All About Serums: The Power Players in Your Skincare Routine

While toners, essences, and moisturizers certainly have their merits, they struggle to compare to the power of serums when it comes to truly transforming the complexion. If you’ve been looking for a way to supercharge your skincare routine, a couple of carefully-chosen serums could be exactly what you need. 

Keep reading as Lionesse explains how a serum could help your skin, along with how to pick the best serums to deal with your visible skin concerns.

What is a Serum?

Serums are lightweight but highly concentrated skincare products. They’re packed with potent compounds consisting of very small molecules. This is how serums are able to soak into the skin so quickly while also diving deeper down than thicker products with larger molecules, like creams.

Why Add a Serum to Your Skincare Routine?

The benefits that you’ll experience from using a serum will vary depending on the serums that you pick. There are so many different types of serums out there, each one designed to hone in on specific visible skin concerns. 

This is what makes serums so appealing – they enable you to finely tailor your skincare routine to suit the individual needs of your skin.

Choosing Serums to Target Your Visible Skin Concerns

Before shopping for a new serum, your first task should be to decide which visible skin concerns you want to target. Are you trying to reduce the appearance of wrinkles? Do you need some extra help hydrating your skin? Or are you hoping to fade the visibility of dark marks? 

Once you’ve identified your main visible skin concerns, it’s then so much easier to choose the perfect serum for your skin:

Discoloration and Dullness

Whether you have dark marks leftover from teenage acne breakouts or sun damage has discolored patches of your skin, vitamin C is an ingredient that you most definitely need to be using. Research confirms that it’s fantastic for lightening the look of hyperpigmentation while brightening the overall appearance.

While you’ll see plenty of different types of vitamin C skincare products out there, experts all agree that serums are the best way to topically boost the skin’s vitamin C content. Thanks to how serums are so effective at penetrating the skin, they’re able to carry the vitamin C to the skin cells that need it the most, as opposed to simply leaving it on the surface of the skin.

Browse some of the many vitamin C serums out there and you’ll notice that the ingredient is used in a variety of forms. Ascorbic acid is the most potent but it’s also infamously unstable. It can easily degrade when exposed to light or oxygen, after which it could cause more harm than good to your skin cells.

The next best thing is 3-O-ethyl ascorbic acid, which you’ll find in the Lionesse White Pearl Vitamin C Serum. Combined with mica and pearl powder to add some instant luminescence to the skin, this serum won’t fail to give your skin a glow.

Fine Lines and Wrinkles

Serums are amazing for diminishing the visible signs of skin aging. The right combination of ingredients can effectively minimize the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Most serums need to be used regularly and consistently in order for this to happen but some, like the Lionesse White Pearl Wrinkle Reducing Syringe, produce instant results. 

This serum is unlike most of the other serums out there. As you can see, it has a syringe-like dispenser. This enables you to directly target individual fine lines and wrinkles when using it, maximizing its effects.

The formula itself consists of a potent blend of sodium hyaluronate, DMAE, acetyl hexapeptide-8, and vitamins. Not only will it plump and smooth the look of your skin straight away, but use it regularly and it will help with the appearance of wrinkles in the long run too!

Dehydration and Dryness

Dehydration refers to the lack of water in skin cells, whereas dryness refers to insufficient sebum on the skin’s surface. Either way, serums can help with both of these issues.

Hydrating serums contain a mixture of humectants and occlusives. The humectant ingredients bind moisture to the skin, therefore improving hydration levels. Meanwhile, the occlusives form a seal over the top of the skin, preventing all of that extra moisture from evaporating away.

These two ingredient groups are vital in order for hydrating serums to be effective. That’s why the Lionesse Morganite Transforming Serum contains both. Sodium hyaluronate and glycerin act as humectants while castor oil provides an occlusive. It’s an amazing combination that dry and dehydrated skin absolutely loves!

You’ll also find a powerful peptide duo in this formula. Peptides improve how strong and thick the skin barrier feels. The thicker it is, the better it will be able to retain moisture in the future. This will help to eliminate the feeling of dryness and dehydration in the long term.

A Rough Skin Texture

There are a number of reasons why the skin can sometimes feel rough to the touch. Sometimes, it’s down to dryness or dehydration. Other times, it’s due to aging and the buildup of dead cells on the skin’s surface.

Whatever the cause of your rough-feeling skin may be, the Lionesse Black Onyx Serum can help. It contains a few different ingredients that can soften and smooth the complexion, with lactic acid being one. This alpha-hydroxy acid has a mild exfoliating effect while also providing humectant properties that hydrate the skin. Vitamin C can help with hydration too, which is why it’s included in this serum as well.

Sodium hyaluronate can be found in this serum too. It plumps up the appearance, adding volume to the complexion to make the skin look smoother and bouncier, rather than rough and sallow.

The Loss of Volume

The loss of volume commonly accompanies the skin aging process. As protein production begins to decline and the skin thins out, it can end up looking hollow in some areas yet saggy in others.

To tackle this, you need to be using serums that restore the look of volume in the skin, which the Opal Sheer Collagen Serum excels at. This formula boasts collagen amino acids. Amino acids make up the proteins that give your skin its structure and firmness. Applying them topically will help to volumize the appearance of your skin, leaving it looking much younger.

This serum also contains sodium hyaluronate. As a humectant, it gives the skin a plumper finish, which, once again, adds to the appearance of volume.

Crow’s Feet and Tired Eyes

So far, the serums that we’ve recommended have all been designed for the face. However, the skin around the eyes is particularly delicate and therefore even more susceptible to damage. This is why there are specialized eye serums available.

One such product is the Lionesse Amber Eye Serum. If the skin around your eyes has been looking creased and tired, this serum will help to perk your appearance back up. 

Peptides are among the main actives in this formula. They’ll help to support and strengthen the feel of the skin around your eyes, leaving it looking thicker and firmer. Meanwhile, sodium hyaluronate will plump up the look of sallow skin.

This eye serum is also loaded with a long list of antioxidant-rich botanical extracts. With calendula, green tea, aloe vera, licorice root, and more, each of these botanicals will help to keep your skin feeling protected against environmental damage.

Puffy Eyes

While the eye serum that we’ve featured above will help to reduce the look of puffiness too, we also have an even more specialized serum designed specifically for this issue.

Meet the Lionesse Diamond De-Puffer. Whether your puffy eyes have been caused by a lack of sleep, the aging process, allergies, or anything else, this solution will quickly de-puff your complexion.

Its efficacy comes down to its powerful ingredients. Although the ingredient list may be short and sweet, the compounds in this formula are fantastic at soothing the complexion. From acetyl hexapeptide-8 to sodium hyaluronate to diamond powder, this serum will have the skin around your eyes looking effortlessly radiant.

Making the Most of the Serums in Your Skincare Routine

Serums may be powerful, but they need your help in order to be able to work to their full potential. 

To start with, serums should always be applied to clean skin. If you apply a serum on top of dirt, oil, dead skin cells, and anything else that may be cluttering up your skin’s surface, it will struggle to push through this layer. Very little, if any, of it will end up in your skin, rendering it ineffective.

Since your serums will be exposing your skin to several potent actives, it’s best to start with a gentle cleanser. The Lionesse White Pearl Facial Cleanser would be a great choice. Infused with aloe vera leaf extract, chamomile extract, moringa seed oil, and pearl powder, it will hydrate and soften your complexion while it cleanses.

Next, follow up with the White Pearl Skin Toner. This will ensure that your skin feels perfectly prepped to receive all of the benefits that your serums are able to provide.

You can now move on to applying your serums. It can often be beneficial to use multiple serums in a skincare routine but try not to use more than three. Start with the thinnest and lightest serum, working up to the thickest.

Once you’re done, it’s time to lock all of those serums in with a moisturizer. After all, you want to encourage their absorption rather than allowing them to evaporate into the air. The Lionesse Black Onyx Cream is the perfect moisturizer to finish with. It will seal in your serums while also smoothing away the look of fine lines and wrinkles.

Summary

The beauty of a serum lies in its targeted formula. This enables you to truly customize your skincare routine. You can either use multiple serums that each focus on the same skin concern but with different ingredients, or you can spread the net a little wider and tackle a variety of skin problems with different serums. Either way, if you’re hoping that your skincare routine will produce some noticeable improvements in your skin, then serums are most definitely what you need!

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