The AM Skin Order
Four products, one sequence. The sequence is doing most of the work. There is a version of this piece that lists four products and stops. That version is…
Four products, one sequence. The sequence is doing most of the work.
Five steps Four products Every morning 90 sec
Rinse, don't cleanse
Your face at 7am is carrying last night's moisturiser and its own sebum. Neither of those is dirt. Cool water for ten seconds, hands only, then pat until damp rather than dry — the two steps after this one both behave differently on a wet surface.
No product · technique
Vitamin C, on bare skin
This one is first because it cannot be second. L-ascorbic acid sits at a pH around 3.0, and anything you put down ahead of it raises the surface pH and takes the edge off before it has done anything. Four drops, pressed in, including the sides of the nose. Sixty seconds, then move on.
Product Vitamin C serumHyaluronic acid, while you're still damp
A humectant with nothing to hold will pull water out of your own skin and take it with it when it evaporates. That is the whole reason people say hyaluronic acid made them drier. Three drops onto skin that is still slightly wet, then a lid over it inside a minute.
Product Hyaluronic acid serumEye cream, on the bone
Half a millimetre of skin, almost no oil glands, and ten thousand movements a day. Three dots along the orbital bone with the ring finger — not the lid, not the lash line. Body heat walks it inward on its own, and a face cream up there will migrate into the eye by mid-morning.
Product Eye creamSPF, last and generously
Everything before this is a delivery system. This is a layer, which is why nothing goes over it but makeup. A quarter teaspoon — two fingers' length — and two minutes before foundation. The SPF already in your moisturiser is real, but it is rated at a dose nobody applies.
Product Mineral SPF