Although you may often be tempted to dive into bed without first washing your face, there are a bunch of important reasons why you definitely need to remove eye makeup each night.
Your eyes are surrounded by delicate tissue that can easily become damaged when you skip your nightly skin care routine and leave your makeup on overnight. This can lead to wrinkles and sagging skin. In addition, one of the mechanisms for preserving healthy skin tissue is sleep, during which new cells replace older cells. When you leave your makeup on—not only on your eyes but also on your face—you interrupt this process of cell repair and regeneration, so you won’t reap sleep’s complexion-enhancing benefits.
Of course, if you remove eye makeup improperly, you can also harm your skin. So, if your skin care routine includes any of the following bad habits, change your ways to maintain younger-looking, healthy skin around your eyes.
DON’T Do This When You Remove Eye Makeup
DON’T remove eye makeup last. Some people wash their faces, leaving eye makeup removal until the last step before moisturizing. But there is a proper order to removing makeup and cleansing your skin to keep your skin healthy:
- First: Remove your lipstick. If you remove eye makeup first, you are likely to smudge your lipstick with your hand, wrist, or arm, rubbing it onto your skin—which can be even more challenging to remove.
- Second: Remove your eye makeup. You will cleanse your face last, so you want to remove any residual product from the surface of the skin around the eyes.
- Third: Cleanse your face, using the proper products and techniques as mentioned below.
DON’T rub too hard. The tissue around the eye area is fragile because the thin skin there does not have as much collagen and elastin. These two important proteins make up the foundation of our skin, providing structure and an anchor to which tissues connect. Rubbing the eye area too hard breaks down the collagen and elastin there, leading to droopiness and fine lines. Rubbing can also damage eyelashes, leading to breakage, lash loss, and irritation around the follicles, which undermines healthy lash growth.
DON’T use a cleanser that is too harsh. Harsh chemicals, preservatives, and artificial fragrances in skin care products can irritate and dry the skin, increasing the look of wrinkles, dark circles, and puffiness. Cleansers that nourish the skin and are formulated especially for the intricacies of eye tissue help you look bright-eyed in the short-term and preserve beauty for the long-term. Ingredients such as natural squalane and jojoba esters condition the eyes and offer both hydration and soothing properties.
DON’T go against the grain. If you wipe your eyes from the bottom up, you are moving against the natural growth pattern of your eyelashes. Like rubbing, this can also damage lashes and cause them to be pulled out. Lashes tend to thin as you age—due to physiological changes, eye irritations, and infections. So, protect your lashes and create a healthier environment in which new lashes can grow by gently wiping in a downward motion when removing makeup.
