Surviving Summer Heat: Your Roadmap To Best Skincare for Oilier Types

Do you love switching up your fragrance as soon as the temperature soars? If you’re all about happy-making scents in summer, take the same approach for your skin. What – apart from SPF – is your essential summer skincare survival kit? Because if your skin can’t take the heat (think shine and breakouts), it needs smarter solutions. While skin types 4, 5 and 6 aren’t usually prone to burn, skin cancers, sun damage and pigmentation are real. Living in a country with one of the world’s highest UV concentrations means the heat is on. Surviving the summer heat and having a happy skin need not be a challenge? Simple. Product up!

Climate control: how your skin is going to survive the summer heat

Skin is such a clever organ. As the temperature rises, so our skin switches on its inbuilt aircon. Whether dry heat or humidity, your face basically cools itself. It does this by perspiring. Being sweatier freshens the skin, as sweat – made chiefly from water – evaporates. However, things get complicated. Here’s the short version: there are two kinds of sweat glands. One produces regular sweat (more water-based), and the other produces oil-based sweat. Now, water and oil don’t mix well, so tiny droplets are what you see on your skin. Maybe not the look you were going for as you arrive at the rooftop bar? 

Skincare Survival Set

It’s oh-so-tempting to scrub your skin when you feel like there’s an overload of oil. Stop. Over-cleansing, especially with harsh foaming products, simply strips your skin of oil. And a lack of oil sends signals to your face to produce more of it. In other words, the skin will overcompensate. Instead, invest in a soap-free cleanser for gentle exfoliation and hydration. Hydration is an oily skin’s BFF – and with good reason. Without giving your skin the water it needs, the vicious cycle of over-sebum production starts. In other words, skipping moisturiser is the worst thing you can do. Instead, reach for a day cream that’s oil-free and non-comedogenic. This means it won’t clog pores. Snap for your SPF, which can easily be found in a lightweight gel texture.

Pimples, Pigmentation And Surviving Summer Heat

Acne isn’t – worst luck – a skin condition that lives alone on a desert island. No, it has neighbours. And the loudest, for skin types 5 and 6, is pigmentation. This is because the skin is more reactive to injury. So a pimple forms, and next thing you have Post-Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation to try and evict. And while this is beyond unfair, simply having the right product can make a big difference. A treatment product that tackles uneven tone and pigmentation need to be preventive. Also, consider night therapy – the skin does most of its repair work between 11 pm and 12 am. 

If you’re feeling more ready to get up and glow rather than sweat about shine, that’s great news! Summer is, after all, the season for all the good feels. We wish you a very happy one, and most of all, a beautiful skin journey.