When it comes to beginning or levelling up your skincare journey, it can be hard to determine where to start. To narrow down your starting positions, it may help to map out the finish line.
What are you looking to target? It doesn’t have to be just one thing, but starting with a specific area of concern can make the entire task less daunting. From there, you can expand into other concerns, but if you had a magic wand that could only address one issue, what would it be?
Your overarching skin goals can vary from texture to laxity. You might be looking to even out hyperpigmentation, or maybe fine lines and wrinkles are your white whale… For beginners, it helps to pick a general direction before starting to head down a path.
Best Beginner Facials for Smooth, Glowing Skin
For the beginner who wants to start with broad strokes before getting into the finer details, you can’t go wrong with facials and peels. This category of treatment is tried and true because it’s comprehensive and requires little downtime.
Facials range from milder treatments to more intensive ones. If you’re looking to start slow, the Essential Facial is the place to go. This is a customizable treatment that can address a variety of concerns within one appointment, and, beyond their customizability, all of our facials check the main boxes for improving skin texture and radiance.
For deeper skin concerns, a step up from the facials would be a peel. Miracle 10 Facial Peels come in variations that address concerns like acne, melasma, and age spots. The peels can be a bit more demanding in terms of downtime, but they’re still relatively entry-level. If a facial leaves you with mild redness from stimulated blood flow, peels might leave you with mild flaking the next day.
In both cases, whether you’re getting a facial or a peel, you can walk away knowing that you’re strides closer to smooth and glowing skin than you were before. The caveat with this category of treatment is that its depth is limited. These treatments tend to fare best as starting points and maintenance thereafter.
The Facial Rejuvenation Starter Kit
A facial that gets deeper than topical ingredients can is the coveted microneedling with DP4. A microneedling facial offers a substantial step up from your run-of-the-mill facial and peels. Because it works by creating micro-injury, it targets the layers of skin beneath the superficial ones.
Not only does microneedling trigger a healing response, which boosts fibroblast production (collagen and elastin, FYI)… It also creates microchannels for better absorption of serums after the fact. Many clinics will actually apply rejuvenating serums post-microneedling for this reason.
Microneedling is a great addition if you want to incorporate high tech into your skincare. If the facials and peels just don’t cut it for you, this treatment can more effectively target concerns with texture and radiance. For deeper concerns like hyperpigmentation or skin laxity, however, you’ll want something a bit more heavy-duty…
Which Treatment is Best for Hyperpigmentation?
Hyperpigmentation is a concern that’s tough to hack. It may respond differently to different interventions because a wide variety of factors contribute to this issue (e.g., UV damage, acne, hormonal fluctuations, etc.). One broad category of treatments most effective for hyperpigmentation is light therapy.
Pigmentation is a ‘colour’ concern, meaning that it arises from the activity of melanocytes—the cells that give us our complexion. When these cells get increasingly active in different parts of our bodies, we get hyperpigmentation. If this is something that bothers you, it’s helpful to know that melanocytes are impacted by light.
IPL and laser treatments are the most effective technologies on the market for modifying the activity of melanocytes.
Before and After 1 BBL HEROic treatment. Images courtesy of Sciton.
BBL HEROic is a top-of-the-line IPL in that it uses a broader spectrum of light to target varying degrees of pigmentation (including redness in rosacea). It’s still fairly gentle on the skin and requires less downtime than laser treatments.
The strongest light therapies involve laser. If you have stubborn hyperpigmentation, as well as laxity concerns, lasers might be a better consideration. They require more downtime (depending on whether the laser is ablative or non-ablative), but in return you don’t require as many maintenance sessions as you would with IPL and BBL therapies.
Best Low-Downtime Treatments for Fine Lines & Wrinkles
If you’ve identified a concern with fine lines and wrinkles, light therapy might not be your first choice of treatment. It works well for this concern, but Botox might be a game-changer for you. This is definitely the case if your concerns involve dynamic wrinkles caused by repeated movement of the facial muscles.
Some beginners want to start slow with their submersion in non-surgical cosmetic waters. If neurotoxins feel like too many steps ahead, know that pacing your progress is still possible.
For starters, you might want fewer units of the neurotoxin in more discreet areas. Botox, and its colleagues, also doesn’t stick around forever; the effect (unfortunately) fades with time. If you’re not settling into your final results the way you’d like, you can also do a washout and try something different the next time.
The best thing about neurotoxins for skin laxity is that they have virtually no downtime. It’s a treatment you can get done during your lunch break. Besides some tiny bruises and stiffness around the treatment area, you’ll be good to return to your day as usual.
Check out our Glow Club offers for effortless wrinkle maintenance.
Which Treatment Is Right for You?
As with all things in life, you gotta take your cosmetic treatment journey one step at a time. Decide on your primary concern, explore broad categories before narrowing it down to a specific treatment, then take the plunge to see what works.
If you’re still having a hard time figuring out where to start, you can consult a professional to explore your options. You don’t have to know everything before you come in; we’re here to help.
View this post on Instagram
