How to Moisturize Your Skin, and Why Your Skin Needs Both Oil and Water

Recently we discussed how to use an organic face moisturizer in your skin care routine to combat dryness, flaking, or roughness. But thoroughly moisturizing consists more than just the single step of massaging a moisturizer into your skin. There’s a difference between moisturization and hydration, and your skin usually needs both. We’re going into the details on how to moisturize your skin, and why your skin needs both oil and water for a healthy, radiant complexion.

What’s the Difference Between Hydration and Moisturization?

We often talk about moisturizing our skin, but are we adequately preparing our skin before we apply a moisturizing product to our faces? To put it shortly, hydration involves providing water to your skin cells, and moisturization is the process of adding oil to them. Hydrating ingredients might consist of water-based ingredients like floral hydrosols or aloe vera. Our product of choice for this step is an organic toner, in which hydrosols work with hyaluronic acid to lock hydration into your thirsty skin cells.

On the other hand, a moisturizer usually contains a higher amount of lipids, with a much richer consistency than a hydrant. Moisturizing ingredients include cold processed oils and shea butter, found in an organic facial oil or moisturizer. Your skin needs water to function and protect your body while also keeping your complexion bright, but an oil is also necessary on top of that to keep the water locked in. Now that you’re aware of the difference between the two, we’ll cover more in depth information about why your skin needs both, and how to moisturize your skin after thoroughly hydrating it.

Why Your Skin Needs Hydration from Water

Your vital organs aren’t the only parts of your body that need water to properly function. Your skin is your body’s largest organ, and works hard to protect you and keeping you looking your best. Water is essential to keeping our skin cells plump and full for a smooth, firm complexion. Dry skin cells lead to flaking and dullness. On the other hand, properly hydrated skin cells create a smooth, radiant skin surface. Pumping water into your skin - whether it’s from the inside by drinking your daily glasses of water or with the right skin care products - is called hydration.

How to Hydrate Skin

When you’re looking for ways to hydrate your skin with skin care products, you should look beyond more than just plain water. If you’ve ever spotted water as the first ingredient in conventional beauty products, it’s there to water down the product and is usually no better than a synthetic filler that’s lowering the potency of the other active ingredients. Instead, look for ingredients like hyaluronic acid that’s able to hold up to six liters of water in a single gram, making it ideal for helping to hydrate your skin. Combine it with floral hydrosols in our Flower Water Toner and you have a nutrient-packed method of hydrating your skin. Organic rose water soothes and hydrates thirsty skin cells, making it especially beneficial for irritated or inflamed skin. After cleansing your face with nourishing Nopal Cactus Cleanser, gently pat the toner into your skin for deep hydration. Using a toner helps to purify pores and prepare them to better absorb other skin beneficial ingredients in your routine.

Why You Need to Moisturize Your Skin with Oil

When your skin is not adequately hydrated - which happens easily because water evaporates from your skin - it can lead to more visible fine lines and other signs of aging. After hydrating your skin with an organic facial toner, remember to apply a moisturizer on top to help prevent the hydrating ingredients from evaporating from your skin. Moisturization consists of adding an oil to your skin to reinforce your skin’s natural lipid barrier that keeps beneficial ingredients (water, nutrients, antioxidants) locked into your skin cells. Even people with an oily skin type need an additional boost from a moisturizer to aid in water retention and strengthen their lipid barrier. With inadequate moisturization, your skin becomes easily dehydrated and less protected from environmental stressors like UV damage from the sun, pollutions, and other toxins.

How to Moisturize Your Skin

Be sure to apply a moisturizer after hydrating with a Flower Water Toner for the full benefits of an organic skin care routine. You can achieve this by first massaging a skin softening facial oil into your skin. The benefits of our Restorative Facial Oil go far, especially with its cold pressed plant oils that retain maximum potency and benefits for supple skin. It is better absorbed by your skin after applying a Flower Water Toner, meaning the two complement and synergize with each toner (just like how hydration and moisturization are both necessary for each other!).

Always apply moisturizer at the very end of your skin care routine and after your facial oil to seal in active ingredients and protect the outermost layer of your skin. Gently press Seaberry Moisturizer into skin so that your facial oil and moisturizer can meld together and be properly absorbed. The hero ingredient of our moisturizer is sea buckthorn that promotes a firm, balanced complexion with nourishing fatty acids. Supporting sea buckthorn is deeply moisturizing grapeseed oil and shea butter. Both ingredients protect the skin’s natural lipid layer and prevent beneficial nutrients and water from evaporating.