I used to spend hundreds on skincare. Whatever the label promised, whatever an influencer swore by, into the basket and onto my face (and I have sensitive skin, so you can picture how that went). I’m a lot more careful now. I read what’s in the bottle before it gets anywhere near me, which sounds obvious and was not obvious to me for years.
My skin is sensitive, and it has spent years telling me exactly what it thinks of products. Loudly. Usually about forty minutes after I have gone to bed and can do nothing about it.
I tried the ten step version. This is what I came back to, and I keep it short because every product you add is one more thing to blame when your face kicks off.
The short version
Skincare for sensitive skin works best when there’s less of it. Four steps: a cleanser that doesn’t leave you squeaky, a calming toner, a moisturiser matched to how dry you are, and SPF every morning. Nothing fragranced. Add one new thing at a time and give it a fortnight. My two toners are Anua Heartleaf 77% Soothing Toner and Etude House Soon Jung pH 5.5 Relief Toner, and my two moisturisers are PURITO SEOUL Oat-In Calming Gel Cream for combination skin and Aestura AtoBarrier 365 Cream for dry or damaged skin.
Table of Contents
What sensitive skin means
Nobody agrees on a definition, which isn’t much help when it’s printed on half the the products in Boots.
Skin that stings or burns on contact with things everyone else uses happily. Skin that goes red and stays red. Skin with a barrier that has been worn down, usually by us, usually with acids. And skin that is reacting to one specific ingredient, which is an allergy rather than sensitivity, and that needs a different approach entirely.
Mine’s mostly the barrier kind, worn down over years by me and my own bad decisions. So the routine below is built to leave the barrier alone. That’s all it’s doing. If flaking round your nose and brows is part of your picture, my seb derm cleanser guide covers that side of it.
The rule I actually follow
Nothing fragranced. Not “lightly scented”, not essential oils, not the natural ones. Fragrance is the commonest cause of contact reactions in skincare and it’s in there for your nose, not your face.
And keep the number of products low. Four is plenty. If something goes wrong with four products you can work out which one it was. With nine you are guessing.
The routine
Cleanser. Something that doesn’t leave your face feeling squeaky. Squeaky means stripped. A low pH gel or a cream cleanser, once in the evening and a rinse with water in the morning if your skin is unhappy.
Toner. This is the step I wouldn’t skip, and the two I recommend are the Anua Heartleaf 77% Soothing Toner or the Etude House Soon Jung pH 5.5 Relief Toner. Heartleaf and panthenol respectively, both calming, both watery enough to layer without your face feeling coated. Pick one, not both.
The Anua lives on my shelf (the other four Anua products I’ve used are in my Anua skincare review). I use it morning and night, straight after cleansing, and everything that goes on after it sits better for it. There are toner pads as well, which I like more for travelling because there’s no decanting involved. When skin is being unhappy, it’s the Soon Jung. Watery, sinks in before you’ve finished patting it in, no sticky film after. There’s nothing in it trying to be an active, and for a sensitive routine that’s the point of it.
The Anua is also at Sephora UK, and the Soon Jung is at Olive Young with my code NEVEEN20.
Moisturiser. Moisturizer, if you’re reading this from the American side of my inbox, which plenty of you are. Depends on your skin. PURITO SEOUL Oat-In Calming Gel Cream if you are combination or you hate the feeling of a heavy cream, because oat and panthenol do the work in a gel texture that vanishes on you. Seventeen ingredients, 77% oat seed water, about as short a list as you’ll find anywhere. I picked it up during a stretch where my skin was so reactive I couldn’t layer anything, and it’s the one I keep crawling back to. Aestura AtoBarrier 365 Cream if you are dry or your barrier is genuinely wrecked, because the ceramides do something the gel cream can’t. The texture is rich and cushiony and somehow still not heavy. I go to it when my face feels tight and stressed, and it does the job in one layer, which matters a lot when the whole approach is fewer products.
One thing about the Aestura before you buy it, because it won’t matter to most of you and will matter a lot to a few. It isn’t malassezia safe. Pentaerythrityl Tetraisostearate sits high on the ingredient list (fifth or seventh, depending which version you get), and there’s stearic, palmitic and oleic acid further down, all of which feed the yeast that causes fungal acne. (Squalane’s in there as well and that one’s fine. It’s the esters and the free fatty acids that are the problem.) If you flake round your nose and brows, or you get small uniform bumps on your forehead that never quite behave like spots, go for the Purito instead. It screens clean.
SPF. Every morning, all year, grey days included. If you’re going to drop a step, don’t let it be this one. UV is one of the most reported triggers for reactive skin, and it quietly undoes whatever the other three are doing for you.
The one you’ll reapply beats the one with the best ingredient list, every time. I’ve written about that separately because it turned into a whole thing: the best Korean sunscreen is the one you’ll actually reapply.
So what’s the best moisturiser for very sensitive skin in the UK?
The Aestura. It’s the one I’d hand to someone whose face is actively angry, because barrier repair is what it’s built for and there’s very little else in it to react to. Unless the malassezia note above applies to you, in which case the Purito.
The Purito is the nicer daily experience and I reach for it more often. Both are easy to get in the UK now, which wasn’t true a couple of years ago. If you’re over 40 and wondering where this sits alongside the anti-ageing side of things, I’ve written about Korean skincare for mature skin separately.
If your face is red as well as reactive
That’s a different question and I’ve answered it elsewhere, because the high street has better options than it used to and they deserve their own write up. The creams, cleansers and SPF worth buying in Boots or Superdrug are in best cream for rosacea UK, and the K-beauty side of it is in 10 Korean skincare products that helped my rosacea.
What I avoid
Acids on a bad week. Not forever. Not while the barrier is complaining, though. Same goes for anything sold as an at-home peel when you don’t know what’s in it.
Alcohol high in the ingredient list. The drying sort. Fatty alcohols are fine.
Physical scrubs. I know. I know.
And trying two new things at once. Last time I did that my face was on fire. Red, swollen, and I couldn’t work out which of the two had caused it (so I’d put myself through all that and still learned nothing).
How to introduce something new without a disaster
Patch test on your inner arm for a couple of days, then on your jaw for a couple more, then commit. It’s boring, it takes a week, and it’s saved me more misery than any single product ever has.
Give a new product a fortnight before you decide. The exception is stinging, which isn’t purging and isn’t your skin getting used to it. Stinging means stop.
Where to buy these, and the discount codes
All four are easy enough to get in the UK, and most of them turn up in more than one place, so here’s where I’d go and what comes off.
- Anua Heartleaf 77% Soothing Toner – Lookfantastic with my code LFTFNEVEEN, or Sephora UK
- Etude House Soon Jung pH 5.5 Relief Toner – Stylevana with code INF10NEVE, or Olive Young with code NEVEEN20
- PURITO SEOUL Oat-In Calming Gel Cream – Sephora UK, or YesStyle with code NEVEEN15
- Aestura AtoBarrier 365 Cream – YesStyle with code NEVEEN15
My full list of codes lives on the discount codes page if you’re buying anything else while you’re there.
Questions people ask me
Is fragrance free the same as unscented?
No, and this one catches people. Unscented can mean a masking fragrance has been added to cover the smell of the base. Fragrance free is the one you want.
What is the best moisturizer for sensitive skin?
Same answer whichever way you spell it. Aestura AtoBarrier 365 Cream if your barrier is in trouble, PURITO SEOUL Oat-In Calming Gel Cream if you’re combination and want something lighter. Both are fragrance free, which is the part that matters most.
Do I need a serum for sensitive skin?
No. If your skin’s settled and you want one, fine. If your skin is currently unhappy, adding a serum is adding a variable.
Can sensitive skin use retinoids?
Sometimes, slowly, and not while your barrier is broken. That’s a whole separate conversation and not one to start in the middle of a flare.
How long does sensitive skin take to settle down?
Barrier repair is usually a few weeks of leaving it alone, not a few days. The hardest part is doing less for long enough to find out.
Some of the links above are affiliate ones and the codes are mine, so I earn a commission if you use them. Costs you nothing extra. I bought all four of these myself.
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