Another day, another skincare trend to unpack. This time it’s skin flooding – a trend where certain products are applied in a specific order to maximise the hydration your skin receives.

While there’s often huge misses when it comes to skin trends, at UpCircle we’re all for the skin flooding trend! Discover what skin flooding actually is, the benefits of skin flooding and how you can incorporate the principles into your daily routine. 

What is skin flooding?

Skin flooding is all about providing your skin with the hit of moisture that it craves. By layering different products on top of the skin with moisture-boosting qualities and skin-loving ingredients, your skin gets more of what it needs.

The products used for flooding skin are often rich in active ingredients such as:

• Hyaluronic acid – famed in the skincare world, hyaluronic acid holds well over its weight in water and helps to prevent your skin losing moisture to evaporation. 
• Ceramides – holding together skin cells, ceramides also lock moisture into the skin, support the skin barrier and prevent water from escaping the skin.  
• Vitamin E – one of the many skincare vitamins used for flooding the skin, vitamin E helps to seal in water and smooth out dry or dehydrated skin. 
• Cocoa butter – rich in essential fatty acids, cocoa butter helps to both nourish and protect the skin’s barrier function.

Skincare trends to help keep the skin hydrated are nothing new – think jello skin – and neither is the process of achieving plump skin. Building on the main principles of correctly layering your skincare products, skin flooding helps you to reap the maximum benefits from your hydrating skincare products. 

Discover why people are raving about skin flooding and the skin benefits you should see with the trend.

Skin benefits of the skin flooding trend

1. Hydration, hydration, hydration

It’s no surprise that the primary benefit of skin flooding is delightfully moisturised skin that not only looks wonderful, but more importantly, feels great. Dry skin can be problematic for many people, leaving the skin feeling tight and itchy. Whereas dehydrated skin can be dull and lifeless, lacking in elasticity. 

Incorporating skin flooding into your routine can help to prevent dry or dehydrated skin and keep your skin feeling plump, hydrated and nourished. 

2. Improves skin elasticity

Increased moisture in the skin helps to improve the elasticity of the skin – its ability to ‘bounce back’. This is a primary concern for many people worried about their skin, but focusing on layering your moisturising products can make a huge difference. 

3. Maintains the skin barrier 

Skin flooding adds key moisture into the skin as well as essential nourishment. This plays a big role in maintaining the skin’s barrier function and repairing any damage already done. 

The skin barrier helps to lock moisture and hydration into the skin while keeping out environmental toxins. Free radicals wreak havoc on the skin by ‘stealing’ an electron from a healthy atom in the skin, and the skin barrier helps to keep these from damaging the skin. 

How to use skin flooding in your routine

When trying out any skincare trend, it’s important to make the trend work for you and your skin needs. If certain areas of your skin need a little more attention than others, take that into account when choosing which products to use and where to place them.

Find out how you can use UpCircle’s vegan skincare for skin flooding:

1. Cleanse your skin of impurities

The first step in any skincare routine is to use a gentle cleanser to remove any impurities and particles of dirt from the skin. However, the skin flooding doesn’t have to start after you’ve cleansed your skin – choose the right cleanser and you can give your skin the first layer of moisture it deserves. 

Opt for cleansers which are rich in hydrating ingredients and full of natural goodness. Our multi-award-winning Cleansing Balm with Oat Oil is packed with ingredients that your skin will love. Oat oil, sea buckthorn oil and rosemary oil are incorporated into the natural balm to help moisturise the skin and prevent it from drying out.

Formulated with nourishing oat oil, our Cleansing Face Milk with Aloe Vera soothes the skin as it cleanses. Helping to restore the skin’s natural moisture barrier, jojoba oil is infused into the dermatologically approved sensitive skin product.

Top tip: Try double cleansing to remove any impurities from deep within your pores. Use natural cleansers with skin-loving ingredients for increased hydration. 

2. Spritz your skin with a hydrating toner

After you’ve cleansed the day away, the next step in your skin flooding routine is to use a hydrating toner to soothe and plump the skin. 

Our refillable Hydrating Toner is formulated using organic mandarin fruit water, chamomile extract and hyaluronic acid to replenish the skin’s moisture barrier. This helps to promote sumptuous plump skin. 

3. Moisturise your skin

Skin flooding is all about adding layers of moisture to the skin – so now is the time to add your moisturisers into the mix. Our vegan moisturisers are formulated using natural ingredients that work with your skin.

• Eye Cream with Coffee – formulated using hyaluronic acid and coffee to brighten, refresh and renew the skin, reducing the appearance of dark circles and fine lines.
• Face Moisturiser with Vitamin E – formulated with aloe vera and nourishing cocoa butter for natural hydration.
• Night Cream with Niacinamide – formulated with natural retinol alternative repurposed blueberry extract, rosehip oil and hydrating hyaluronic acid. 

4. Use a nourishing serum

Skin flooding is not just about adding moisture to the skin, but also retaining the moisture that has been added. Lock in the skin-loving ingredients you’ve used in the previous steps by using an oil-based serum as occlusion prevents moisture loss. 

Our multi-award-winning Organic Face Serum with Coffee Oil is brimming with hydrating ingredients for your skin to soak up. Rosehip oil and jojoba oil help to add moisture to the skin and sea buckthorn oil helps to keep the skin smooth and firm. 

Discover our full range of cruelty-free beauty products at UpCircle.