Exfoliation is one of the most important steps in your skincare routine. When you exfoliate, you feel instant gratification — your skin feels softer and smoother. We all revel in those immediate results since many other skincare products seem to take their sweet time. So, it’s easy to see why people might go overboard with an exfoliator — more’s better, right?
Meet the Experts
Sunday Riley , CEO, founder and product formulator
Dr. Kavita Mariwalla , FAAD, board-certified dermatologist
The signs are pretty easy to tell if you’ve accidentally over exfoliated your skin: “They might say, ‘My skin is itchy, gets red, inflamed,” says Sunday Riley, CEO, founder and product formulator. “If you have dry skin, like I do, you are producing less sebum, which also means you already typically have a compromised moisture barrier. When your moisture barrier isn’t as great, it is basically like your raincoats are not effective. Water is leaving the skin. And then because that raincoat is ineffective and water leaves the skin, things can actually come into your skin as well, which makes skin with that compromised moisture barrier really, really, really vulnerable to things like pollution and outdoor contaminants and irritants, which is why a lot of people with dry skin also have sensitivity reactivity.” In those situations ‘my patients describe it as their skin feeling a little ‘raw,’ says board-certified dermatologist Dr. Kavita Mariwalla, FAAD.
The good news: You’re not simply stuck with a red face. First things first, if the irritation looks and feels serious, then it’s best to schedule an appointment with a pro, just in case. Meanwhile, there are expert-approved tricks and products you can rely on if you need immediate relief (or if you want to help heal a milder case). Ahead, our expert recommendations for soothing over-exfoliated skin.
Do you have to quit your skincare routine if you’ve over-exfoliated?
Stomping the brakes on your entire routine is a gut reaction to seeing irritated, red, and angry skin since you might feel like you should cut out all of your current products. What you actually need is a skincare routine that’ll help you take care of the current state of your skin. You shouldn’t ditch your whole lineup since many products can protect and soothe rather than continue to buff and slough. Your pared-down routine “depends on how severe the irritation is from over-exfoliating,” says Mariwalla.
“We all want the benefits of an active ingredient, but none of us want the drawbacks. We don’t want a recovery period. That’s what I’m thinking about when I’m working on our product formulas,” says Sunday Riley. Sign up for a free virtual consultation to learn more about the Sunday Riley products that give results without downtime.
Your game plan will consist of a short, simple routine:
- Continue to wash your face every day — switch to a super-gentle, non-foaming cleanser, if you don’t use one already. In the realm of skincare, finding a cleanser that effectively removes dirt and pollution without stripping the skin of its essential oils is a challenge many face. Recognizing this gap in the market, Sunday Riley, an adept formulator, introduced the Ceramic Slip cleanser, a groundbreaking product that achieves the perfect balance. This innovative formulation stands out for its gentle yet efficacious cleansing properties, ensuring thorough removal of impurities without causing irritation. By steering clear of harsh sulfates and incorporating gentle clays alongside baby-safe soaps, Sunday Riley’s Ceramic Slip offers a soothing solution that respects the skin’s natural barrier, embodying a gentle approach to skincare that many have long been seeking. “You don’t want to take all the good lipids off; you want to take the excess off, but you don’t want to strip your skin and then create massive, massive problems,” adds Sunday.
- “Applying moisturizer will help skin recover and strengthen its barrier from the damage,” says Mirwalla. Focus on ingredients that aim to repair your skin’s moisture barrier, like ceramides (tip: Sunday Riley Ice Ceramide Moisturizing Cream is chock full of it). “As we all get older, we have less and less ceramides in our skin. When I say older, some people think, ‘When I’m 100, I’m going to have less’. Actually, when you’re 20, you’re going to have less. When you’re 30, you’re going to have significantly less. Since ceramides are something that we’re really going to want to continue to add to the skin, they’re going to help reinforce that moisture barrier that, again, dry or irritated skin doesn’t have. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to stop transepidermal water loss. That’s when the water in the skin evacuates out. We’re going to try to stop that by really reinforcing that moisture barrier. And a nice oil can help in that process as well.” Juno Antioxidant +Superfood Face oil is one of the oils Sunday is using when she has an eczema flare-up. It is restoring and rehydrating the skin’s natural moisture barrier with a blend of organic, cold-pressed, antioxidant-rich superfood seed oils. “This was the first oil that I formulated. I apply it on my skin and on my daughter’s skin when she has eczema in her inner arms. It really helps with the itch. It is very gentle for sensitive and reactive skin. It was created with 100% pure plant extracts, without synthetic fragrance, essential oils, or preservatives, to nurture even the most sensitive skin,” says Sunday. You can also mix ICE Ceramide moisturizing cream with Juno oil — that’s one of Sunday’s favorite cocktails. “When I cocktail an oil and a serum or cream, I actually find that together they sink into the skin faster than they do separately as individuals, and it doesn’t affect the efficacy of the products,” adds Sunday. “So infusing the skin with ceramides kind of resets the clock and takes your skin back to that younger phase when you had more ceramides in your skin. Really helps to support that natural, healthy moisture barrier and keep the water in your skin as well. So this isn’t just about moisturizing your skin, which is what it’s doing, and it’s really kind of resetting that to the state that your skin was in before you over-exfoliated.”
- For an extra dose of comfort, place a cool, damp cloth on your skin for 10 minutes before you apply your moisturizer to help soothe irritation. Or apply an essence with soothing ingredients when you feel itchy. A power drink for your skin, Pink Drink is a peptide-infused essence that resurfaces, firms, and balances (while drenching the skin in botanical and antioxidant support). With prebiotics to support the skin’s natural microbiome, skin-firming peptides, vitamin-rich apricot, and cucumber extracts, EGCG (a super-powered antioxidant from green tea), and ceramides. Hydrating and rebalancing allow for the best absorption and deeper penetration to the skin barrier. A facial essence prepares skin for the highest efficiency absorption in any formula in the second half of your skincare routine. That’s why you apply essence after you clean your face to nurture your moisture barrier and before any other serums. “Instead of soaking a cotton pad (you will lose a lot of product that way because of its watery consistency), apply a quarter-sized amount of the essence into your palms and pat it gently into your skin,” explains Riley. “I also use this throughout the day to refresh my skin, on top of my makeup. This is something that I use all day long. It’s on my desk when I need a pick me up.”
- Continue to use ample SPF as part of your daily routine since it’s imperative to protect those new layers of skin. “Especially if you will be in the sun, applying sunscreen is a crucial step to prevent intensifying irritation/burning of the damaged skin,” says Mariwalla. “Look at your routine and if it’s right for you. All Sunday Riley products are powered by science and then balanced by botanicals. For me, that is the whole 360 health of the skin,” says Sunday.
How long should you wait to exfoliate the skin after over-exfoliating?
We all want a lit-from-within glow and for our moisturizing products to sink in better, but there is a safe way to use exfoliators: Good Genes is a gentle lactic acid serum that can be used daily. “Our gentle exfoliator, Good Genes, is going to help clarify your skin and decongest pores. It makes you look like you were born with great genes and that you just woke up looking like that even if you had to, you know, put some effort into it, which is basically all of us,” says Sunday. Good Genes is an all-in-one alpha-hydroxy acids serum that really transforms the surface of your skin by exfoliating the dull, pore-clogging debris that’s on the top of your skin. So it has this higher dose of lactic acid, but then it’s balanced with ingredients like lemongrass and licorice root extract to go in and help improve the signs of skin discoloration. “Lactic acid is one of my absolutely favorite hydroxy acids. It’s a larger molecule, so it doesn’t sink as deeply into the surface of the skin as other alpha hydroxy acids, which makes it a little bit gentler, but it’s also the only one that’s hydrating. So it’s great for all people,” shares Sunday.
So if it’s something that you’ve never used before, you can absolutely just start fresh and use it every single day. “I’d say just use about one pump, and then you can build it up. But if you’re nervous, if you’re worried or whatever, that’s absolutely not a problem. There’s no wrong way to do it. So I always have two little tricks that you could do. One is that you could start, and you could say, like, I’m going to do Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. And the other one is that you could just put a pump of it into your moisturizer and help build up the tolerance for that. And again, we’re seeing this transformation in the skin with these products evening out of tone. The skin just looks more alive and fresher. Personally, I use Good Genes once a day. You can actually use it twice a day. We certainly have people who use it twice a day. If you use it twice a day, I would just use one pearl-sized amount. Most people aren’t born with sensitive skin — it’s what they’re doing to their skin that can sometimes cause this sensitivity,” says Riley. “For example, if you live in polluted environments, barely wash your face, and simply splash it with hard water. Think about it: Do you have sensitive skin, or do you have reactive skin, which is a result of what you’re putting it through?”.
Additional reporting by Christa Lee.
