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Bad habits: We're all guilty of them—and most aren't a big deal. Who hasn’t watched hours of Friends reruns with a bag of Cape Cod chips on a sleepless night? But then there are the bad habits that can sneakily sabotage our skin, and when wrinkles are looming, things get a little more personal. There’s the stuff we do mindlessly that can lead to hair breakage (what?), well-intentioned purchases that undermine our skin care’s wrinkle-smoothing potential (why?!), and good old-fashioned forgetfulness (we swear to wear sunscreen tomorrow).
When we asked dermatologists which bad habits they most wish people would break for the sake of their skin health, some answers were not surprising (wash your face before bed, don’t pop pimples); but the advice they gave for breaking these tendencies and forming good habits instead was stuff we hadn’t been told before. They offered a wealth of simple, effective tips that might just help us crawl into bed with clean skin every night and protect it from the sun each day. (Put sunscreen next to our toothbrush? Genius! Our skin thanks you, Corey Hartman, MD!)
Each doctor interviewed mentioned that we should not be following skin-care trends blindly—our sincere apologies to the industry!—and to avoid giving up on a formula too quickly. “Skin care is a long game,” says Laurel Naversen Geraghty, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Medford, Oregon. “It’s not how much you blast your face with new ingredients; it's the good, proven steps that you stick to over time.”
Here’s how to make that long game work in your favor—and how to recognize and quit all of the habits that might be undermining your skin along the way.
Treating skin care like fashion trends
We shudder to think of candy-colored Juicy Couture tracksuits and low-rise jeans from the ’90s, but one day, we might also look back and wonder why we ever embraced slugging (remember when everyone was coating their face in petroleum jelly?) or bought so many peels. “We don’t need to be on some continual holy grail quest to find the ultimate new skin-care product,” says Dr. Geraghty, “and you shouldn’t feel like you need to throw every possible ingredient at your complexion or spend a lot of money to have healthy, glowing skin. Keep your regimen simple but consistent, relying on proven ingredients rather than trendy TikTok ones. Trends come and go, but your skin has to last you a lifetime.”
Shopping for new skin care has been a thing for as long as skin care has been a thing. But there’s a new, almost compulsive willingness to buy more, and to do so more frequently in order to keep up with what’s buzzy (exosomes! PDRN! growth factors!). “The idea [is] that looking good for our time isn’t just about things like eyebrow shape; now it's how good your skin is,” says Ava Shamban, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Los Angeles.
The worst-case scenario is spending a lot of money on products that ultimately wreak havoc on your skin. “I have some young, female patients who tend to overdo it—they pile on multiple active ingredients or products at once, or they keep throwing new treatments at their skin, over and over,” says Dr. Geraghty. They can wind up with skin reactions like bumps, flakes, or itchy rashes, she adds, or a generally compromised, fragile skin barrier. “These conditions can take time, a dermatologist consultation, and medication to calm and reverse.”
And just because a friend or random influencer swears by a peel for achieving glass skin, that doesn’t mean it’s right for your skin, says Corey Hartman, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Birmingham, Alabama. If you’re jumping around a lot and a product causes you to break out or makes your skin flare up, it can be “hard to tell what’s causing the problem and what’s actually helping your skin,” he explains.
Dr. Shamban agrees. She is increasingly finding herself playing detective for “young patients who are really obsessed with not getting old,” she says. They may jump on one too many trends and “come in and their skin's all on fire. I’ll ask, ‘Okay, three weeks ago, what were you doing?’”
A good rule of thumb, says Dr. Geraghty, is “don’t introduce more than one new product or ingredient at a time, or try multiple new products in any given week.”
Some trends to be especially careful with are slugging (“I see a lot of breakouts from this,” says Dr. Shamban), alpha hydroxy acids (“a double-edged sword that irritates some folks,” says Dr. Hartman), and, for the love of all that’s holy, injectable peptides. “Younger people are using a tanning one,” Dr. Shamban says, and “the risk is that you're stimulating melanocytes everywhere in the body. There are some in the central nervous system and in the internal genital—and you don't know if you're inadvertently stimulating a precancerous melanoma cell.”
But even if you’re not taxing your skin outright, you are robbing it of the chance to get all the benefits from a product if you give up on it prematurely. “People don't give their products enough time to work before they hop from one to the next,” says Dr. Hartman. If a formula contains tried-and-true ingredients and it is not irritating you, “stick with it for at least three months to really give it time to work. Be consistent.”
With peptides in moisturizers and serums, for example, “people expect so much of them, but the bottom line is that they're overpromising and underdelivering in the short period of time that people want them to work,” says Dr. Shamban. “You have to wait two or three months to really get a significant change.” Even with retinoids—a proven ingredient for smoothing lines and brightening skin—“we know from good studies that it really takes six months [to see meaningful results].”
So, instead of following fads or jumping around, “stick to what’s withstood the test of time, and to what works for your skin type,” says Dr. Geraghty. Peptides can be great for smoothing; niacinamide and vitamin C are solid brighteners; salicylic acid is known for helping to manage acne; and retinol is ideal for… well, everyone, really. “Don't give up on a proven ingredient after a few days or a week,” she adds.
When in doubt: Occam’s razor applies to skin care too. By that we mean the simplest solution is often the right one. The sun is the number one cause of skin aging, so the single best thing you can do is “protect from sunshine with sunscreen, hats, sunglasses, and clothing,” says Dr. Geraghty. And speaking of UV rays…
Seeking the sun
Indoor tanning, laying out, and getting sunburned are what Dr. Geraghty considers the worst habits for your skin. The new and, frankly, reckless anti-sunscreen movement has a lot to say about this, but the fact remains: “Ultraviolet light is a proven carcinogen. It increases the risk of skin cancer and precancers, while damaging the skin, causing dark spots, sagging, and wrinkling that can be very difficult or impossible to reverse,” Dr. Geraghty explains. “UV light raises the risk for cancer, just like smoking and asbestos raise the risk of cancer. Patients tell me they think they look better when they are tan—do they also think they look better when they smoke?”
If you’re chasing the sun for vitamin D, Dr. Geraghty suggests getting it from your diet (cheese, egg yolks, and fortified milk are all good sources) or supplements, “rather than raising the risk of cancer and sun damage.” If you simply like the way it feels to be out in the sun or in a tanning bed, she wants you to consider the fact that these habits have “been shown to be physiologically addictive, just like using opioid drugs.” Just because something makes you feel good, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily healthy. “Too much sun and any indoor tanning causes definite harm to our skin,” she says.
For Dr. Shamban’s patients who might say, “Well, I was just laying out for two hours, it's not that bad,” her response is: “It is that bad. We know that ultraviolet exposure is the number one cause of premature aging and skin cancer.” And it's not just bad for your skin, she points out, “it's bad for your internal organs because you're compromising the ability of your skin's immune function—we know that sun exposure exacerbates lupus and other autoimmune conditions."
There’s also the fact that having skin cancer removed can be more complex in some cases than others. On areas that don’t have a lot of laxity (if you pinch the nose, eyelids, and ears, for example, you’ll notice there’s not a lot of extra skin there), removing skin cancer can leave a wound that requires a skin graft (taking nearby healthy tissue) to cover it, which can leave a scar. C’mon, isn’t the prospect of a scar on your nose another good reason to reach for sunscreen daily?
The flip side of this is that simply by using sunscreen, you are doing something amazing for your skin: protecting yourself against skin cancer, wrinkles, and hyperpigmentation. There are mineral and chemical options, sheer formulas that are undetectable on skin, and sprays for quick touch-ups. It’s so much easier to put on sunscreen (with an SPF 35 or higher) than it is to use a million other skin-care products to try to reverse wrinkles and sun spots once you have them.
“Self-tanners or makeup [such as bronzers or tinted moisturizers] are safe ways to give skin a tan appearance, if that’s what you’re going for,” says Dr. Geraghty, though she’d much rather “we all love and embrace our natural skin tone, rather than trying to change it.”
You’re not actively looking to get tan, but you do skip sunscreen some days
You know the sun is bad for your skin. You know that sunscreen is the answer. It’s just that the mornings are so busy and you’re only outside for, like, an hour total each day, so do you really need to wear SPF all the time? The answer from dermatologists—the people who look at skin cancer and wrinkles and sun spots all day long—is yes. You get more sun than you’d think just driving around in your car, says Dr. Shamban.
To prevent premature aging, new and deepening wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, not to mention skin cancers, “we want people to wear sunscreen every day,” says Dr. Hartman. “Look, just develop a habit: Keep your sunscreen by your toothbrush so that it’s built into your routine. It’s something you do every single day after brushing your teeth. That way you don't have to wonder and guess if you put it on.” If you get into the habit of doing it at the same point in your routine every day, “then you don't have to think about it.”
Make sure to cover easy-to-miss areas, like between the brows, above the upper lip, sides of the nose and nostrils, around the temples, and the ears. If your eyes tend to be sensitive, there are workarounds for the area: mineral sunscreens are gentle on the undereyes; the waxier formulas of SPF sticks can be great for covering the brow bones without it melting closer to the eyes; and, of course, there are always cute hats and UV-protective sunglasses.
Popping pimples
It’s sitting right there on your face. The urge to squeeze it can be overwhelming. This might be the hardest of bad skin habits to break, in Dr. Hartman’s opinion, “because we’re all human,” he says. “I’m guilty of it myself.”
Instead of telling you to quit cold turkey, though, he’s willing to compromise. “You get one good squeeze [per day],” Dr. Hartman says. If the pimple is ready to come to a head, it will. If it does (lucky you!), cover the area with a pimple patch. Even successful popping can mean that the skin barrier has been broken. “The patch gives a protective layer to help the skin heal faster.”
If the plug (that solid-feeling clump of oil and debris that’s inside some pimples) “doesn’t come out with that squeeze, leave it alone—it’s deep-seated,” Dr. Hartman explains, or it’s an inflammatory lesion that’s filled with fluid (and not as satisfying to pop). It’s hands off until tomorrow: “You can squeeze all day and all you're going to do is aggravate that pimple more,” he says. Continuing to mess with it can push bacteria and pore-clogging gunk even deeper into the pimple—which is as counterproductive as it sounds, because then it takes longer to heal—and can increase your chances for post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation (the dark spots some pimples leave behind).
Your best bet is to cover the pimple with a 2% salicylic acid spot treatment (which can draw out extra oil and help shrink the pimple) or a hydrocolloid salicylic acid pimple patch—after all, it’s impossible to pick at something that’s covered up, says Dr. Hartman. We like Ceravé Acne Control Gel, Starface Hydro-Star Patches, and Hero Mighty Patch.
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CeraVe
Acne Control Gel
Amazon
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Best Sticker Spot Treatment
Starface Hydro-Star + Salicylic Acid
Amazon
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Hero Cosmetics
Hero Mighty Patch The Original
Amazon
Washing your face too much…
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions—but also, maybe with washcloths and oil cleansers? “People get very exuberant with their cleansing technique,” says Dr. Hartman. Trying to get a little exfoliation in—by using a washcloth, nubby silicone brush, or mesh sponge—while you cleanse your face “is just too aggressive and can lead to problems,” he explains. Those include redness, irritation, breakouts, and dryness.
Likewise, while double-cleansing—which refers to using two different face washes, usually an oil-based or micellar cleanser, followed by a gentle cream or gel cleanser—can be relaxing, it’s a ritual best left for oily skin and days when you wear a full beat of makeup. “I just think more people are double-cleansing than really need to be, and they end up over-cleansing,” says Dr. Hartman. That can dry out skin and cause irritation. “I like the double-cleanse method for removing makeup and allowing a medicated cleanser for acne to have access to your bare skin… but double-cleansing isn't really necessary if you're not removing a layer of makeup.”
His advice: Pare down your cleansing routine to one good, gentle cleanser. Look for fragrance-free options, and if you are acne-prone, choose oil-free cleansers with ingredients to help treat and prevent breakouts, such as salicylic acid. We like Cetaphil Daily Facial Cleanser for a gentle foaming option, La Roche-Posay Toleriane Moisturizing Milky Cleanser for a creamy daily face wash, and Clinique Acne Solutions Cleansing Gel for managing breakouts.
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Cetaphil
Cetaphil Daily Facial Cleanser
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Ulta Beauty
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Best Cream Cleanser
La Roche-Posay Toleriane Moisturizing Milky Facial Cleanser
Amazon
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Clinique
Acne Solutions Cleansing Gel
Ulta Beauty
Clinique
Picking at your skin
“People develop this habit for a multitude of reasons,” says Rachel Nazarian, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in New York City. “Some people truly believe they can ‘clean’ a pimple out, and the discomfort of a blackhead or whitehead may be too tempting to ignore. Others use their skin as a target for releasing anxiety, and pick to address an underlying emotional trigger.”
Picking may be directed at healthy skin, hair, scalp, pimples, or moles. “People feel shame around it and may go to great lengths to hide it. It's really helpful to understand that you’re not alone, and speaking to your board-certified dermatologist can be very helpful,” Dr. Nazarian says. “We understand that there's a large range of reasons that people form these habits and can offer effective tools to break them.”
One way Dr. Nazarian helps her patients, she says, is by giving them ideas for “redirecting the energy and fixation.” Keep fidget toys and squeeze balls on hand to fiddle with instead of picking, and make sure nails stay “super short—that makes it difficult to pick,” she adds.
Jeanine Downie, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Montclair, New Jersey, says we should not underestimate the value of exercising more as a way to release nervous energy and stress, as that is often what’s fueling the habit. When the picking targets pimples, she helps her patients find other ways to wield control over breakouts, so they may be less tempted to dig into them. “I give them tangible stuff to do, like following a Mediterranean diet, no alcohol, and limiting their soy intake, because soy has an estrogenic influence and that can aggravate anybody's acne,” she explains.
This tactic works for patients who can stop and say, “Okay, I shouldn’t eat soy,” or “I need to go for a 20-minute walk,” and then “they can link that to not picking. It’s like giving them homework to do,” she adds. Because knowledge is power, Dr. Downie also shows her patients pictures of keloid scars, which are raised scars caused by trauma to the skin, such as picking. Sometimes that’s enough to deter them.
“The risk of tissue damage and scarring is high, and picking or pulling at the scalp can even result in permanent hair loss,” says Dr. Nazarian. “Allow other people to help you. That alone can be quite effective, because often, people who are picking are unaware of their own habit—they pick absentmindedly.” Ask close family and friends to “make you aware and gently redirect you if they see you engaging in this habit—that can be very effective for quitting.”
While some people may pick or scratch at their skin every once in a while—and covering a bug bite with a Band-Aid, say, is enough of a deterrent—the compulsive urge to pick may be a condition known as dermatillomania, which can also be helped by cognitive behavioral therapy.
Scratching your scalp
A dry, tight, itchy scalp can be hard to ignore. Instead of letting yourself mindlessly (or sometimes zealously) scratch the itch, try switching your shampoo and conditioner to get rid of scalp issues in the first place, says Dr. Downie. Scratching an itchy scalp a couple of times a day or in bed at night may seem harmless enough, but this can actually cause breakage, as explained in a 2024 study published in the Archives of Dermatological Research, and potentially even lead to thinning hair, says Dr. Downie.
Let’s say you dye your hair, which weakens your strands, Dr. Downie posits. Maybe you're perimenopausal or menopausal, which can weaken them further: “Then you're adding the tension of scratching? Seriously?”
Dr. Downie continues, “You can comb your hair, but don't scratch. Don't twist it when you're in meetings. Just leave it alone.” It can take less than a week to cause breakage, she says, and once you’ve damaged the hair, it can take about two or three months of no scratching to repair. “It's really quite annoying.”
Anti-inflammatory shampoos can help calm the scalp. Over-the-counter formulas may use ingredients such as pyrithione zinc to address dandruff-causing yeast, while prescription shampoos may contain clobetasol. This corticosteroid can help with managing persistent itchiness from conditions such as scalp psoriasis (one of the most common forms of psoriasis, according to a study published in the journal Dermatology and Therapy).
Because itchiness can be caused by different factors—scalp psoriasis, dandruff, a reaction to an ingredient in your shampoo or styling products, dryness from blow-drying—seeing a dermatologist can help you figure out why you’re itchy and what you can do about it, so you don’t have to keep on scratching.
Smoking (cigarettes, yes, but also weed)
We already know that there are lots of very good reasons not to smoke (and that includes vaping and using a hookah). Here’s another: “It decreases the oxygen supply to the face, and makes eczema, psoriasis, acne, wrinkles, hair loss—a thousand different things—worse,” says Dr. Downie. No matter what you’re smoking, it is “oxidizing your skin, and that delivers pollutants to the surface of the skin, which is exactly what you don't want to do.”
Vanity isn’t the only reason to quit smoking, of course, but it can be a powerful motivator. “Smoking is a known carcinogen—let's not be ridiculous and forget about the facts,” Dr. Downie cautions.
“Forgetting” to wash your face at night
“Sleeping with makeup on is not just a bad habit, it's also a dirty habit. Aside from staining your sheets, not cleansing the face before bedtime can lead to several skin problems,” says Dr. Nazarian. “Makeup, which is often oil-based, can clog delicate pores on the face, and around the eyes can be a source of infection and irritation like styes.” (If you’ve ever had a stye, you know how unpleasant those painful red bumps along the lashline can be, and how time-consuming treating them with hot water compresses is.)
Even on those days when you don’t wear makeup, you probably went outside at some point. “Environmental pollutants, dirt, and bacteria that accumulate on the skin during the daytime can cause oxidative stress, inflammation, and loss of collagen and elastin, leading to premature aging,” Dr. Nazarian says.
If that’s not reason enough to wash your face before turning in, we don’t know what is. But that all seems much less urgent around 10 p.m., doesn’t it? “The major reasons that people don't wash their face at night are lack of knowledge on how detrimental it is—most people don't realize they're accelerating aging—and pure exhaustion,” Dr. Nazarian explains. “Energy levels run low in the evening, and generally, after other priority bedtime routines are done, like brushing your teeth, many people are too tired [for] a skin-care routine.”
It’s totally understandable. The good news is, it’s totally avoidable too. “Rather than waiting until bedtime, shift it earlier—when you get home, change your clothes, wash your face, remove your makeup,” says Dr. Nazarian. “Your skin, and your sheets, will thank you.”
Don’t let cleansing wipes be your go-to, though. Swiping one over your face before bed can seem like a solid substitute for washing your face (and it sure feels good), but wipes can leave behind residue that can irritate, dry out, and potentially even age skin, says Dr. Nazarian. You really do need soap and water to “remove all of the dirt, bacteria, and makeup,” she says.
Brushing your teeth right before bed
Let’s be clear: The dermatologists we spoke with never said that you shouldn’t brush your teeth every morning and night; rather, you might just reconsider your timing slightly and not do it right before you jump under the covers or rush out the door.
“A lot of people get residual [toothpaste] on their face, and that can irritate the skin around the mouth and cause chapped lips,” says Dr. Downie. It’s partly because many toothpastes contain a foaming ingredient called sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), which can potentially dry out skin. One study published in the journal Contact Dermatitis found that SLS can even cause contact dermatitis (a red, itchy rash) over time at concentrations as low as 0.025%, and toothpastes may contain SLS at about 1% or 2% concentrations, according to another study published in the Journal of Dentistry.
The lips “are a thinner-skinned area that’s quite sensitive for a lot of people,” says Dr. Downie, explaining that your toothpaste really isn’t meant to linger there. If your lips seem prone to chapping, something as simple as washing your face right after you brush your teeth might do the trick and prevent dryness, so you can reach for lip balm less often.
If you’re especially sensitive to the ingredient in toothpaste—it can cause small ulcers, reminiscent of canker sores, for some people—there are SLS-free toothpastes you can try (they’re usually not marketed as such, but just read the ingredient list to check that it’s not there). But even the flavors in toothpastes may wind up drying out lips if you don’t rinse them away after, says Dr. Downie.
Ignoring the fit of your glasses
You want your glasses to put more pressure on the backs of your ears than on your nose. Wearing glasses that are too tight on the latter can put enough pressure there to cause small areas of hyperpigmentation on the bridge of the nose over the years. “You’re going to get dark spots there, which drives people [who have them] bonkers,” says Dr. Downie.
Wearing sunscreen helps prevent hyperpigmentation from becoming more noticeable, and using brightening ingredients such as niacinamide, retinol, or vitamin C can help to an extent, but once those dark spots set in, they can be really stubborn and difficult to treat.
It’s so much better to head them off by adjusting the fit of your glasses regularly—hey, you could even use this as an excuse to go shopping for new ones, as long as you don’t pick up a super hipster pair. “I tell patients, the heavy glasses they wore at 20 can start messing with their face at 30,” says Dr. Downie.
Spending your lunch break at a med spa
You may think that a little self-care never hurt anyone. But here’s the thing: The risks of complications from minimally invasive skin-tightening procedures (which include radiofrequency and ultrasound) and nonsurgical fat reduction (from devices such as CoolSculpting) are higher in med spas than in doctor’s offices, according to one small survey published in the journal Dermatologic Surgery in 2023. And when complications do arise, there might not be a doctor on site who is trained to treat them.
There have been extreme cases of things gone terribly wrong at med spas that have made headlines: second-degree burns from laser hair removal; hospitalizations, muscle weakness, and breathing difficulties from counterfeit Botox; poor injection technique blocking critical arteries, leading to tissue death called necrosis (this can mean skin in the area needs to be removed, which can scar).
More likely, though, a visit to a med spa may end with low levels of satisfaction. You may not like the way your neuromodulator or filler looks—maybe one eyebrow is a little higher than the other or your lips are puffier than you wanted. The best way to get a good result and manage the risk of complications (God forbid they arise) is to go to a board-certified dermatologist who went to medical school and residency and has a clear understanding of facial anatomy. Injectables are an art form, so ask to see before-and-after pictures of a doctor’s work on other patients to make sure their approach is right for you.
Even at a dermatologist’s practice, remember less is more. “If you’re going to have a little augmentation with filler, okay, great, but don’t go in and try to become a Barbie doll,” says Dr. Shamban. “Young people who do too much are really doing themselves a disservice—you’re young, you’re beautiful, period.” Over-injecting with hyaluronic acid fillers, to the point that facial features seem noticeably inflated, for more than a year has even been shown to stretch out tissues in the face (a risk that’s not been associated with more low-key, or “average,” filler use), as previously reported by Allure.
