ROUTINES
What Is Skin Cycling?
Nailing the perfect skincare routine is tough: Finding the right products for your skin’s needs is already hard enough, but learning how to layer them and when to use them, not to mention how to tell if they’re actually working or not, can feel overwhelming. Too many active ingredients used at the same time can lead to irritation, but not using them frequently enough won’t get you the results you’re hoping for. Figuring out how and when to use your products is equally as important as the actual products themselves, which is why board-certified dermatologist Dr. Whitney Bowe came up with skin cycling.
What is skin cycling?
Skin cycling is a regimen that helps improve the efficacy of your nighttime routine, alternating “treatment” nights and “recovery” nights. If you’re using heavily active ingredients on your skin every single night, your skin never has time to regenerate, so adopting a skin cycling routine can ensure that your products are working effectively.
It’s natural to want to add a buzzy ingredient to your skincare routine — especially if a product claims a high concentration of the ingredient — but doing so can lead to a long, cumbersome skincare routine that isn’t as efficient as you need it to be. Dr. Whitney Bowe’s skin cycling approach is very deliberate in that it prioritizes different areas of your skincare routine to maximize your results over the course of four nights. Here’s how it works.
