We all have our bad habits, but when it comes to our skincare, how we treat our face and body can amount to some serious red and green flags. While red flags can stand in the way of your best skin yet, green flags are the little things you can do on your skincare journey for nourished and healthy skin.
The Red Flags
?Using expired products 
Time to clear out the back of your skincare drawer! Every makeup and skincare product has an expiration date, and continuing to them indefinitely is not going to be effective or helpful to your skin. As ingredients break down, they can become less effective or even damaging to the skin.
Avoid this red flag by keeping track of your expiration dates using the jar icon on the back of packaging. You can even use a permanent marker to track when you bought a product can make it easier to know if your product is in-date.
?Not regularly washing your bedding
Breaking out and you don’t know why? It could be your bedding. Especially if you sleep on your side or stomach, makeup, sweat, and oils from your skin collects on your sheets and pillows and are pressed into the skin.
If sebum (oil) is on the pillowcase, that can feed bacteria (C. acnes) which occur naturally on the skin. This may trigger an inflammatory response which leads to blemish formation.
?Sleeping with makeup on
While tempting when you’re exhausted after a night out, sleeping in your makeup is a definite red flag for your skin. Unremoved makeup can embed itself into your skin, can clog and enlarge your pores. The oil in makeup products can (again) feed the bacteria which causes blemishes. When this makeup is combined with pre-existing sweat and oils on the skin, your pores can become even more aggravated, leading to the appearance of enlarged pores.
?Forgetting to apply sunscreen daily
Even in Autumn, applying sunscreen daily is to key to keeping your skin healthy. Sun damage can dry out the skin and lead to premature aging. Particularly if you love our AHA-infused products, making sure your skin is well protected from UV radiation is essential to ensuring the long-term health of your skin.
The Green Flags
✅Moisturising regularly
Even if you have oily skin, keeping your skin hydrated is the ultimate skincare green flag. When you don’t moisturise the skin, it produces more oil to compensate for the lack of moisture. This can further exacerbate issues like blemishes or enlarged pores.
That’s why we recommend AMELIORATE’s Balancing Facial Moisturiser. It has a cooling, light-weight texture designed for blemish-prone skin to give the essential hydration it needs.
✅Cleaning your makeup brushes
Keeping your makeup brushes and sponges clean is a chore, but definitely a chore which is worth it. Your makeup tools can be a hot-bed for blemish-causing bacteria, which is why it’s important that you don’t let your brushes accumulate months’ worth of old makeup.
For a green-flag-worthy vanity, AMELIORATE recommends deep-cleaning all makeup brushes once a month and cleaning high-use makeup brushes once a week.
✅Not picking your blemishes
If you can fight the urge to pick the angry, red bumps on your skin, that’s a definite sSkincare green flag. By listening to your mum growing up, you’ve avoided the extra inflammation and even worse blemishes that can come with picking and squeezing.
This is because popping blemishes can force the debris deeper into the skin. This can spill the infected material (including pus) into the lower layer of skin. This can result in even more inflammation than before, with increased redness, swelling, and heat in the surrounding skin.✅Using a toner in your routine
While it can be a forgettable step, remembering to apply your toner can do wonders for your skin’s radiance. We recommend our Resurfacing Facial Toner. This lightweight formula has been designed to sweep away dry, dull and dead skin cells to promote a more even, light reflective complexion.
