What Should You Avoid After Getting a Facial?
A facial is like a personal training session for your face. It’s a treatment performed by a skilled and trained professional who can evaluate your skin, listen to your goals, and then determine the right methods and products to use to help you accomplish those goals. These beauty treatments focus on addressing the skin imperfections and conditions you can’t seem to effectively treat with your at-home products and can initiate a total skin transformation.
What Should You Avoid After Getting a Facial?
After undergoing a customized, professional facial, you can expect brighter and glowing skin. You won’t have to worry about social downtime and can resume your normal daily activities.
However, there are some treatments, environments, and products that you should temporarily avoid to ensure the best post-treatment results. Following all of your esthetician’s instructions is the best way to avoid interfering with your results and achieving and maintaining the healthiest skin possible.
The Sun
It’s important that you avoid sun exposure on a normal day to protect your skin, but it’s even more important that you do so immediately following your treatment. During your appointment, your esthetician may use different exfoliating methods to uncover healthier and brighter skin. That process will make your skin more susceptible to sun damage from UV exposure.
For that reason, you must avoid direct sun exposure after your appointment and commit to wearing a quality sunscreen that can protect your skin from UV rays when you are outside, even if for a few minutes at a time.
Touching Your Skin
Depending on which treatment methods and products are used during your appointment, your skin may peel or purge afterward. If this occurs, you need to avoid touching your skin and resist the urge to pop whiteheads or peel away flaking skin, as doing so could result in scarring or spreading bacteria to other areas of the face.
Your skin will naturally exfoliate and purge, and it doesn’t need your help. By avoiding touching your skin, you can reduce the risk of any adverse reactions and enjoy all the benefits of this professional treatment.
Dehydrating Your Skin
After your treatment, it’s important to drink plenty of water to ensure adequate skin hydration. Another way to hydrate your skin is by avoiding beverages or foods that dehydrate the skin, including but not limited to alcohol, caffeine, and sodium-rich foods. Eating a diet rich in vitamins and minerals and drinking enough water will help enhance your treatment results and avoid dehydrated skin.
Exfoliating Products
Facials typically include exfoliating treatments that eliminate the layer of dead skin cells, build-up, and debris from the skin’s surface. These treatments and techniques will brighten your skin and reveal a healthier and younger layer while accelerating cellular turnover. Once your treatment is over, you’ll need to temporarily avoid exfoliating products because over-exfoliating your skin will strip it of its protective barrier, which can result in acne, inflammation, and redness.
Exfoliating products aren’t limited to cleansing scrubs or devices but include resurfacing and exfoliating ingredients like AHAs, BHAs, retinol, and retinoids, among others. Your esthetician will provide you with a complete list of exfoliating products to avoid after your treatment so you can protect your skin, avoid over-exfoliation, and ensure the best results.
Hair Removal
Both at-home and professional hair removal treatments also exfoliate the skin. For that reason, you should temporarily discontinue performing or scheduling hair removal treatments in the area treated during your appointment, including shaving, waxing, and laser treatments. These methods can cause over-exfoliation, which will irritate and inflame your skin and can lead to unwanted results.
Specific Beauty Treatments
The skin loves to be balanced, and facials are designed to balance your skin with different techniques so you can experience that envy-worthy post-treatment glow. However, you should temporarily avoid certain professional beauty treatments after your appointment. While there are some treatments that can pair well with facials, there are some that don’t, and too much too soon after your treatment may cause irritation or inflammation and negatively impact your results.
Your esthetician will provide you with a list of the professional skin care treatments you can combine with your facials or schedule as add-on treatments so that you know how to maintain healthy, balanced skin and don’t give your skin more than it can handle. For more information, click here to learn about the different treatments and add-on options you can schedule at your local medspa to perfect your skin.
If you want to experience a total skin transformation, you can begin by scheduling customized facials. Each treatment will build upon the results of the one before it to treat the most common skin imperfections, reduce the signs of aging, and promote optimal skin health. Once you make this treatment a part of your skincare regimen, you can expect vibrant, radiant, younger, and healthier-looking skin.