There is one rule underneath all of this: thinnest to thickest. Everything else is a refinement of it. Water-based products go on before oil-based ones, because a cream will block a serum from getting anywhere, and a serum will not block a cream.
Morning
- Cleanser. Optional, genuinely. If your skin is dry or you cleansed properly the night before, water is enough.
- Antioxidant serum. Vitamin C belongs here — it works alongside sunscreen against daytime free radical damage. Give it a minute to absorb.
- Targeted treatment, if you use one. Pigment correctors, niacinamide, hydrating serums.
- Moisturiser.
- Sunscreen. Always last, always its own step. Sunscreen mixed into moisturiser does not give you the protection on the bottle.
Evening
- Cleanse. Twice if you wore makeup or sunscreen — the first pass removes the product, the second cleans the skin.
- Active. Retinol, or an exfoliating acid. One or the other, not both.
- Moisturiser. More substantial than the morning one, particularly if you are using retinol.
That is the whole structure. Anything else is an addition to it, not a replacement for it.
What to keep apart
Retinol and exfoliating acids. Both increase cell turnover. Together they do not double the result, they double the irritation. Alternate nights.
Retinol and benzoyl peroxide. Applied together, benzoyl peroxide can degrade some retinol formulations. If you need both, one goes in the morning and one at night.
Multiple new products at once. Not an ingredient conflict but the most common mistake. Introduce one product at a time and give it two weeks. If something reacts, you will know what.
Things that are fine together, despite what you have read
Vitamin C and niacinamide layer without issue — the incompatibility claim comes from research on raw ingredients at high heat, not on formulated products.
Vitamin C and sunscreen are actively better together. Hyaluronic acid goes under anything, though it wants a moisturiser over it or it will draw water out of your skin in dry weather rather than into it.
How to tell you have overdone it
Tightness after cleansing. Stinging from products that never used to sting. A shiny, tight redness that is not quite a rash. That is a compromised barrier, and the fix is subtraction: cleanser, moisturiser, sunscreen only, for two weeks. Then reintroduce one thing.
Our redness and irritation guide goes through the recovery routine in detail, and if your skin sits somewhere between dry and reactive most of the time, the dehydrated skin guide is the better starting point.
Not sure which of those describes you? Our advisors do this in person at both Vancouver clinics, and it takes about ten minutes.