2. HYDRATION: Building Your Hydration Wardrobe

Hydration isn't just a single step like an active or even a moisturiser. It's more of an awareness. A way of looking at your skin and understanding where it's at.

I will keep coming back to the concept of BALANCE. When I mention balance all I mean is keeping your skin where both your moisture levels and oil levels are in check.

Now that you've assessed your skin for dryness and dehydration you are probably spending more time poking your face (to test if it bounces back), looking at the colour before showering, and after. Just generally keeping an eye on how it reacts to different situations and when it's happy. This will be essential as you try to find the right hydration solutions for you.

As with all Skincare, no one can give you a perfect recipe for hydration. And as always it will be up to you to experiment to see what works for you. Today we will start to look at some of the products that may be helpful in helping you build a HYDRATION WARDROBE. These are the products that will form the basis of your routine. Because water doesn't remain within the skin hydration is a part of skincare that you need to monitor every day.

TYPES OF HYDRATION PRODUCTS

💦 H2O. WATER. Aqua. Yes, that's what hydration means: Water content within the skin. It fills your cells, lubricates the tissues, helps actives to penetrate and all products to do their job more effectively without sitting on top of the surface of the skin. Water can be just that: the water that gets into your skin from cleansing or bathing. Thermal water sprays. Water-based hydrators. And yes, tap water. The only issue to consider is the hardness/softness of the water where you live (London has particularly hard water, I had to be careful using tap water on my face when I lived there). You can check your water hardness online.

💦 ROSEWATER. The best Rosewaters are pure distilled rosewater. Rose petals are soaked in water and then distilled (boiled and the steam is collected) which yields a very pure product. These Rosewaters are food-grade and often available in Middle Eastern or Turkish grocery stores. Or sometimes in the baking section of large grocery stores or speciality shops. Make sure there are no other added ingredients like sugars etc. Sometimes there is a small amount of preservative added and