Above all else, the number one ingredient in your moisturiser is water. The number one thing your moisturiser should do is hydrate. 

Nowadays we ask for a lot from our moisturiser, to get rid of pigmentation and wrinkles, make us look radiant and younger, and while our cream certainly does that, these should be add-ons.  The number one thing our skin needs, the number one essential nutrient is Water.

How many of us are guilty of not getting enough water in our diets?  Too much coffee during the day or wine in the evening?  Even if you make the recommended 8 glasses of water, chances are your skin is still dehydrated.  Most people think they have dry skin, when they in fact have dehydrated.  Once you know the difference, it’s easy to spot – dry skin needs oil, dehydrated skin needs Water.  While your skin can be both, most (yes even oily skin) is dehydrated long before it becomes dry.

Throughout the day your skin loses water through evaporation, with a technical term of ‘transepidermal water loss’ it can be confusing so we’re choosing to just call it water loss, it’s important to make sure your skin is well hydrated in both the amount of water you’re drinking and in the products you use.  Dehydrated skin has less radiance and appears duller, while also becoming less plump it will accentuate fine lines and wrinkles and can even make them appear in places you hadn’t seen any.  This is why a lot of moisturisers have ‘plumper’ ingredients that make your skin fuller so that these lines are diminished.  Sadly these ingredients are temporary and at maximum last only 12 hours, so we’ve stayed away from them, opting for ingredients that have benefits longer term.  Proper hydration can stop the formation of wrinkles in their tracks.

Now we are talking about water in the skin but oil is crucial in this process.  Your skin naturally produces oils and one of the jobs they play is to slow down water loss in the skin and lock it in.  If you’re skin is overproducing oil and you’re using products that are oil free, it’s worth seeing if your skin is dehydrated.  You can keep applying your moisturiser but if your skin can’t retain the water, it’s going to keep producing oils to try and lock it in but that’s for another blog on why oil is crucial to ALL skin.

Skin cells, like every other cell in your body, are made up mostly of water.  Not having enough water can lead to undesirable symptoms like dryness, tightness and flaky skin but also flat, dull and wrinkled skin.  We’ve use purified water in the Quintessential Moisturiser and combined it with water soluble nutrients, oils and oil soluble nutrients to make sure your skin has everything it needs to work at its’ best.