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We’ve reached a point in skin care where, apparently, our barriers are really in need of repair. A few weeks ago, Paula’s Choice, a brand I consider the skin-care bellwether, emailed me with its newest innovation: a barrier-repair moisturizer. Around the same time, drugstore staple RoC announced a three-piece barrier-repair line. Hailey Bieber’s Rhode had launched a barrier-restore cream a few months before that, as did the Ordinary, with a barrier-support serum for when things have gone too far. The barrier conversation is so salient that one aesthetician, Simedar Jackson, built their entire brand around it: Of Other Worlds launched in June with a single product — Light Beams, a barrier-repair serum — and soon after landed in Sephora’s Accelerate incubator program and received a Glossier Grant.
The reality is that you can truly mess up your skin barrier. Also known as the stratum corneum, the barrier is the uppermost layer of the skin, and a healthy one resists bacteria and toxins and keeps your entire skin’s hydration level balanced. A barrier that has gone haywire presents as dry, irritated, flaky skin, sometimes with acne. One of the main ways the barrier can start to malfunction is when we overexfoliate — which is exactly what the beauty industry, Reddit threads, and YouTube and TikTok influencers have been encouraging us to do for years by offering up superstrong exfoliating masks, gels, and serums without much education on how to use them.
A quick poll of my skin-care-obsessed friends revealed that lots of them are using actives every night — retinol, glycolic acid, or tranexamic acid — on a hunt for glassy skin. They’re trying to get rid of a pesky maskne spot from a few years ago, smooth out a line on their forehead, or avoid lines altogether. They’re focused on a goal, so they orient their skin care around it, rather than around the skin’s natural processes. This is normal, I’ve found, especially in a world where the quality of a skin-care ingredient is measured by its potency and noticeable results. But all of this has led to lots of newly sensitive, irritated skin, creating a cycle of damage and repair. Between P50, ultrapotent vitamin C, and an actives-filled cleanser (sometimes all in one routine), it was almost fated that we would reach the point in the cycle where everyone is attempting to fix problems that they created.
The irony, of course, is that keeping the barrier healthy is the best way to get the glassy skin so many covet. The tendency to use too many active ingredients has been Jackson’s experience, too. She decided to launch Light Beams after working with her clients, who she says were using great products but not seeing results. “Almost 95 percent of the time, they were overexfoliating and overtreating their skin,” she says. Light Beams is formulated to both prevent barrier disruption from happening and treat it if it does.
But honestly, we don’t really need products to get the barrier to heal. The skin is skilled at regeneration and can restore itself without any interventions — it will just take longer than if ceramide-filled moisturizers and serums were helping it along. According to Jackson, the average 30-year-old could see total barrier repair within about four to five weeks if they stuck to cleansing with water and nothing else. That should get skin back to its baseline, whether that’s oily, acneic, or dry.
If you do decide to use a moisturizer, do you really need a barrier-specific one to get supple, healthy-looking skin? Also no. A no-frills moisturizer like Vanicream or CeraVe is just fine. As someone who’s sensitive to fragrance, I’m no stranger to basic moisturizers that simply, well, moisturize. And after years of using barrier-friendly moisturizers (from First Aid Beauty’s Ultra Repair Cream to Dieux’s Instant Angel), I tend to look for just a few ingredients. First, glycerin. As Rio once said, glycerin needs hyaluronic acid’s publicist; it’s very good at keeping moisture in, and it draws moisture from the air to hydrate skin. Also, ceramides: These lipids naturally exist in the skin, and the synthetic version (the stuff you’ll find in skin care) helps to replenish them because we make fewer ceramides as we age. These two, along with a peptide if I’m feeling fancy, have never steered me wrong. I just go thicker in the winter and lighter in the summer to account for the weather.
I recently started using a retinol product — Skinbetter’s AlphaRet, which I picked because it came recommended by dermatologists for people with sensitive skin. I’ve been using it three nights a week at most (sometimes two) and have noticed my skin getting nicer by the day. I’ve become a consistent moisturizer and sunscreen wearer as a result, adding Of Other Worlds’ Light Beams to avoid the worst symptoms of irritation. So far, it looks like my barrier’s intact.
Some of Tembe’s Favorite Barrier-Protecting Products
This article originally appeared in The Strategist Beauty Brief, a weekly newsletter from our beauty writers on their must-tries, can-skips, and can’t-live-withouts. Sign up here.
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