Cold isn’t really what dries your skin out in winter, the air is. Cold air holds very little water, indoor heat dries it out even more, and your face loses water faster than it did in August. So that routine you loved all summer starts falling behind by November, and it’s not your fault. The fix is smaller than you’d think. Swap your foaming cleanser for a cream or milk one, go up one moisturizer weight, cut your exfoliation about in half, and finish your nights with something that seals moisture in. Keep your sunscreen, too. You’re filling a gap, not buying a whole new shelf.
What the cold is really doing to your face
Water always moves from wet places to dry ones, and January air is a lot drier than it looks. Cold air can’t hold much water, so even a gray, rainy day is dry as far as your face is concerned. Then you walk inside, where the heat warms that dry air and makes it drier still. A heated apartment in winter can be drier than plenty of deserts.
Your skin barrier, the natural fats that hold your outer skin cells together, is what slows that water loss. It does fine in mild air but starts leaking more when the air gets very dry, and wind makes it worse by blowing away the thin layer of damp air that normally sits on your skin. Hot showers wash away some of those fats, too.
Your skin didn’t suddenly get worse. Dermatologists generally suggest adjusting for the season instead of treating winter dryness like a brand-new skin type, and that means a few small changes, made one at a time.
Swap your cleanser first
The gel cleanser you loved in July is usually the biggest problem by November. Foaming cleansers foam because of detergents, and those can’t tell the oil you want gone from the fats holding your barrier together. In summer your skin replaces that little daily loss before you notice. In winter it can’t keep up.
So switch to a cream, milk, balm or low-foam gel cleanser. You want clean, not squeaky. A non-foaming one with ceramides, like CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser, is the easiest swap and costs next to nothing, and if your skin is reactive, the fragrance-free, dye-free Vanicream Gentle Facial Cleanser is boring in the best way. If your face stays tight for more than a minute after you rinse, your cleanser is stripping it. Plenty of people who think they need a richer cream really just need a gentler wash, and that’s the cheaper fix by a mile.
Two more fixes cost nothing at all. If you’re dry, skip cleanser in the morning, since plain water is plenty on skin you washed eight hours ago, and turn the water temperature down a few notches.
Go one moisturizer weight heavier
Next up is moisturizer, and the question to ask is which kind, not which brand. A light lotion that’s mostly water and humectants (ingredients that pull water in) doesn’t have much to hold that water in place. In dry air, a humectant with nothing sealed over it can pull water up from deeper skin and lose it to the room. That’s why some people swear hyaluronic acid made them drier in winter, when what was really missing was a cream on top. A serum like The Ordinary Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 is great in winter as long as it goes on damp skin with a cream right over it.
If you’re fuzzy on what these ingredient types do, read our breakdown of humectants, emollients and occlusives before you buy anything for winter, so you don’t end up with three versions of something you already own.
Just go up one step: gel to lotion, lotion to cream, or cream to balm. La Roche-Posay Toleriane Double Repair is a natural first step up from a summer gel, with ceramides and niacinamide and a feel that’s still light under makeup, while a tub of Vanicream Moisturizing Cream is the one to grab when a lotion stops cutting it, for your face, hands and anywhere else the heat dries out. If your skin feels rough and reactive, look for ceramides, cholesterol and fatty acids, and either way you want glycerin near the top of the ingredient list. Skinfix Barrier+ Triple Lipid-Peptide Cream is the best-known cream built around those fats, and we compare it with a drugstore ceramide cream in our Skinfix Barrier+ comparison.
Turn the exfoliation dial down, not off
Flakes look like a reason to scrub, but in winter they usually aren’t. Those dry flakes are thirsty skin cells lifting at the edges, and scrubbing them off makes things worse, because the skin underneath is thinner and loses water even faster.
Cut back by about half. Three acid nights a week become one or two, and a daily gritty scrub can go. Keep some exfoliation if your skin handles it well, since winter dullness is real too. Signs you’ve overdone it include stinging from products that never stung before, a tight and shiny look, and sore breakouts, and we cover all of them in the signs you’re over-exfoliating.
Seal it in at night
An occlusive over your night cream gives you the biggest payoff, and it’s the step people skip. Think of it less as a moisturizer and more as a lid, a thin film that slows water loss while you sleep in a heated room.
Petroleum jelly ointments like Aquaphor Healing Ointment are the classic pick, and they’re cheap. Cream goes on first, then a thin layer of ointment. The order matters, because sealing over dry skin just locks the dryness in. If ointment feels like too much, a balm sits nicely in between. Farmacy Honey Halo is the balm everyone asks about, giving you that sealed-in feel without an ointment’s shine, and we size it up against its dupes in our comparison on Farmacy Honey Halo.
Start with the spots that crack, like around your nose, the corners of your mouth and your eyelids if they get scaly. Covering your whole face, which people call slugging, is totally optional. If you’re acne-prone, keep it to your dry areas and skip it over active breakouts.
Keep your sunscreen, change the texture
UVA rays don’t take winter off. They get through clouds and glass, they’re the rays most tied to sun aging, and they change much less with the seasons than UVB does. Snow also bounces a lot of UV right back up at your face, so a bright day on the slopes can give you more than a gray day in July.
What you should change is the texture, because that dry-touch gel from August can feel chalky by February. A cream or milk sunscreen you’ll actually wear beats a fancier one that lives in a drawer, and a moisturizing formula like EltaMD UV Daily SPF 40 is one dry winter skin is happy to wear. You’ll find more on building a routine by season in our skin archive.
Half the problem is your apartment
A humidifier can do more for your face than a lot of pricey creams. If your bedroom humidity sits in the low 20s all night, you’re fighting the room, and getting it up into the 40s takes one appliance and helps every product you own work better. Run one like the Levoit Cool Mist Humidifier where you sleep overnight, and clean it every week, because a dirty tank causes its own problems.
Shorter, cooler showers help too, since long hot ones are what leave your legs tight and itchy in January. And stay out of the direct path of heat vents and space heaters, including that car vent on your commute.
Keep your retinoid, and change one thing at a time
There’s no need to quit a retinoid you’ve worked up to. Winter does make skin less tolerant, but stopping until spring means getting used to it all over again. Buffering is the usual workaround: put moisturizer on first with the retinoid over it, mix the two in your palm, or use it every third night. You keep the habit, just at a gentler dose.
Try not to change everything in one week, either. If you swap your cleanser, moisturizer, serum and sunscreen all at once and your face reacts, you won’t know which one did it, and you’ll probably blame the priciest one. Make one change, give it five to seven days, then make the next. It takes about a month, but you come out knowing exactly what works for you.
If your skin is cracked, bleeding or painful, or you have eczema, rosacea or dermatitis, see a dermatologist instead of shopping. Everyday winter dryness gets better with a heavier cream, but a flaring skin condition doesn’t, and treating it yourself can cost you weeks.
Your summer-to-winter swap list
Here’s the whole switch at a glance, and when spring comes, switch back in the same order, since the heavy cream that saved you in February can clog and pill under sunscreen in June.
- A foaming gel cleanser twice a day becomes a cream or milk cleanser at night, with plain water in the morning.
- A gel or light lotion becomes a cream, or a balm once a cream stops holding.
- Acids three nights a week drop to one or two, or take a break while you’re flaking.
- Nothing after moisturizer becomes a thin occlusive layer at night, since eight hours in heated air is the longest stretch of water loss in your day.
- A dry-touch or matte sunscreen becomes a cream or milk one with the same SPF.
- A hyaluronic acid serum on its own goes on damp skin with cream right over it.
- A nightly retinoid gets buffered, or moves to every second or third night.
Eyeing a pricey winter cream? Our skin guides put plenty of splurges next to cheaper picks.
Oily, flaky or already slathered in cream?
If you’re oily and think this doesn’t apply to you, it partly does. Oil isn’t water, so oily skin gets dehydrated in winter too, and the giveaway is a face that’s shiny by noon but still feels tight. You don’t need a heavy cream. Keep your light moisturizer, swap the cleanser and add the occlusive at night only.
If you’re already flaking and stinging, the usual advice is to pause all your actives for a week, so no acids, no retinoid and no vitamin C. Stick to a gentle cleanser, a plain cream, an occlusive at night and sunscreen in the morning, then bring your actives back one at a time once nothing stings.
If you’re picking just one swap, start with the cleanser. It’s the cheapest change, it works for every skin type, and it fixes the problem right where it starts.
If you already use a heavy cream and you’re still dry, a heavier one won’t help much, but a humidifier and shorter showers will. Past a certain point, the air in your home matters more than what’s in the jar.
If your skin cracks, bleeds or hurts, see a dermatologist rather than shopping, because cracked skin, or anything with a diagnosis like eczema, rosacea or perioral dermatitis, needs a real treatment plan.
