Add These 5 Ingredients to Your Winter Skincare Routine

As we enter the colder months of the year, the telltale side effects are creeping in: dry hands, lips, and faces. It can be hard to combat the chilly breeze, especially without making a few tweaks to your skincare routine. 

In order to beef up your defenses, consider adding these skin-saving ingredients into your normally scheduled rotation. They help lock in moisture, brighten your pale countenance, and exfoliate the flakiness away. 

This ingredient is considered a staple when it comes to trapping moisture in the skin. Hyaluronic acid acts as a humectant, which means it has the ability to both draw water to the surface of the skin, and to hold it there. HA can be found in both creams and serums. 

There's no wrong time to add vitamin C to your routine. The antioxidant is quite effective at helping to boost your skin's protective barriers, an essential in the harsh months of winter, but also necessary when it comes to blocking the sun's summer rays. However, vitamin C is a notoriously unstable ingedient, meaning you will want to make sure you find a product that is proven to be effective. 

Niacinimide is one of the most popular skincare ingredients currently on the market. It can be found on its own in specially made serums, or mixed into a variety of products. The ingredient works to strengthen the skin barrier, and helps to ramp up production of ceramides, another essential wintertime ingredient. 

If you are battling endless flakiness, it might be time to turn to a chemical exfoliant. You don't want to be too harsh on your skin, perhaps only using the product once a week or so, but the tides have turned to favor chemical exfoliation over physical scrubs. AHA and BHA are two popular ingredients. While AHA concerns itself primarily with surface-level gunk, BHA penetrates deeper into the skin, often used to combat acne.