Autumn Skincare: The Changes I Make to my Routine

Last week we had my Skincare Routine at 43, this week I’m going to tell you about the all-important tweaks I make to that routine as the weather starts to cool.

Weather starts to cool. God, I’ve made autumn sound romantic, haven’t I? Who am I kidding. It’s just under three months of perpetual dampness and depressing, sub-optimal temperatures. I am not the biggest fan of autumn. I know that everyone wangs on about crisp days, kicking through leaves, scarves on, but really: how many actual times does this happen?

I can tell you, because I am out walking the dog and when I’m not doing that I am in front of a large window in my house at the top of the hill, watching the weather fronts move in, and I guesstimate that those perfect Hallmark Autumn Days account for around 10% of the season. The other 90% consists of cold drizzle, flat grey skies, storms with stupid names and everyone discussing relentlessly whether or not it’s unseasonably warm/the wettest October on record/frosty too early.

Anyway. Do you need to change your skincare routine to suit the season? No you do not. Obviously if it’s summer and you’re outside loads then absolutely ramp up the SPF application, but apart from that, if your routine works perfectly for you then there’s no need to mess. Your skin might be like my skin, however, and completely lose the plot as soon as summer shuts shop. Drier, more irritable, tight as a drum, weirdly breaking out even though it’s drier not more oily…

If this is you (have to point out that I couldn’t find a good picture for this post and so I do not look drier and more irritable in the above photo, soz) then here are some easy (and relatively cheap) things you can do to tweak your routine and make your skin feel less aggrieved.

1. Step away from the strong active ingredients for a while. Powerful retinoids, potent antioxidants, glycolic acid peels so punchy that they require a fan to be pointed at your face so that your skin doesn’t spontaneously combust: just back away from them for a week or so and get your skin on an even keel. (I mean, with the last example there, with the fan thing, just don’t do it anyway is my advice. There are some insane procedures out there that you can have done, I just wonder at how they can ever, ever be worth the pain and downtime unless they are somehow crucial or the only available option to treat something specific. Separate post, I suppose.)

2. Sounds obvious, but switch up your skincare products to more nourishing, heavier-weight versions. Cleanser is a brilliant place to start if you usually use a gel wash or liquidy sort of face cleanser that foams and rinses off. If it leaves your skin feeling tight or stripped then change pronto to a balm or cream cleanser. I only really use balms or creams anyway, I hate the feeling of tight, squeaky skin, and I do think that stripping every single oil away to then have to replace it all in the subsequent products seems really counterintuitive.

   Gorgeous budget balm and cream cleansers include: Inkey List Oat Cleansing Balm, £10.75 here*, ELF Cleansing Balm, £11 here* and Superfacialist Rosehip Cream Cleanser, £6 here*.

3. I like to layer a really soothing serum beneath just about everything if I’m trying to settle my overly sensitive, husk-like face. The Aveeno Triple Oat Serum (£15 here*) is one of my most-used serums of all time. I have an entire arsenal of soothing serums to call upon, but for some reason this is the one I return back to time after time. I think that it is the immediacy of the calming effect - I also use this on my scaly patch of shin that gets really itchy and it’s one of the only thing that actually stops me from scratching it! Also take a look at Medik8 Liquid Hydrate Serum, £45 here*. There are so many hyaluronic serums on the market, but few of them really feel as though you’ve been somehow magically rehydrated, like those dried rose buds that unfurl when you tip them into warm water. This one is one of the few.

4. Barrier repair. Look for a moisturiser that actively works to help repair and strengthen the skin barrier and you’ll see a marked difference to dryness and sensitivity. I say this from experience. Don’t be seduced by all the fancy pants face creams with swanky pots, this is the time for the creams that look almost medicinally plain and non-seductive. Ceravé have “barrier repair” as their specialist subject - the entire brand is built on the inclusion of ceramides. Nearly all of their moisturisers will get to work swiftly, but I must do a special mention for the Advanced Repair Ointment, £9 here*, which was previously only available in the States. It feels pretty gross on the face, I’ll be honest, but nothing has cleared up patches of extreme dryness or (sshh) bits of accidental sunburn faster than this barrier-lard-in-a-tube. Try also La Roche-Posay Toleriane Cream, £23 here*, which has been a favourite of mine for years and years and, if you have serious wodge to throw about, take a look at Murad’s Intense Recovery Cream, £78 here*. It’s more the sort of ointment you’d expect to have applied to a serious kind of gruesome skin injury but it works speedily to bring severely dried-out skin back to life.

5. Bloody hell, this was supposed to be short and snappy, this post! Why can’t I just write a sentence per bullet point like a normal person? Final tip. Gradual tanning drops. Look, don’t be scared. They rarely go wrong, and if they do go wrong all you have to endure is a day or so of looking like a total weapon. No biggie. Seriously though, a couple of drops of gradual tan mixed with face cream every other day or so works wonders for the soul and for self-confidence in the beauty department. It just gives the hint of a golden glow so that when you wake up in the morning you almost wonder whether you in fact went to sleep with your makeup still on. You look better. Healthier. Less like someone from a dangers of smoking pamphlet. I can highly recommend pretty much every gradual tanning drop going, because they all do vaguely the same thing, but for an affordable way to dip your toe into this particular minefield of potential errors, plump for Isle of Paradise Self-Tanning Drops, £7.33 here*. They come in different colour depths, so take a look at which will suit and start off with the minimum number of drops mixed in to your face cream. Make sure you take your mixture down your neck a bit and right into the hairline, but honestly: don’t let me scare you. The effects, if you start of with a light touch, are really very subtle.

Right. Well, that will hopefully help some of you in this transitional weather period. And then when you start to ramp up the central heating and it gets frostier outside you can just add more moisture and richer textures to your routine: I’m sure I can probably eke another post out of that when the time comes, over-explaining things.