To mix or not to mix?

Well once you have made a decision on which products to buy and sit to make a routine you have to keep this in mind and you need to know which ingredients you can use together and which one's you cannot mix in the same routine. 

After you have brought all the ingredients this is the most important step. Layering your skincare product determines the results you will be able to see with your routine. If you end up mixing two actives which don't get along well you might end up causing irritation to your skin which we do not want and instead we need to first learn which products work well together and which do not and then use products accordingly in your routine. And a basic thing to keep in mind while layering is that your water based serums go first and then your oil based serums follow and your last step should be a moisturizer. If you use a specific facial oil then use it as the last step. This will make sure that your water based serums and oil based serums to work well and if you mix them up at random places then that can cause piling. 

1. Retinol: Retinol or Vitamin A is a very potent and well researched ingredient which is known to increase cell turn over and reduce the appearance of fine line, wrinkles, dark spots and acne. But, it can be an extremely irritating ingredient so in order to avoid your skin from getting more irritated you need to be careful of which ingredients you decide to mix with retinol. You can use hyaluronic acid and moisturizers which contain ceramides. What you need to avoid is vitamin C, AHAs, BHA and Benzoyl peroxide. 
2. Vitamin C: Vitamin C is known to be an excellent antioxidant and it also protects your skin from free radicals in the environment while reducing pigmentation, appearance of wrinkles and fine lines and has various other effects as we read about in my last post. As for what you can use along with vitamin C I love using hyaluronic acid and vitamin c together and then top it off with moisturizer and sunscreen. I usually love to use vitamin c in the morning as I do like to use serums with treatment properties at night. So, AHAs BHAs and Vitamin C shouldn't be used together and also retinols and vitamin c don't go well as well. There are contradicting opinions on this and that is niacinamide and vitamin c. 
3. AHAs and BHAs: Exfoliating serums are something that I like to use alone and not mix any other ingredient.I would say avoid retinols, Vitamin C and if you use AHA then don't use BHA and vice versa. These exfoliating serums aren't supposed to be used together and keep that in mind. 

Ingredients like Hyaluronic acid, Niacinamide usually go together very well with most ingredients as they are hydrating ingredients and do not have exfoliating or cell turn over properties. Also it is important to use sunscreen regularly especially when you use exfoliants and retinols. I would also recommend you to use a moisturizer with no actives as you already use treatments and I would prefer my moisturizer to be nourishing and not be a treatment. 

I hope you find this post helpful and do subscribe and comment down below what you want me to write about in the future ❤