Published: November 15, 2024
Skincare routines come in many different forms. While some are tailored toward targeting specific skin concerns with a bounty of potent actives, others are more focused on providing a balanced level of care to the skin. These routines tend to be geared toward supporting the skin’s natural functions in a way that enables the skin to look after itself more efficiently.
Wondering what a balanced skincare routine involves? With these seven simple steps from CBGärdN, you’ll soon be able to create a perfectly balanced routine of your own!
1) Start With a Gentle Cleanser
The very first step to any skincare routine, balanced or otherwise, should be to cleanse your skin. After all, if you don’t do this, the other products that you apply won’t be able to work properly. Why not? Because instead of penetrating into your skin, they’ll be blocked by all of the oil, dirt, and other impurities on your skin’s surface. They’ll end up sitting atop this layer, rendering them ineffective.
However, since you’re trying to keep your skincare routine balanced, the cleanser you use needs to be gentle. There are plenty of formulas out there that promise a powerful cleanse yet, often, they over-cleanse the skin, removing too much sebum and leaving the skin dehydrated and prone to inflammation.
How do you know whether or not a cleanser is gentle? By taking a look at its ingredient list. First, check to see if it contains sulfates. If so, reach for a different cleanser. Sulfates are the biggest culprit when it comes to drying out the skin. Next, look for moisturizing ingredients. These will help to keep your skin feeling replenished after that layer of grime, which also serves as a physical barrier of protection, is removed. Finally, keep an eye out for antioxidants. These compounds are superstars when it comes to keeping the skin looking young and healthy and, ideally, should be incorporated into every stage of your skincare routine.
The CB Silk Facial Foaming Purifier meets the mark on all fronts. It uses gentle cleansing agents while being packed with moisturizing ingredients and antioxidants. It also contains peptides – great ingredients for keeping the skin barrier feeling strong and supported!
2) Rebalance With a Toner
The pH of your skin is extremely important. It helps to maintain barrier function, which, in turn, regulates skin hydration levels while also keeping the skin safe from external harm. If the pH of your skin falls out of balance, barrier function will be affected.
Unfortunately, cleansing often causes this imbalance. The good news is that it’s easy to put things right, so long as you include a complexion-balancing toner in your skincare routine. A good toner will rectify the pH of your skin’s surface so that your skin barrier once again feels capable of thriving.
Of course, it makes sense to use a toner that offers a few additional benefits too, just like the CB Facial Toner. Not only will it keep your skin’s pH feeling balanced but it will also provide an extra layer of hydration, thanks to the inclusion of sodium hyaluronate. Better yet, it also boasts niacinamide, aka vitamin B3. It’s one of the best ingredients out there for giving the skin a bright and even finish. Meanwhile, nettle leaf extract, which you’ll find in all CBGärdN products, is loaded with antioxidants that your skin will absolutely love!
3) Hydrate With a Serum
If you want your skin to feel balanced, then it needs to be sufficiently hydrated. This may seem easy but, sadly, it’s not. Why? Because there’s so much out there that’s constantly taking moisture away from the skin. Between dry air, UV rays, aging, and more, simply drinking your eight glasses of water a day is unlikely to be enough to keep your skin adequately hydrated.
This is where your skincare routine can really help. By providing hydration topically, your skin cells will be able to directly benefit from that moisture. Serums tend to be the best way to do this as their lightweight nature enables them to dive even deeper down than heavier products, like creams.
While many serums may claim to be hydrating, the only way to know how true these promises may be is to take a look at their ingredient lists. Ideally, you’ll see plenty of humectants on there, which are ingredients that have moisture-binding capabilities. Sodium hyaluronate is one of the best humectants around but there are plenty of others that do an amazing job too.
The CB Replenishing Serum is one that features a number of different humectants. Sodium hyaluronate is, of course, in this formula, along with peptides and glycerin. These hydrating ingredients are joined by several antioxidant-rich botanicals, including grape stem cells, hawthorn berry extract, and nettle leaf extract.
4) Pamper Your Eye Area
It’s true – eye care products aren’t strictly essential in the way that, say, a cleanser or a sunscreen is. However, if your aim is to create a balanced skincare routine, then your eye area needs some special consideration. After all, the skin here is much thinner and more fragile than the skin on the rest of your face. Treat it in the same way as the rest of your face and it will end up falling out of balance since you won’t be catering to its unique needs.
This is where adding an eye serum and/or an eye cream to your skincare routine can make a huge difference. Which should you pick if you only want to use one? This depends on what your eye area needs…
If you’re trying to revive the look of your skin while softening the appearance of aging, the CB Eye Serum Concentrate would be a great product to try. It contains a long list of antioxidant-rich ingredients, as well as peptides, sodium hyaluronate, and vitamin C.
Meanwhile, if you’re hoping for an eye area that feels smoother and not so puffy, the CB ProLift Eye Firming Cream would be a good buy. It will also leave the skin around your eyes feeling thicker and stronger.
5) Lock it All in With a Moisturizer
It goes without saying that you want all of those skincare products that you’ve just applied to work to their full potential. Sadly, it doesn’t take long before the lighter ingredients in those products begin to evaporate away, leaving your skin lacking.
This is one of the reasons why you should always round off your skincare routine with a moisturizer. A good cream will form a seal over your skin’s surface, helping to lock all of those other products in. This extra layer will also serve to keep your skin barrier feeling bolstered and more efficient.
How do you pick the right moisturizer? Look for one that caters to both your skin type and your skin’s needs. For example, if you have dry skin that looks rough and dull, the CB Bio-Restorative Creme would be the one to try. With shea butter, which is brimming with fatty acids, it will quickly have your skin feeling softer and smoother.
Meanwhile, oily skin would be better suited to a formula like the CB Rehydration Cream. It hydrates with lightweight ingredients while the addition of salicylic acid helps to prevent the appearance of clogged pores and acne breakouts.
6) Add in Sun Protection
While a moisturizer can be the final step in your evening skincare routine, don’t forget about sun protection during the day! The sun causes so much harm to the skin. Not only is it responsible for up to 80% of the visible signs of aging that develop on the face but it also contributes to skin cancer.
When it comes to choosing a sunscreen, look for SPF 30. Any less won’t provide sufficient protection, leaving your skin vulnerable. It would also be worthwhile to keep an eye out for other complexion-balancing ingredients, which the CB Multi-Active Moisturizer With SPF 30 contains plenty of. Thanks to a combination of aloe vera, green tea extract, and vitamins, it will leave your skin feeling revitalized.
7) Exfoliate Every Few Days
While the above steps should comprise your daily skincare routine, exfoliation needs to be periodically added in too if you want to keep everything well-balanced. Sure, when you’re young, your skin will manage to exfoliate itself just fine. However, as you age, this process slows down, which is why you need to step in and do some exfoliating yourself!
With that said, your approach to exfoliation should be the same as your approach to cleansing. This means keeping it gentle all the way. You may find yourself tempted by some of the highly acidic exfoliants or exotic granular scrubs out there but these can often end up causing more harm than good.
Instead, go with a gentle exfoliator, like the CB Microexfoliant Peel. This product looks like a gel and works to gather up your dead skin cells as it’s applied to the face. Rinse it off and it will take those dead cells away with it. This will leave you with skin that looks brighter and more radiant.
Even better, exfoliating will really enhance the rest of your skincare routine. While cleansing does this to a certain extent, exfoliators work on a deeper level. This encourages the skincare products that you apply next to penetrate even further.
Creating a Balanced Skincare Routine With CBGärdN
There’s nothing wrong with creating a targeted and ultra-powerful skincare routine…until your skin begins to protest. This is why recent trends have seen the skincare industry taking a turn in a different direction. The focus now is on keeping skincare balanced and gentle to give the skin all that it needs to feel its very best. Go with the skincare routine detailed above and you’ll be able to do just that. It won’t be long before your complexion is reaping the rewards of your new, balanced approach and your skin starts to look healthier than ever!
Click here to boost your skincare routine with more bestselling products from CBGärdN.