Everywhere you turn, there’s another ad for a skin care product that promises to turn your skin around and transform it into the clear, youthful, dewy skin of your dreams. It’s tempting to try them all, and that’s exactly how you end up with an unmanageable 10-step skin care routine that you do twice and then abandon to collect very expensive dust in the bathroom drawer.
The fact is that you can absolutely take advantage of multiple specialty skin care products, but you need to do it with a strategy. There are two main techniques people use to incorporate several products: skin care cycling and skin care stacking.
What’s The Difference Between Skin Cycling and Skin Stacking?
Both stacking and cycling are ways to structure your skin care routine in a way that gives your skin the benefits of several skin care products working collaboratively, but they do this in opposite ways. In skin stacking, also called layering, you use multiple products on top of each other during your skin care routine, applying them in a certain order to help each of them reach your skin effectively. For instance, each night, you apply a serum, then a lotion, then a cream.
Skin cycling, on the other hand, is a practice where you only apply certain skin care products on alternating days from one another. For example, there might be one product you use on Monday, a different one on Tuesday, and then you don’t use either on Wednesday, and the cycle starts over on Thursday. This is especially common for products that can be harsh or irritating on your skin, like exfoliators and retinol - using them together can be too much, so alternating them is much more skin-friendly.
Is Skin Stacking or Skin Cycling Better?
Both skin stacking and skin cycling can be effective and help you work toward several ways of improving your skin - like hydration, anti-aging, and so on - at the same time. It’s not a question of which one is better, it’s a question of which one’s better for you. Each one is suited to different skin types, goals, and needs.
Pros and Cons of Skin Care Stacking
Skin care stacking packs a powerful punch for your skin. By layering products like a serum + a lotion + a cream, you’re hitting your skin with all of those targeted ingredients together, so it can be like an intensive boot camp for your skin.
The downside, though, is that this might be too harsh for your skin, especially if the products you’re using can be inflammatory. It also means you have to be a bit more careful about the products in your “stack” and making sure that their ingredients won’t interact poorly with each other and won’t counteract each other.
Pros and Cons of Skin Care Cycling
You can use the same products with skin care cycling that you use with stacking, but you just use them on different days from each other. This doesn’t give your skin quite as intensive of treatment as you’d get from stacking, but that advantage to that is that you lower your risk of getting inflammation or irritation from layering on all those products at the same time.
So if your skin tends to be sensitive, if you’re using products that might not interact well with each other, or if your skin has become irritated from layering in the past, cycling can be a great way to give your skin the benefits of all those products in a gentler way.
Always Include the Necessities
Among all this talk about stacking and cycling different skin care products, it’s important to clarify that these strategies are for skin care products that are supplemental, not the core basics. Your skin care routine, every morning and every night, should still include the essentials: cleanser and moisturizer, plus a sunscreen in the morning. Those are the non-negotiables.
Stacking and cycling are different strategies you can use for additional skin care products that work toward particular skin goals, like boosting hydration, reducing or preventing signs of aging, easing redness, enhancing your overall complexion or skin tone, and so on. But regardless of whether you’re stacking, cycling, or neither, you should always be using cleanser, moisturizer, and sunscreen because these are the essentials for your skin’s health.
Designing Your Skin Care Routine
With the endless product options on the market today, it’s no easy feat to find the techniques and products that are right for your skin, and stacking vs. cycling is just one of many choices to make in that process. If you find yourself wanting some guidance, check out our skin quiz for personalized recommendations, or if you want more of a professional touch, book an appointment at one of our skin care spas.
