What Is Combination Skin And How To Keep It Balanced
Does the skin on your cheeks feel different to the skin on your nose, forehead and chin? Maybe you struggle to find skincare that keeps both parts happy, or makeup that stays flawless in both areas? If this sounds like you, then you probably have combination skin.
What Is Combination Skin?
Combination skin is the skincare equivalent of Hovis’ Best of Both Bread. It is characterised by oiliness in your T-zone (across your forehead, down your nose and on your chin) and dryness on your cheeks. It’s a mix of two skin types: oily and dry. Oily skin has an excess of sebum, which is the oil that keeps our skin moisturised, and dry skin has a lack of sebum. As a result, caring for combination skin is slightly less straightforward than looking after just one of these skin types.
If you have combination skin, you may be prone to congestion, breakouts and a greasy skin feel in the oily areas, with more prominent pores around your nose and forehead. In dry areas, skin will feel rough to the touch, might be red in appearance and can be itchy too.
What Causes Combination Skin?
Just like your hair and eye colour, your skin type is predetermined by your genes, and you’re more likely to have the same skin type as your parents. Alongside this, there are other factors that can drive combination skin, making the oily areas more oily, or the dry areas drier.
First up, the weather. A change in seasons can bring with it an increase in sebum on the surface of the skin. During the winter months, cold winds and central heating mean dehydration and dryness are more common, which causes the skin to make more sebum to protect itself and stay moisturised. When the warmer weather creeps back in in the summer, the sebaceous glands (which make sebum) can again be triggered to overproduce oil. Equally, extreme weather on either end of the spectrum can impair the skin barrier, meaning the skin is less able to hold onto moisture and therefore feels (and looks) dry.
Another factor is your hormones, which surge around the time of your period and jolt up and down as you approach and reach menopause. Androgens, the male hormones, can increase the amount of sebum in your skin but the skin becomes naturally drier after menopause. You may notice that previously oily complexions start to display more characteristics of dry skin around this time, tipping them into combination territory.
How stressed we are will also impact how dry or oily our skin is. When we are doing through a difficult or unsettling time, which could vary from a traumatic event or general day-to-day worries, our skin prioritises sending nutrients to our vital organs instead of our skin. This lack of resources and attention from the body can create an imbalance in the skin that worsens dryness or oiliness.
How To Treat Combination Skin
How to treat combination skin is all about balancing the scales. Try these:
Play The Balancing Act
You don’t want your skincare to suffocate the oily areas of your complexion, nor do you want to over-strip the dry parts – it’s about tip-toeing the line between the two. If you focus on finding products that support the skin’s microbiome (the colony of bacteria that live on our skin’s surface) and reinforce the skin barrier (our first line of defence) then both skin types will flourish. It’s best to avoid very oily skin-centric ingredients like salicylic acid on the cheeks, which will likely irritate dry skin, and the same goes for rich emollients and occlusives that will be too heavy for the T-zone.
Cleanse With Care
Very astringent cleansers can feel initially satisfying when your skin is squeaky clean, but they’re not doing your complexion any good in the long run – especially if you have combination skin. Harsh cleansers will ultimately make the T-zone oilier, as it makes more sebum in an attempt to counteract the dryness and keep itself soft, while dry cheeks will become less and less comfortable. Opt instead for a nice water-based cleanser, or maybe even one with a lightweight cream texture to keep the peace and make sure all areas are happy.
If you wear makeup or SPF, it’s best to double-cleanse in the evening to remove this. The first cleanse will remove surface grime, and the second cleanse will treat the skin and give it a proper clean-out. There are benefits to both elements of combination skin here, as double cleansing will prevent congestion at the same time as stopping free radicals generated by pollution from impairing the skin barrier and making dryness worse.
Introduce An Exfoliant
Dry and oily skin alike can benefit from a liquid exfoliant to break down the bonds that hold old skin cells to the surface of our complexions. Dry skin tends to have a lower rate of cell turnover, as this skin type holds onto tighter to these older cells. This creates a barrier on the very surface of the skin that makes it very difficult for the nourishing ingredients in the rest of your routine to make their way in. Oily skin will feel the benefits of a liquid exfoliant when it comes to keeping congestion and blemishes at bay. Spots like blackheads and whiteheads form when oil and old skin cells combine to block a pore. So, if you remove the old skin cells from the equation, any oil in the skin can flow freely without creating breakouts.
Don’t Skip Moisturiser
It’s a myth that oily skin doesn’t need moisturiser. Oily skin has a surplus of sebum, but it doesn’t have a surplus of water, so skin can be dehydrated and oily all at once. This creates, you guessed it, even more oil. Gel-textured moisturisers are best for combination skin as a compromise for both areas. If during the winter you find that this isn’t enough to nourish the dry parts of your complexion, consider using a second, richer moisturiser here.
Consider Multi-Masking
Love a face mask as part of your Sunday evening beauty ritual? This is a great opportunity to give combination skin some TLC. For the t-zone, look for ingredients like zinc to soothe, and clay to draw out impurities and soak up excess oil. For the cheeks, put the focus on comforting, soothing and hydrating the skin with ingredients like ceramides, squalane and hyaluronic acid.
What Makes Combination Skin Worse?
As a skincare expert, one of the biggest mistakes I have seen people make when they have combination skin is using the wrong skincare. For an easy life, there’s a tempting tendency to treat the entire face as if it has one skin type by choosing either oily of dry, but this can quickly knock the other areas off kilter.
One solution is having different products to treat each part of the skin, but not everyone’s budget will stretch to a dual skincare routine. It’s also near-impossible to limit a particular cleanser to a particular part of your face, so it’s not altogether practical either.
If you’re trying to restore balance to your skin on a tighter budget, then keep things simple at the start, beginning with getting into a good rhythm of cleansing and moisturising. Once you’ve mastered these basics, you can introduce new products. Do this slowly, leaving gaps between applications to ensure they suit all of your complexion. With this approach, you’ll find that the side effects of both skin types will become less noticeable over time and that skin appears and feels more normal than combination.
Thank You For Reading
I hope you enjoyed this blog, the most important thing to remember is don’t ignore any tingle as it could be the skin is trying to tell you it’s not happy.
Stay tuned for more blogs and follow me on social media for latest launches and more skin school.
Bye for now,
Fiona x
Links may be affiliated links which means that if you make a purchase though one of our links we receive a small commission which helps support and run this website.