What’s the best way to help with skin redness?

Jamie Sabot·Updated on September 8, 2023

redness reducing skincare and how to get rid of redness on face - getting to the root cause of redness

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QUESTION:

The following question was asked by a radiant rebel in our Facebook community:

“What’s the best way to help with skin redness?“

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ANSWER:

The answer is to focus on 3 specific areas…

Calming Skincare: Focus on reducing inflammation by using products that contain calming skincare ingredients like calendula, cucumber, oats, and turmeric.
Lipid Barrier Repair: Focus on fortifying (strengthening) your lipid barrier – this is the natural barrier on your skin that keeps allergins and irritants from creating redness and sensitivity. Lipid rich ingredients are what to focus on here, for example, sunflower or rosehip oil. As well as making sure any stripping ingredients or actions (like the overuse of peels, “resurfacing” masks, harsh cleansers, and scrubs).
Internal Support: Focus on any “internal heat” that’s going on and cool the fires from the inside out.

Let’s dive into each area…

PART ONE: Calming Skincare.

Bring the power of plants into your skincare with one of mother nature’s most soothing medicinal plants, calendula.

Calendula – a sunny little flower that makes the perfect “first aid” botanical as it’s soothing to irritated, damaged, and injured skin, comforts and calms itchy skin, and relieves redness quickly.

To infuse your skincare routine with the benefits of calendula, check out the calendula skincare collection by Grounded Sage. This herbal skincare collection was made specifically for sensitivity, redness, rosacea, and skin that needs soothing ingredients NOW.

Two particularly helpful products from the calendula collection to checkout are:

PART TWO: Lipid Barrier Repair

As we age, our skin is more prone to barrier function impairment. A healthy barrier is essential for keeping our skin looking (and feeling) it’s best. When it’s impaired, it can become dehydrated, sensitive, red, inﬂamed, congested, and prone to breakouts.

So how do we repair and support our lipid barrier? By feeding our skin with lots of calming, lipid-loving ingredients.

These will include hydrating products to help replace lost hydration until your skin can hold on to it better, as well as moisturizers and serums that contain ingredients that mimic our skin’s lipid barrier and help to provide the building blocks for a healthy barrier.

While many Grounded Sage products will help repair and fortify our skin’s lipid barrier, check out these two products that provide our skin with a generous dose of lipid barrier building blocks:

To dive deeper with lipid barrier repair, check out these resources:

Blog: What lipid barrier support means for your skin
Podcast Episode: How to check in with your lipid barrier
Blog: Anti aging support for extra sensitive skin
Blog: How to wash your face when you need to repair and restore your lipid barrier

PART THREE: Internal Support

Phew – where to start. When it comes to redness, outside of topical skincare (assuming that’s ﬁgured out and you’re protecting your skin with SPF every day), addressing 3 areas of internal health can really make a diﬀerence. Working with a naturopath is the best way to sort through all this but most often the root causes are:

Inﬂammation (internal inﬂammation often fuels the ﬁres of external inﬂammation)
Microbiome disturbance (this is both internal – in the gut, and external – our skin’s microbiome. We can’t address inﬂammation without addressing both)
Hormones (particularly inﬂammation inducing hormones like cortisol – “the stress hormone”).
Start exploring how to reduce internal inﬂammation, support your gut, and balance out hormones to really get to the root of things

Going into all of those is deﬁnitely beyond the scope of what I can advise (or even try to unpack in this post), but start by looking to slowly adjust your diet to include antiinﬂammatory foods, get enough sleep, ﬁnd ways to reduce stress (deep breaths, walking, spending time in nature, etc), and support your skin with SPF, calming ingredients, and topical probiotics. I know all of these adjustments are easy to say but not easily changed, so just take baby steps towards balancing/supporting your whole body in each area.

I hope that helps!

Pin for later:

redness reducing skincare and how to get rid of redness on face - getting to the root cause of redness - plus healthy skin care products that can help

natural beauty product guide for calming skin irritation and redness with healthy skin care products. List of beauty products for redness and sensitive skin. Calming face mask product, serums to get rid of redness, and rosacea safe products to calm down sensitivity.

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Jamie Sabot

Jamie Sabot is the founder of Grounded Sage Skincare. Since she started in 2009, Grounded Sage Skincare has helped thousands of customers with their skin by creating handcrafted skincare products, online workshops, and this blog, which has been a trusted resource for straightforward natural skincare information to over 2 million readers and counting.