Skin is the first indicator that tells your age. Things like stress, makeup and environmental factors have a huge negative impact on your skin even if you had a flawless skin in the first place. So, having a flawless skin is a plus but protecting that skin is something entirely different.

1. Do Not Sleep With Makeup On

Sleeping in makeup clogs pores, causes pimples and blackheads. You might not have realized but your skin constantly breathes and it needs to breathe. Diet is important because blood nourishes your skin from inside and breathing does the same thing from outside. So you can say that the perfect skin needs two ingredients; a healthy diet to be nourished and clean skin to breathe.

Do not wait for bedtime to remove your makeup. Let’s assume that you get home at 7:00 PM every day and wear makeup at 6:00 AM every morning, your skin has about 11 hours to breathe and repair itself. If you wait for bedtime to remove your makeup, which would be around 11:00 PM instead of 7:00 PM, your skin will have 7 hours to breathe.

2. Choose A Face Wash & Cleanser For Your Skin Type

I can’t go into details with my limited chemical engineering background but these products have been developed after a very long R&D procedures for different skin types. If you use the wrong type of products for your skin, not only you can’t get benefit from it but also it may harm your skin.

Even if the chemistry is complicated, there are some basic rules to keep in mind. People with oily skin should prefer products with salicylic while people with dry skin should prefer cleansing milk. It is very easy to get scammed if you are buying cleansing milk for the first time so it is best to get help from experienced friends if you don’t know what you are doing.

3. Use Retinol Creams On A Regular Basis

Everyone older than 35 should definitely use products with retinol or retinoid. The collagen production of the skin gets slower at the age of 25 and usually stops around 30. It is impossible to increase the collagen production considerably with natural products or lifestyle. Less collagen production means sagging skin, prominent wrinkles and even skin color complications.

Retinol creams (and other products with retinol or retinoid) triggers and increases collagen production. If you are going to use a night cream, be sure to check its retinol content.

4. Choose A Moisturizers For Your Skin Type

Every woman that knows a thing or two about skincare also knows that the first step of having a flawless skin is moisturizing it. Apply the proper moisturizer for your skin before wearing and after removing makeup – so that makes two times a day.

If you are not wearing any makeup, there are also a couple of unwritten rules for when to apply moisturizer. The best time to moisturize your skin is after taking a shower and before going to bed. Another rule is not to apply moisturizer on a dry skin so, if you are going to apply moisturizer to your face and don’t have time to take a shower, rinse your face with warm (or cold but not too hot) water and apply the moisturizer immediately.

5. Don’t Overdo It

Stop thinking about your skin and searching for the perfect product all the time. Aging is a natural process and there isn’t any chemical strong enough to stop this process. Cleansing, moisturizing and even nourishing it too often upset the balance of your skin and cause more problems rather than fixing them.

For instance, if your skin is oily and you can wash it 2-3 times a day (without using ordinary soaps) to remove excess oil. But if you do it too often and use hand soap, your skin secretes more oil to protect itself and your skin gets oilier than before.

6. Don’t Sleep Less Than You Need

Your metabolism knows if you are sleep and if you are, it can make the necessary changes to fix the small complications. However, you should be sleeping in order your metabolism to make these changes. So, sleep is actually a kind of fuel that your body needs to keep going.

Have you ever pay attention the amount of oil on your skin just after you wake up? This is not the same oil you have on your skin throughout the day because your skin gets rid of toxins so it’s very important to wash your face after you wake up to cleanse these toxins from your skin.

7. Don’t Even Step Outside Without Wearing A Sunscreen

The sun rays are probably the biggest reason why most people have more wrinkles than they normally should, which brings us to another unwritten rule – wearing a sunscreen. There is a popular misbelief that sunscreens are only for beaches but that’s not true. If you are going to spend the whole day in an office, you probably don’t need to wear a sunscreen but if your job requires visiting customers or distributors (poor sales engineers), it will be wise to wear a sunscreen.

The sun rays damage the collagen balance of the skin and if these damages are permanent, which means you spent too much time in the sun without wearing a sunscreen, you have to start using retinol creams even if you are still in your 20s.

8. Learn How To Wear Makeup Like A Pro

You can’t be a pro just by reading random articles on the Internet for sure but it will make things easier to know a couple of tips & tricks before anything else.

If you are going to apply a moisturizer, do it before wearing a makeup. If you have a dry skin, wearing a makeup without a proper moisturizer (for dry skin) will make your makeup look dull and you can’t get the tone you want.

Another crucial point when it comes to makeup is choosing a foundation and powder that match your skin tone and slightly lighter under eye concealer.

9. Clean Your Makeup Brushes

Cleaning your makeup brushes seems to be related to wearing a flawless makeup, rather than having a flawless skin. However, residual makeup is not the only thing that your makeup brushes have on them. Along with the residual makeup, dust and bacteria also pile up on your brushes if you don’t clean them on a regular basis.

Most women are struggling to find an answer for “How often should I clean makeup brushes?” rather than “should I clean makeup brushes?” and that’s why I’m going to answer that question. If you wear makeup regularly every day, you should definitely clean it once a week and the best day to do it probably Saturday mornings. If you work on Saturdays, then do it in the Saturday evening because some of them might get wet as you clean them and they need time to dry out.

10. Believe In The Power Of Green

These green fruits and vegetables are known to increase the oxygen amount on your skin so why not make yourself a delicious smoothie to drink just before going to work? The most popular ingredients for green smoothies are spinach, cucumber and broccoli. These ingredients have many benefits not only for skin but also for your whole metabolism.

11. #YourDietMatters

The legend says princesses with flawless skin are fed with flaxseed, walnut and fish. Can you see the resemblance? All of these foods contain Omega 3 and this fatty acid is as crucial as collagen for the skin. It is also known that Omega 3 increases skin’s ability to keep the moisture.