How To Care For Dry Winter Skin: Finally End Your Winter Skincare Woes

The 11 Best Skincare Tips To Treat, Prevent, & Take Care Of Dry Winter Skin

Ughhhh, this time of year can be absolutely brutal on your skin…am I right?? As soon as that winter chill rolls around, so does that rather unpleasant dry, itchy skin! 

The unfortunate cracking, flaking, and tightness has settled in, requiring us all to seriously level up our skincare game with some much needed TLC…or possibly even to consider a complete beauty routine overhaul.

And while you think you are doing all the right things for it, we all can admit that it can be rather frustrating when you can’t find relief.

However, a few years back, when I first found my way into the skin business, as a consultant, I realized after extensive training that there were several new things I could do that would help, rather than just applying more moisturizer and drinking extra water each day.  

In fact, with just a few changes to habits and your skincare routine, as you utilize these 11 best tips, rest assured, YOU WILL find your way back to healthy, hydrated, supple skin again too!

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Why Is My Skin So Dry In The Winter?

With winter weather comes cold frigid temperatures, strong winds, and dry, dehydrating air, as we all crank up the heat indoors. 

When it gets colder outside, the humidity takes a major dip. Lower humidity equates to drier air and less moisture in the atmosphere for your skin, ultimately leading to drier skin. 

Additionally, as we power surge our homes with warm, cozy heat, the air indoors also becomes drier, causing you to lose moisture in your skin, as it dissipates quickly.

Time Is Of The Essence…Here’s Why

Over time the harsh weather & climate added to the heated environment indoors can strip your skin of its natural protective oils and weaken your skin’s natural lipid barrier.

As your barrier weakens, your skin becomes more susceptible to damage. And with its weakening, gaps begin to form on the outermost layer. This allows allergens and irritating elements easy access in, while also allowing moisture to escape. Longterm, this can result in inflammation (redness, irritation, burning, severe itching) and developing sensitive skin.

Also, chronic skin dryness can result in weathered, wrinkled skin that looks older than your chronological age.

What Helps With Dry Skin In The Winter?

Having some extra knowledge of skincare solutions in your arsenal of remedies can surely add some reprieve ladies. Generally, the goal is to prevent excessive moisture loss, boost your skin’s lipid barrier, increase moisture levels, & retain that moisture, and prevent the stripping of protective oils, to name a few.

Everything from your cleansing habits to the timing for using a moisturizer, the foods you eat, the skincare ingredients you use, your home environment, to deep bath soaks can help. So, the purpose of this article is to give you some quick solutions you can even start today if you’d like. Concrete solutions that show you how to take care of and how to treat dry skin in winter!

It’s time to bid farewell to that dry, itchy, tight, uncomfortable skin! Are you ready to end your winter skincare woes!??!

11 Best Tips For Dealing With Dry Skin Each Winter

Tip 1: Avoid Those Long, Hot Showers

Stay away from lengthy, hot showers and opt for a quick, warm (lukewarm) temperature shower instead. Hot water pulls moisture out of your skin and strips its natural oils resulting in dry and/or itchy skin. Additionally, excessive heat can begin to break down your skin’s lipid barrier (more on your skin’s lipid barrier in Tip #5).

Tip 2: Time Your Moisturizing & Keep The Door Closed

First, keep the bathroom door closed while showering or bathing and while drying off. This will help keep some extra moisture in the air contained rather than allowing it to dissipate. 

Second, after your bath or shower, be sure to blot with your towel, don’t rub. Then while your skin is still slightly damp, immediately apply your moisturizer to your body, as this will help to seal in some additional moisture (the added dampness in the air helps too).

Tip 3: Add A Humidifier To The Home

Do humidifiers help dry skin? Absolutely, Yes!!!

Try using a humidifier like this one in your home, especially in your bedroom at night. A humidifier will add some moisture back into the air (humidity) and help to reduce the dryness in your skin.

A few hours each night of moisture-boosting nourishment, and you’ll notice a major improvement in no time! Plus, skin that is hydrated looks plumper and thus younger. So if aging skin is a concern, this is a great option as well.

Pro Tip: Use distilled water in your humidifier. A good humidifier for beginners

Tip 4: Change Your Bathing Habits

If you normally take baths, try using a gentle cream cleanser rather than a heavy lathering or sudsy wash. In fact, you may want to try a sulfate-free cleanser to prevent stripping your skin of too much natural oil.

Like showers, stay away from a long and super hot. Make the water temperature warm, not hot, and keep the time shorter (5-10 min).  

Pro Tip: If your skin is very itchy and painful, try an oatmeal bath, using lukewarm water.

Tip 5: Add Omega -3 Rich Foods To Your Diet

Omega 3’s are “good fats” that support, boost, and strengthen your skin’s lipid barrier, along with improving your overall health. When your skin’s lipid barrier is performing optimally, it helps to keep moisture in, while keeping irritants out.

Foods like: Avocado, Salmon, Walnuts, & Flax Seeds

Tip 6: Try A DIY Bath Soak With Soothing Oil

DIY Soaks – Winter Dry Skin Remedy

Another alternative for bathing beauties is to add in some oils to your bath before you soak. This can help to soothe some of the dryness you experience. Again, you want to keep the water at a warm temperature, rather than hot. Keep in mind, while adding oils will help, you still want to be sure not to oversoak.  

Simply add these to your bath water once it’s full. If you feel like you need a cleanser with it, you can try adding a very gentle one.

*Play around with the amounts to see what works best for your skin.

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Some Great Oils To Try:

• Coconut Oil – Add a nice healthy scoopful
• Argan Oil – A few sprinkles to a Tablespoon
• Grapeseed Oil – A few drops to a Tablespoon
• Avocado Oil – 2 Tablespoons
• Olive Oil – A few drops to a Tablespoon
• Almond Oil – 2 Tablespoons 

Tip 7: Try Skincare Products With Targeted Ingredients

Often we find our skin has very different needs in the wintertime compared to other seasons, so what works at other times of the year may not be enough for winter. 

Ingredients To Attract Moisture & Retain It

When picking skincare products, if your current skincare routine doesn’t contain powerful humectants, consider adding them in. Humectants attract water molecules (moisture from the air) to your skin and help to hold that moisture. You want to add products for the body and face with ingredients like glycerin, hyaluronic acid, and sodium hyaluronate. 

Ingredients To Help The Skin Barrier & Prevent Moisture Loss

Also, look for products with ingredients that help to improve your skin’s barrier, as these sorts of ingredients can help with keeping moisture in and harmful irritants out. Ceramides, glycerin, allantoin, lipids, dimethicone, and hyaluronic acid are ingredients that help restore the barrier.

Pro Tip: What is good for whole body dry skin?

What I find works particularly well for my skin on my body is a deeply hydrating moisturizer that contains a combination of 30% glycerin with hyaluronic acid, coconut oil, shea butter, jojoba seed oil, dimethicone, and quite a few barrier-boosting ceramides. Not only does it treat my dry winter skin, but it helps fight against moisture loss.

Best of all, it was created to help make your skin look younger. Lol, my skin goes from a 40-year-old’s to my 20-year-old self’s skin seemingly in a matter of minutes. Win-win!! 🙂

Pro Tip: How to keep face hydrated all-day?? And What should I use overnight??

Mornings: Layer up by using a serum followed by a daytime moisturizer with SPF. Make sure both contain some of the suggested above ingredients (humectants and those that help the barrier).

Evenings: You may want to layer up again with a serum and overnight moisturizer for super dry skin. Or, if the dryness is not too bad, you can just use a moisturizer that contains the same suggested ingredients above.

Both mornings and nights, for my face, I always use a serum containing glycerin, hyaluronic acid, and ceramides. During the day, I follow that serum with a moisturizer (w/ SPF) that contains glycerin, sodium hyaluronate, peptides, and dimethicone. At night, I follow it with a moisturizer that contains glycerin, hyaluronic acid, lipids, sodium hyaluronate, and dimethicone.

Additionally, when I visit family on the east coast where the weather is more severe than in California, I tend to notice more dryness than usual and sometimes a little chapping. So when I’m there, I also use a cream cleanser made of nurturing ceramides that help to repair my skin’s natural moisture barrier.

I follow with my serum and two other creams as needed. The first contains allantoin, dimethicone, glycerin, and peptides. It particularly helps with that burn, irritated feeling my skin gets from the freezing wind as it hits my cheeks. The second contains glycerin, dimethicone, and some nourishing oils.

Tip 8: Layer Up & Re-Apply Regularly

This may seem obvious, but some people do admit to only applying a moisturizer once a day. While this may be totally fine during other months, in the winter, your skin needs some extra love. 

Apply an extra layer of hydrating moisturizer to your body right before bed and first thing in the morning. Then throughout the day, you should re-apply as needed.

Tip 9: Reconsider Your Moisturizer Formula

Consider using a cream (or an ointment) as opposed to using lotion when it comes to moisturizing your body. Creams have a higher ratio of oil to water than lotions and are thicker than lotions, thus giving the skin an extra barrier that helps keep moisture in.  

For the face, however, caution should be taken when it comes to heavy creams as they can contribute to clogged pores, which can lead to acne or the appearance of large pores. So, keep your skin type in mind when making selections.

Tip 10: Adjust Your Thermostat/Heater Settings

Consider turning the temperature down a few degrees from its current setting. Instead, try to cozy up to a blanket or wear a few more layers of comfy clothes indoors. Less dry heat = Less dry skin! Try around 72 degrees and see how that works for you, adjusting as needed.

*The added bonus is your monthly bill will be reduced a bit.

Tip 11: Gentle Exfoliation

Now, this can be a tricky one. Exfoliation can be good for your skin in that it will help remove dead skin cells, thereby, making way for better absorption of the moisture-boosting ingredients in your skincare products. It helps those products to penetrate at a deeper level, thus allowing them to work better.

However, during the winter, since cold weather and indoor heat have a tendency to cause a compromised skin barrier, you can be more susceptible to redness, sensitivities, and irritation, as irritants can more easily enter the skin. So, It’s about finding a balance, as you don’t want to further irritate such skin with too much exfoliation.  

This is why gentle exfoliation is key!

If your skin can handle it, you may want to consider exfoliating a bit less than normal. For example, if you regularly exfoliate with strong products several times a week at other times of the year, consider just doing so once a week instead, during the winter. You should also think about opting for more gentle exfoliation. As always, you should avoid over-scrubbing. 

*However, if your skin is sensitive, painfully dry, and/or irritated, you should probably avoid exfoliation for winter altogether.

I find exfoliating my body with a microdermabrasion paste that contains sugar, salt, and vitamin C works really well for my skin. I apply it to my skin while it is a little damp (this helps the salt and sugar to dissolve a bit for a gentler exfoliation), then I step to the side from my shower’s streaming water and massage for about 30 seconds to a minute.

Next, I step back into the shower stream for rinsing off. It works exceptionally well at softening my skin, getting rid of dead skin cells, and brightening things up.

Pro Tip: Exfoliation is needed for almost any skin concern aside for sensitive skin because it allows the targeted ingredients that address those concerns (dark marks, signs of aging, etc.) to work at their most optimal and effective rate (more on that later, in another article).

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Dry Winter Skin Problems: The Wrap-Up!

Ok, now it’s your turn! If you want to take baby steps, today just start with one or two different suggested tips. Then make sure you Pin this article so you can come back to it and add in more options as needed throughout the next few weeks. 

However, if you really want to nip things in the bud, go all the way big! Follow five or more tips starting now and then add more as needed these next couple of weeks.

I hope these tips bring you some comfort so that you can enjoy healthy, newly hydrated skin again Beauties! If you want to know more about the specific moisturizers, serum, and exfoliating scrubs I use every winter to help my dry, dehydrated skin, feel free to reach out, and I can share what has been most effective for me.

More Skincare, Beauty, & Seasonal Articles:

• The Best Guide to Women’s Essential Skincare Tips
• How To Have Healthy Glowing Skin: 7 Expert Tips
• How To Minimize Pores On Face: 11 Easy Ways That Work Like A Charm!
• How To Save Money During The Holidays: 7 Easy As Pie Ways!
• Preparing For Christmas: Ways To Make The Holidays Easy & Stress-Free

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