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Although some people may choose to follow the same skincare routine both morning and night, experts generally recommend having a separate routine for each. Why? Because your skin’s needs in the morning are vastly different from its requirements in the evening. The only way that you’re going to see major results from your skincare routine is if it caters to those needs, meaning that a differentiation needs to be made between morning and night skincare.
What, exactly, does this involve? Keep reading as Lionesse explains…
Morning vs Night: Understanding Your Skin’s Needs
First, the question that many ask: Does your skin really know what time of day it is? The answer is a resounding yes. Just like your body, your skin has its own circadian rhythm – a 24-hour internal clock. This clock regulates the skin’s various functions, switching your skin from day mode to night mode as required.
What do those different ‘modes’ entail?
During the day, your skin focuses on defense. It’s well aware that it’s about to come face-to-face with harmful environmental aggressors. From UV radiation to pollution to blue light, your skin produces protective molecules to keep itself safe from all of this.
Once evening rolls around, your skin switches into nighttime mode, which is all about repair. While its natural daytime defense system is good, it’s not quite good enough to block 100% of damage. This is why its nighttime focus is on cell renewal, protein production, and other processes that counter the issues that have occurred during the day.
How Should Your Morning and Night Skincare Routines Differ?
Now that you understand how your skin’s functions vary between day and night, let’s take a look at how you’ll need to adjust your morning and night skincare routines to cater to this:
Cleansing
Cleansing is something that needs to be done both day and night. There’s nothing wrong with using the same cleanser for both your morning and evening cleanse, but different formulas can be beneficial. Skin tends to be dirtier in the evenings, mainly because it has just spent all day in contact with dirt, dust, pollen, pollutants, and more. As a result, a more thorough cleanse is sometimes needed. Do this and then go to sleep on a clean pillowcase, and a gentle cleanser, like the Lionesse White Pearl Facial Cleanser, will be all that you’ll need.
Another option is to double cleanse in the evenings. This can be helpful if you’ve been in a particularly dirty environment that day. Double cleansing involves cleansing your face with an oil-based cleanser to tackle oil-based impurities, before following up with a water-based cleanser to deal with water-based impurities. A quick glance at the first couple of ingredients on a cleanser’s ingredient list will tell you whether it’s water-based (the word aqua is sometimes used) or oil-based.
Exfoliating
Although exfoliation isn’t something that you should be doing daily, you’ll still need to decide whether to do it in the mornings or in the evenings.
The majority of people tend to prefer exfoliating in the evening. Exfoliation helps to enhance the skin’s natural overnight repair processes so, in that sense, it’s logical to exfoliate when those processes begin. Exfoliation can also leave your skin temporarily more vulnerable to sun damage, as the layer of dead cells that you’ll be removing would have been acting as an additional physical barrier between your skin and UV rays. Exfoliating in the mornings means stepping up your SPF game.
With that said, exfoliation also immediately gives the skin a brighter and more radiant finish, which is why some people prefer to exfoliate in the mornings. If you wear makeup, the smooth canvas provided by a freshly exfoliated face will give you a much more refined and polished look, with your makeup staying fresh for longer.
Whether you choose to exfoliate in the morning or evening, make sure that you’re using an exfoliator that’s suitable for your skin type. If this is something you’re unsure about, check out the Lionesse White Pearl Facial Peeling. Designed to gently exfoliate all skin types, the pearl powder infused into this formula will leave your skin looking beautifully luminescent.
Targeting
After the preparatory stages of your skincare routine, it’s time to focus on targeting your specific visible skin concerns with serums and other concentrated solutions. This is the case for both morning and night skincare, although how you go about doing that should vary depending on the time of day.
With your skin in defense mode during the day, the serums that you use in the morning should support this. Antioxidants are fantastic for keeping the skin feeling protected from environmental damage, so an antioxidant serum, like the Lionesse White Pearl Vitamin C Serum, would be a great addition to your morning skincare routine.
Antioxidants work well overnight, too. They keep your skin cells feeling fortified as they go about their repair processes. This leaves the skin looking even more replenished come morning. For this reason, many choose to include an antioxidant serum in both their morning and night skincare routines.
However, it’s important to also consider the increased moisture loss that your skin experiences overnight. This stage of your night skincare routine should target that with a hydrating serum that will give your skin cells access to the extra moisture they need. A product like the Opal Sheer Collagen Serum from Lionesse, which is packed with hydrating humectants, would do this well.
Eye Care
Eye care is something else that can be incorporated into either your morning or night skincare routine (or both!) – it all depends on the issues you’re dealing with. While your eye area goes through the same day/night processes as the rest of your skin, keep in mind that the skin here is much thinner and more delicate. It experiences damage much faster than the rest of the face, so both your day and night skincare routines need to address this.
The Lionesse Amber Eye Serum is a product that can be used both day and night. It’s quite the multitasker, containing ingredients that not only hydrate the skin but also provide a rich selection of antioxidants.
Eye serums tend to be more effective when topped with an eye cream. This is where, once again, your morning and night skincare routines can diverge. A formula like the Amber Dark Circle Eye Cream is a great option for a morning routine, especially if you often deal with dark circles under your eyes after waking up. Meanwhile, the Lionesse Amber Eye Cream integrates well into a night skincare routine. From peptides to plant oils, it will leave the delicate skin around your eyes feeling stronger and more resilient. This goes hand-in-hand with the repair processes that your skin focuses on overnight.
Moisturizing
Moisturizing is one aspect of skincare where it can be very beneficial to have a distinction between your day and night routines. It’s very difficult for a single moisturizer to be able to do both jobs.
Why? Because during the day, your skin needs lightweight hydration. You don’t want to overload it with a heavy moisturizer that mixes with sweat, pollutants, and other environmental impurities. This will only leave your skin feeling congested and clogged. A cream that absorbs quickly and feels weightless, while still keeping the skin hydrated, would be much more suitable. Of course, one that provides a few antioxidants, like the Lionesse White Pearl Day Moisturizer, would be great too – you can never have too many of those in the daytime!
Why can’t you use that same moisturizer in the evenings as well? You could, but it’s unlikely to provide enough moisture to last through the night. Skin barrier function declines overnight, which leads to an increase in transepidermal water loss. While a lightweight cream may cut it during the day, it’s unlikely to be able to compensate for that extra moisture loss overnight. This is why experts recommend a richer formula, like the Lionesse White Pearl Night Cream, for the evenings.
Sun Protection
One area where your day and night skincare routines will significantly differ is sun protection. It’s something that your skin won’t need at night once the sun goes down!
However, it should be a big part of your morning routine – one that you never forget or neglect. With the sun responsible for up to 80% of the visible signs of aging that develop on the skin, such as wrinkles and dark spots, while also causing skin cancer, preventing UV rays from damaging your skin cells is crucial.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that sun protection shouldn’t be forgotten about after you’ve carried out your morning skincare routine. Sunscreens aren’t able to provide several hours of protection, which is why they need to be reapplied throughout the day. This needs to be done even when it’s cloudy or you’re spending the day indoors. UV rays are able to penetrate through both clouds and glass, meaning that your skin is rarely truly safe during the day.
Understanding the Difference Between Morning and Night Skincare
As you can see, there should, ideally, be a significant difference between morning and night skincare. While following the same routine day and night is better than having no routine at all, creating a distinction between the two can be extremely beneficial to your skin. It’s the only way to really meet your skin’s needs – these change between day and night, meaning that your skincare routine needs to do the same if you want to see results. The tips that we’ve shared above will help you with this, enabling you to put together two routines that help your skin to really thrive!
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