What's Your Skin Type
Accurately assessing and caring for your skin is key to having skin that is irresistible to touch and behold. Skin type can change with the seasons, personal environment, health, and lifestyle. It's important to know your current skin type in order to care for your skin in the best way.
T-ZONE = (Forehead, Nose, and Chin Area)
Normal/
Balanced
This skin is neither too oily nor too dry. It's usually free of blemishes, but may form blackheads. It may get a little oily in the T-zone or in the upper-back region four to six hours after cleansing, depending on the humidity and temperature. The pores are normal size.. The entire body may suffer from surface dehydration (lack of moisture) in very cold weather. Normal skin is a balanced skin functioning as it should and is everyone's desire type.
Oily
This skin has medium to large pores in the T-zone area and perhaps on the cheeks, shoulders, neck, chest, and back. Overactive sebaceous (oil) glands can give oily skin a shiny appearance within an hour after cleansing. This skin may or may not be prone to acne, but oftentimes has clogged pores. Makeup seems to disappear or "slide off" oily skin after a few hours. Heat and humidity tend to increase its sebum production, whereas cooler temperatures and lower humidity are a boon for oily complexions. Surface dehydration may occur in very cold, dry weather. A bonus; because it is well lubricated, oily skin is not prone to fine lines and wrinkles.
Dry
This skin lacks natural oil or moisture, the basic requirements for a healthy glow. It may appear flaky or scaly and feel rough-textured, tight, or dry throughout the day. Dry skin has small pores and feels taut almost immediately after cleansing. It develops lines and wrinkles more rapidly than any other skin type and tends to age prematurely. Dry skin loves warm temperatures and humidity, but the winter can be a real challenge. Cold temperatures and winter air to the skin moisture, making it prone to irritation, sensitivity, redness, and chapping.
Combination
If your face has two or three skin types, you have combination skin. It may be oily through the T-zone, where most of the oil glands are, and normal to dry toward the cheeks and the sides of the face. In combination skin, the T-zone generally has enlarged pores and visible blackheads and may be prone to minor breakouts or even acne, while the cheeks and the sides of the face and neck may feel normal and balanced or dry and tight, with possible surface flakiness. This skin type is seasonally aggravated. In winter, the oily areas tend to normalize, while the dry areas feel parched. When the heat and humidity rise, the T-zone increases its sebum production and the dry areas usually normalize.
Sensitive
Environmentally reactive is how I like to refer to skin that is sensitive. It tends to overreact to outside forces such as commonly used skin care products, sunlight, and changes in temperature and humidity. This skin type easily blushes, sunburns, develops rashes, and becomes irritated. Especially when more mature, it typically displays couperose conditions - that is, it's characterized by dilated or expanded capillaries. A diffused redness, or erythema, is generally concentrated on the nose and cheeks. If not treated extremely gently, sensitive skin will simply appear "unhappy" or "unsettled." Crisp, dry winter air can further upset already irritated, sensitive skin, leaving it drier and ore prone to disturbances. Summer's heat, humidity, and increased exposure to sunlight can also wreak havoc, leading to itchy, blotchy skin, possible blemishes, and general ruddiness.
Mature
Skin can generally be referred to as being mature when you can detect an apparent loss of tone and the skin exhibits a crepelike texture: It's saggy and loose with many fine lines and at least a few shallow or even deep wrinkles. Most of the time such skin is found in people over age fifty, as part of the natural aging process, but I've seen mature skin on individuals as young as their early forties, and, for the lucky few, these signs don't reveal themselves until the early sixties. Good genes, plenty of natural oil in the skin, a healthy lifestyle and sound nutrition, and proper consistent skincare all determine when or to what extent mature skin appears.
This skin type tends to be dry but can be normal or slightly oily in the T-zone, especially if the skin was oily earlier on. If you are over fifty and have oily skin, however, consider it a boon - you'll wrinkle later than your friends. Mature skin is generally more comfortable in warmer climates with higher humidity. In cooler, more arid surroundings, it ages faster and tends to suffer from additional dryness. Such skin may also have hyperpigmentation (age spots, freckles, or liver spots), depending on an individual's history of sun exposure, smoking, and alcohol consumption.
Environmentally
Damaged
This skin type, with its premature lines, wrinkles, hyperpigmentation (freckles and age spots), ruddiness, rough texture, and uneven skin coloration, may begin to rear its ugly head somewhere around age 35. Much to the shock of those who have it, it often takes on the characteristics of mature skin. Environmentally damaged skin is lifestyle reflective. Those who tend to have this skin type include smokers, coffee and cola drinkers, consumers of large amounts of alcohol, routine recreational drug users, ocean-sport enthusiasts, sun worshippers, mountain climbers, long-distance walkers or runners, or any lover of sports that take place in the most extreme outdoor climates. These people generally have skin that has been repeatedly severely dehydrated, and it may be impossible to return it to its former healthy, radiant suppleness. Collagen and elasticity and flexibility.
Individuals with healthy, naturally fair, thin, dry skin that easily becomes environmentally damaged over time, tend to suffer from painful, papery, parched skin that bleeds and tears easily when elderly.
Environmentally damaged skin might have been oily or normal in its youth, ut it's almost always at least normal-to-dry if not very dry after the age of 40.