Dr Rabia Malik’s top 5 skincare mistakes to avoid!
Cleanse your skin properly. That means NO WIPES. Too many of my patients use wipes to cleanse their skin at night without realising that quite a bit of residue is left on the skin…You can use wipes to remove makeup, but to really cleanse your skin properly, you need to use a cleanser with water, especially at night. Ideally, you should be washing your skin with cleanser and water morning and evening. If you do that, you should only need to use an exfoliating product once or twice a week at most.
Use the correct amount of product. Most of my patients tend to apply too much product to their skin. Less is generally better, as you risk overloading your skin and causing more problems otherwise. Generally I suggest a ‘grain of rice’ amount of eye cream, applied to your ring finger and gently patted along the eye bone. A ‘pea sized’ amount of all other creams is usually sufficient!
Apply your creams in the right order. If you are layering products, cleanse your skin and then apply eye cream first. Serum comes next, and then any moisturisers/hydrators. Sunscreen (if mineral based, which is what I prefer and recommend to my patients) comes last.
Apply your sunscreen up to the forehead/hairline. All my patients have photographs taken using a special facial analysis scanner, and 8 out of 10 have increased pigmentation (due to sundamage) on the forehead simply because they haven’t been applying their SPF diligently.
Give your products a chance to work! It takes 6-12 weeks before you will start to see a difference in your skin when you switch to something new. So give your products at least 3 months before starting something else.
Use the correct amount of product. Most of my patients tend to apply too much product to their skin. Less is generally better, as you risk overloading your skin and causing more problems otherwise. Generally I suggest a ‘grain of rice’ amount of eye cream, applied to your ring finger and gently patted along the eye bone. A ‘pea sized’ amount of all other creams is usually sufficient!
Apply your creams in the right order. If you are layering products, cleanse your skin and then apply eye cream first. Serum comes next, and then any moisturisers/hydrators. Sunscreen (if mineral based, which is what I prefer and recommend to my patients) comes last.
Apply your sunscreen up to the forehead/hairline. All my patients have photographs taken using a special facial analysis scanner, and 8 out of 10 have increased pigmentation (due to sundamage) on the forehead simply because they haven’t been applying their SPF diligently.
Give your products a chance to work! It takes 6-12 weeks before you will start to see a difference in your skin when you switch to something new. So give your products at least 3 months before starting something else.
