results in softer, smoother-looking skin overall.

Hyaluronic acid in skincare products also helps skin stay smooth and hydrated as can other humectants like glycerin and panthenol.

During winter months, I recommend patients wash skin with a gentle cleanser, pat skin dry with a towel (never rub, which can irritate skin), and apply a humectant lotion—morning and night. For example, if you have combination skin and normally use a foaming cleanser in the humid summer months, you may need to switch to a non-foaming cleanser in the drier winter months.

If you have dry skin in the summer, however, you’ll probably need to add extra hydration during the winter months. For example, I recommend layering a moisturizer over a hydrator to keep your skin from becoming too dry. A good hydrator is my own Collagen Support Hydrating Gel (available from my office), though there are many others available as well. For extremely dry skin, my Ultimate Moisturizer (also available from my office) is a great choice.

Taking simple steps to combat skin’s moisture loss in winter can go a long way to keeping skin hydrated in winter. Hydrated skin is dewy, supple, soft, and more youthful-looking skin.

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