Hydrating VS. Moisturizing

Hydrating and moisturizing are both very used terms in the beauty world, and we can think they mean the same- but they are not.

What does hydrating mean?

Dehydrated skin is lacking in water percentages. Think of your skin contents as a printer with ink. One cartridge is water, and another is oil. Like this chart below. This skin is lacking water. Hydrating products or ingredients help to balance out the water in our skin.

Dehydrated skin

What is moisturizing?

Just like there can be a low percentage of water in our skin, there can also be a low amount of oil in the skin, that is where moisturizing products come in handy. Moisturizing products help dry skin, lacking in oil. Often this is be connected to dry skin types.

Dry Skin

What ingredients hydrate?

One that comes to mind immediately is hyaluronic acid, which help add extra water back into the skin. Emollients help to bind with water to put into the skin.

Using lighter and watery products are often how these are made. Being of smaller molecules, they ingredients can reach into deeper parts of the skin and hydrate from the inside out.

What ingredients moisturize?

Using ceramics or glycerin in a product are great to keep the skin healthy. Often these can be more often in creams or oils as well, as these products lock in the moisture.

Can I use both?

Of course! But make sure to always use the hydrating products first, as they are the lighter and thinner consistency products that should be first and then follow up with the thicker moisturizing products.

Keeping my skin happy and healthy is always my first priority and I think when I didn’t understand the difference between these two, I definitely saw that I wasn’t using the products correctly or knowing what I should be using in the first place.

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Do you know the difference between hydrating and moisturizing?

Let me know what your favorite hydrating and moisturizing products are!

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