How to Shop Serums

Over the past few months we’ve seen the skincare trend become more and more popular. Skin is definitely in. People are taking an interest in their skin, learning more about products, ingredients and what routine would best suit their skin type. We’ve also seen a growing interest in skin serums, particular from shoppers on our website. But logging onto our website and seeing a whole lot of serum options can be super overwhelming. 

We’ve come up with a five-step shopping process to make your skincare shopping experience easier. 

STEP 1: Understand your skin type

Oily? Combination? Dry skin? Take time out to analyse your skin and understand it. When choosing a serum, you do not want to buy something that is going to exacerbate your dryness or oiliness etc. If you’re not sure of your skin type- analyse it over week or you can pop into a beauty salon and ask for a skin/face assessment. This is going to help when deciding what serum to buy and ultimately helps you get into a routine that suits your skin type.

STEP 2: Diagnose your skin concern

Serums are formulated to address certain skin issues. Most serums contain an active or concentrated ingredient that targets your skin concern. Popular skin concerns include acne, dry skin, dark marks, blemishes, oily skin etc. It is important to note that there will be instances where you have more than one issue you’d like to address e.g acne and dark marks or oily skin and dark marks and it is ok to then add more than serum to your routine. If you do have a skin issue, we recommend that you add a specific serum/s to your skincare routine to address it. 

So how do you know what serum to add to your routine? Let’s move onto step 3!

STEP 3: Do your research on skincare ingredients

Yes- it’s getting a little cumbersome now. But we want glowing, healthy and radiant skin so the effort is well worth it. 

Google has always been our favourite. By googling a question as easy as “what active skincare ingredients address dark marks” you’ll get your answer.  In most instances there will be more than one recommended ingredient. It will then be important to go a little deeper and read up on each of the key ingredients to understand what ingredient will serve your skin well. Try select your top three ingredients just incase one of the ingredients is hard to find. Once you’ve zoned in on two or three ingredients that may address your skin concern, you’re ready to start shopping serums. 

STEP 4: Select your serum of choice

So you’re on our website now and you’re ready to shop a serum. There are two ways you can do this:

1. Go through all the serums on our website via the “Oils and Serums” category and shop by ingredient or
2. Shop your serum via our “Shop by Concern” category which makes this process easier. 

Most serums highlight what the product’s key active ingredient is as noted in the picture below. If this is not highlighted on the packaging, please read the product’s ingredients. In most cases, ingredients are listed from the most active ingredient down to the least. Skin functional serums are named by skin concern which also makes shopping their serums really easy. You’re probably asking whether you can add more than one serum to your routine? Yes you can – this is called layering. However please make sure you contact us or do research on which ingredients cannot be paired together. 

Once you’ve selected your go to serum – it’s time to add it to your skincare routine. 

STEP 5: Fitting your serum into your routine

We always recommend a five-step skincare routine: Cleanse, Tone, Serum, Moisturise and Sunscreen (you can skip sunscreen in the evening). Your serum step should always go before your moisturiser. This ensures that your serum is able to easily penetrate your skin. If you wear your serum during the day, please ensure that you apply sunscreen after the moisturiser step. This is important as exposure to sun rays while wearing serums with potent active ingredients may lead to sun damage. 

We also recommend that you patch test before using any new skin product, incase you may have a bad reaction to it.

 Contact Us

We hope that this helps make your serum shopping experience a little easier. If you need some guidance, please do not hesitate to contact us. We’re always here to help 🙂