March 24, 2025
How to Understand Your Skin Type and Choose Products That Actually Work
Skin type is not a fixed label you are issued once. It is a description of how your skin is behaving now, and it moves with the season, the climate and what you have been putting on it.
The useful question is not “what type am I” but “what is my skin short of today” — and there are only really two answers: oil or water.
The Bare-Face Test
Cleanse with something gentle, then leave your skin alone for an hour. No serum, no moisturiser, no touching. Then look in daylight.
Shine across the forehead and nose with comfort elsewhere is combination. Shine everywhere is oily. Tightness with fine flaking is dry. Tightness with shine is dehydrated — oily skin that is short of water, and the most commonly misread of the four.
Dry Is Not Dehydrated
Dry skin lacks oil and needs lipids: ceramides, squalane, fatty acids. Dehydrated skin lacks water and needs humectants under something that seals them in. Treating one as the other is why so many rich creams sit badly on skin that only ever wanted a hydrating layer.
- Dry skin feels rough and looks matte, in patches, all year round.
- Dehydrated skin feels tight but still shines by the afternoon.
- Sensitised skin reacts to things it used to tolerate — that is a barrier problem, not a type.
Reading Your Skin Over a Month
Check in once a week rather than once a day. Daily readings mostly record sleep, salt and stress; weekly ones show the trend, and the trend is what a product can actually change.
When the reading shifts, adjust one step rather than the whole routine. Skin that is already unsettled does not need six new variables introduced at the same time.
