Skin Care Tips to Keep You Glowing Through Fall and Winter

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The cooler months of the year have finally arrived. Summer comes to an end, and it’s time again to break out the fuzzy sweaters and puffy jackets. You might look forward to spending time outdoors with the falling leaves, but your face and hands might become chapped from the cold weather. Walking out to your car or biking to work can make your skin dry and itchy, causing it to lose its glow as the sun is out for less time.

How can you keep your summer look throughout the darker seasons? Here are a few skincare tips to keep you glowing through fall and winter.

Skin Care Tips for Colder Weather

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1. Use a Humidifier

Once the cold weather comes around, dry skin quickly comes with it. A good moisturizer can give your face and hands temporary relief, but the moistureless air will keep doing its work. Plus, when your skin cracks, it releases more moisture and worsens the problem.

In addition to moisturizer, consider adding a humidifier to your skincare routine. It adds water back into the air, which can help heal and prevent itchy or cracked skin. Combining it with your current regimen can keep that summer glow around instead of letting the dry air make it dull.

2. Consume More Omega-3 Fats

When you think of combining fats and skin, it may remind you of breakouts. While greasy foods might make your face unhappy, omega-3s are a natural, healthy fat that can give your skin a lot of perks. When your skin needs some organic help during the fall and winter, eating more omega-3s might be the answer you need.

Omega-3s have benefits such as improving skin function, encouraging healing, stopping inflammation, and providing a natural source of retinol from vitamin A. If you want an easy way to consume this fat, you could take fish oil as part of your skincare routine. Otherwise, you could up the amount of fish in your diet for some delicious and warm meals during the frigid days.

3. Keep Using Sunscreen

Just because the sun isn’t out as long during the second half of the year doesn’t mean you don’t have to wear sunblock anymore. Many skin care enthusiasts recommend wearing sunscreen daily to protect yourself from ultraviolet (UV) rays and reduce the look of aging. Though the sun does tend to beat down during the summer, it can still have the same burning effects during fall and winter.

In fact, dermatologists say UV rays have the same strength throughout the year, and cloud cover doesn’t stop them. Skin damage can happen just as easily when it’s cold out as when it’s warm. They recommend using sunblock with at least SPF 50, ensuring the label protects from the broad spectrum — meaning it blocks UVA and UVB rays — and adding a vitamin C serum underneath.

4. Eat Some Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and veggies are great for your skin’s glow during fall and winter. Foods like watermelon, celery, strawberries, and cucumbers have a lot of water that can add to your daily H₂O intake. Additionally, they contain some vitamins that can help you fight off dry skin.

Get more vitamin A by eating spinach, kale, mangos, carrots, sweet potatoes, and cantaloupes. For vitamin C — which helps eliminate free radicals and could tighten your skin — try peppers, kiwi, Brussels sprouts or citrus fruits. Vitamin E gets rid of those pesky free radicals even better than vitamin C, and you can get it from broccoli and spinach, along with a few nuts and seeds.

5. Exfoliate Dry Skin

Because of the drying nature of the seasons, you’ll likely still get some flaky skin now and then. If you want to stay glowing throughout fall and winter, you want to get rid of dead skin once it starts to pop up with a store-bought or homemade exfoliant. Doing so helps clear your pores, smooth your skin, and keep your cells fresh.

A charcoal scrub can offer you all these benefits in one product. It also gets deeper into your skin and gives your pores a detox. Charcoal has cleansing properties that help freshen your skin, so when you need to exfoliate — which shouldn’t be every day — try a scrub.

6. Wash in Lukewarm Water

When you get home from work, hopping into a steaming bath or shower is incredibly tempting. The hot water can soothe the chill of the outdoors, but it doesn’t do anything to protect your skin. Washing with too-hot water strips your skin of natural oils and causes more moisture to evaporate as you dry off.

It might seem unpleasant, but try to bathe in as cool of water as you can handle. Dermatologists recommend keeping the bathroom door shut to seal in as much moisture as possible, using a gentle body wash, and moisturizing as soon as you’re done. This helps capture all that moisture you got from the shower and prevent dryness.

7. Switch Your Moisturizer

Speaking of moisturizer, you may want to consider switching up the one you use when the seasons change. You probably don’t need a strong one during spring and summer since those months often come with rain and heat that create humidity. However, that light cream won’t give you much protection when the temperature drops.

Some skin types will love a heavy-duty moisturizer, while others need a water-based product to avoid adding more oil to faces and hands. Take note of your skin type while choosing a winter moisturizer to find a cream that will give you the most assistance. This way, you can give your skin the nourishment it needs with fewer adverse effects.  

Stay Glowing While It’s Cold Outside

With summer naturally comes glowing skin, but colder weather isn’t as kind to your outer barrier.

Along with your scarf and mittens, consider using these seven skin care tips to keep you glowing through fall and winter. You can stay dewy and glow all year with the right products, methods, and foods for your skin type.