Hot summers aren’t going anywhere. And for some of us, we experience warm and sunny climates year round. Summer months are notorious for more easily dehydrating our skin and exacerbating certain skin conditions. But keeping a strong skin barrier is absolutely essential for any summer skin strategy, and now is the perfect time to remind your clients of that.
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Hot summers aren’t going anywhere. And for some of us, we experience warm and sunny climates year round. Summer months are notorious for more easily dehydrating our skin and exacerbating certain skin conditions. But keeping a strong skin barrier is absolutely essential for any summer skin strategy, and now is the perfect time to remind your clients of that.
Early in our careers, we learn the importance of a healthy and hydrated skin barrier function and its integral role in every single skin condition. Somewhere in the midst of recommending the newest treatment or product, we forget to keep hydration standards on our clients’ minds too. This thought recently came to mind as I coached a client through some recent acne and textural issues that popped up. Her immediate reaction to the skin changes, which included a rougher texture, slight erythema and a few extra inflamed comedones was to re-wash her face and exfoliate. She then reached out to me and asked if I thought she was having an allergic reaction to her products and what she should do. After collecting more pertinent data, I had a strong suspicion that her skin was simply super dehydrated versus unexfoliated, dirty or experiencing an allergic reaction.
This prompted me to create a more powerful and prioritized script for all of my clients on the importance of skin hydration, along with easy-to-understand analogies that put hydration in the same seat as sunscreen. I share them with you below so we can all help our clients a little better this season and into the fall and winter months.
1. The Sponge Analogy
This teaches us why hydrating products should be part of every regimen to help our products work better.
Have a regular old sponge handy, or simply ask your client to imagine a dry sponge and a damp sponge. Demonstrate or describe the fact that the dry sponge will have a harder time absorbing a product versus a damp sponge. Dehydrated skin finds it challenging to retain moisture.
By likening the skin to a sponge, we can emphasize the importance of hydrating ingredients that help replenish and lock in moisture, leaving the skin supple and thirsty for our skin care products. This will help clients realize that the dryer their skin is, the less effective their skin care products will be.
2. The Bathtub Analogy
This teaches us why hydrated skin is essential for acne management.
Tell your client to imagine an empty bathtub full of wax candles. The tub in this analogy represents your pore and the candles represent the sebum and dead skin cells that can accumulate inside it if not properly hydrated. Now, tell your client to imagine filling the bathtub with water and watching the candles eventually float to the top and flow over the tub.
Clients with acne and blemishes still have a hard time grasping the fact that drying out the skin is mostly unhelpful for acne. By using this analogy, it’s easier for clients to understand the importance of giving the skin enough moisture to keep pores clean.
Related: The Skin Flooding Trend Layers Products for Boosted Hydration
3. The Wound Analogy
This teaches us that dehydrated skin may react to anything, even soothing products.
Imagine your client is experiencing erythema and a burning sensation from a super soothing and hydrating product. Most of the time, this is a reaction due to an impaired skin barrier versus a product reaction. However, clients will automatically connect burning to the product even if their skin may need that product.
For this analogy, we want our client to imagine a skin wound. Ask them how they would first address a wound. Most will say they would clean it with water and soap, then put a healing ointment on it to keep it hydrated and protected. When our skin is red, irritated and dehydrated, we can picture a similar situation. Sometimes, that water and ointment can sting, but we know it’s necessary for improvement. We aren’t going to exfoliate it or immediately assume we are allergic to the ointment when it burns. We are going to give it time and protection to heal.
Obviously, there are many exceptions to this analogy, but I find it helpful for my clients that are prone to dehydration to remember that soothing product stinging can be a sign of a wounded skin barrier and that we need to go back into protective mode for a bit before we jump back into exfoliants and retinoids.
4. The Waterslide Analogy
This teaches us that rough skin is not always about exfoliation.
When a client feels a rough texture, nine times out of 10 they are going to intuitively scrub it smooth with an exfoliant. This is intuitive to them. But what if you tell them to imagine getting in line for a water slide this summer. Tell them to imagine a gushing water flow sending happy people down a fast-paced tube into a shimmery pool at the bottom.
Now, what if the water flow drastically slows or comes to a halt? We would imagine the people getting stuck in the slide and piling up in the tube. Without a properly hydrated skin, those stuck “people” are like stuck dead skin cells trying to make their way up and out of the skin. Without water, they start to accumulate and feel less smooth to the touch.
This helps my clients realize that sometimes a rough texture can be alleviated by adding hydration versus scrubbing the life out of the skin, which many of us know to be an exacerbator of the symptom.
5. The Garden Analogy
This teaches us that skin hydration is essential for any skin goal.
Tell your client to imagine their spring or summer garden. What does it look like after a summer thunderstorm? What does it look like when there’s a drought and you have forgotten to water it for three days? This is a pretty obvious question, but helps your client to understand the importance of how water is used in the skin.
Explain to your clients that each veggie or herb growing represents a skin goal. They all need that hydration to live and grow. In that sense, they can also understand that hydration is still FIRST when it comes to ALL of our goals.
Happy and Hydrated
So this summer, along with your autopilot sunscreen pitch, I hope that you are able to incorporate some extra hydration reminders in there as well. These analogies have worked really well for me, and I hope they can help you as well.
Remember that these discussions with clients can not only transform their understanding of skin hydration from a mere concept to a tangible necessity, but also create greater connection and trust. As empathetic estheticians, let's empower our clients to embrace a skin care routine that nourishes and protects their skin throughout the sunny days ahead.
Emily Trampetti is a multi-state licensed esthetician, skin care expert and founder of Skin Property Virtual Esthetics. After successfully owning and running her spa in Chicago, she decided to expand virtually with her proprietary skin coaching program, which now supports clients from over 15 states, Puerto Rico and Europe. Her mission is to empower her clients to finally feel in control of their skin and reach their goals through personalized skin care, tailored education and lifetime empowerment!
