Facial oils are high in natural, skin-identical ingredients that are respectful of your skin’s biology while also being highly effective. If you want a radiant glow, a well-chosen facial oil is a must have.
Skincare literally comes in all shapes and sizes, but facial oils are usually packaged in petite ampules. You might have several unanswered questions about these mystical-looking ampules, relative newbies to the beauty world.
Are facial oils worth the investment? Are they better than intensive moisturisers? What exactly are the benefits of facial oils?
What makes a facial oil different from an intensive moisturiser?
The clue to the benefits of a facial oil is the package’s delicate size. Most facial oils come in ampules no larger than 30 ml, and that’s because they’re highly concentrated products.
You need only a very small amount of a facial oil to achieve great benefits for your skin. To get the same dose of nourishing oils from a moisturiser, you’d need to use up to 5 times as much product.
However, even if you did increase your dose of face cream or lotion, the benefits wouldn’t be the same. Moisturisers are a mixture of water and oils, which means the concentration of oils in a moisturiser is always lower than that of a facial oil.
What are the benefits of facial oils?
Facial oils offer great benefits to your skin because they’re:
- Full of omega-rich oils (including omega-3s)
- A natural source of vitamins and antioxidants
- Skin-identical and therefore highly compatible
- Helpful in repairing skin’s barrier function
Let’s take a deeper look at each of these benefits.
- Facial oils offer a concentrated dose of omega fatty acids.
Natural oils are made up of ingredients referred to as ‘omega fatty acids’. You might’ve heard about a specific kind, omega-3s, particularly in relation to heart health. Like many nutrients, omegas are great to apply topically as well as to eat.
Omega-3 oils are known anti-inflammatories, which means they’re great for treating skin concerns such as dryness, eczema, and chronic conditions such as rosacea or acne.
- Facial oils are a natural source of vitamins and antioxidants.
Many emollient-based moisturisers use mineral oil to occlude the skin, and it’s very effective at this task. Mineral oil acts as a temporary skin barrier to prevent hydration from escaping. However, it can’t provide any nutrients to your skin, as it contains none (don’t let the word ‘mineral’ fool you here).
Natural oils can help lock hydration into your skin via an action similar to that of mineral oil. But natural oils also condition the skin with fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants. These ingredients help improve skin’s overall resilience.
- Facial oils are high in skin-identical ingredients.
Facial oils work with your skin, not against it. The outermost layers of your skin are oil-based, which makes a facial oil the perfect treatment. These top layers are primarily composed of fatty acids, cholesterol, and ceramides, all of which can be found in natural oils.
When you give your skin an ingredient it knows how to use, you provide it with highly usable nutrients that your skin may be fooled into ‘thinking’ it made itself. That means facial oils are exceptionally gentle, kind, and effective.
- Facial oils help to repair skin’s barrier function.
The outermost layers of skin are oil-based in order to keep your skin safe from germs and dehydration. You can think of your skin as the shield of your body. When this shield is attacked or neglected, it becomes:
Less able to do its jobs of protection, temperature regulation, and so forth
- Dull and dehydrated
- Dry and unevenly textured
- Open to developing forms of dermatitis and eczema
- Sensitive, reactive, and reddened
Facial oils help keep your skin healthy and attractive because they replenish your skin’s natural oil content. Oils not only form a temporary barrier, but they also feed skin with the nutrients it needs to restore itself to health.
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