Put down the mortar and pestle and back away from the baking soda, because it’s time to say goodbye to homemade skincare.
Although making your own beauty products can be fun and budget-friendly, they often cause more harm than good. With homemade skincare remedies dominating social media, it’s easy to get carried away by the idea that whipping up a product at home is better for your skin.
While knowing exactly what’s in your products may be comforting, store-bought, professionally formulated skincare is safer and more effective.
Homemade skincare faces many of the same issues as “clean” beauty, most significantly the belief that “natural” ingredients are inherently better. The truth is, DIY beauty enthusiasts leave themselves vulnerable to a range of problems, including allergic reactions, contamination, infection, and lasting skin damage.
Read on for some good reasons to break up with your DIY beauty routine.
Contamination and Infection: DIY products tend to degrade quickly. Despite controversy surrounding ingredients like parabens, these types of preservatives are essential for keeping your skincare products free from mold, bacteria, and fungi. Because DIY recipes typically lack effective preservatives, the resulting products can become a breeding ground for pathogens, leading to serious skin infections such as impetigo and conjunctivitis.
And don’t be fooled into thinking that “natural” preservatives like essential oils can stave off contamination. Some homemade skincare recipes suggest using essential oils or plant extracts to provide products with an antimicrobial effect. However, many different pathogens can grow inside skincare products, and the commonly used natural preservatives cannot kill all of them. In short, adding a few drops of essential oil or green tea extract to your DIY body lotion is not a safe or effective alternative.
Allergic Reaction and Irritation: Some of the most frequently recommended ingredients in online skincare recipes can irritate your skin or trigger an allergic reaction. For example, ingredients like lemon juice are so highly acidic that they can damage the skin’s protective barrier. Similarly, baking soda, another popular DIY ingredient, can disrupt the natural pH of your skin, leading to dryness, irritation, and potentially exacerbating existing conditions like acne.
Increased Sensitivity to Sun Exposure: Many DIY skincare ingredients can increase photosensitivity. Bergamot, cumin, ginger, lemon, and verbena can all cause an increased sensitivity to sunlight in the skin. Furthermore, skin that’s treated with lemon and then exposed to sunlight may undergo an allergic reaction. Exfoliating ingredients like sugar and salt (commonly used in DIY face and body scrubs) encourage cell turnover, making the delicate new skin that’s exposed more susceptible to damage from UV rays.
Acid Mantle Disruption: Your skin’s acid mantle is a thin, slightly acidic layer of sebum (the natural oil produced by your skin) and sweat that sits on top of it. This layer helps protect your skin against dirt and bacteria. However, when your acid mantle is compromised, it negatively impacts your skin’s overall health, including its barrier function. Common ingredients used in DIY beauty products like lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and baking soda can disrupt the acid mantle, potentially causing skin irritation, hyperpigmentation, and sensitivity to the sun.
Ineffectiveness: Unfortunately, most DIY skincare products are not particularly effective, especially when compared to commercially made ones. The majority of homemade skincare recipes don’t include ingredients or combinations of ingredients that can impact the skin in a significant way.
Most importantly, there’s one beauty product you should never try to make at home: sunscreen. Concerns about chemicals in traditional sunscreens have prompted do-it-yourselfers to create their own formulations for sun protection, putting their skin health at serious risk. To be effective, the active ingredients in sunscreen must be properly sourced, distributed, and stabilized, which is difficult to accomplish without the right knowledge and equipment. The formula must also be tested for effectiveness and SPF value. In short, the likelihood of anyone replicating such a complex process from their kitchen is precisely zero. If you’re still concerned about chemicals, you can take comfort in knowing that the proven benefits of using a quality, store-bought sunscreen far outweigh any perceived risks.
Final Thoughts
The professionals who develop commercial skincare products are highly trained experts with a deep understanding of skin biology, chemicals, and formulations. Their expertise allows them to create safe and effective products. Rigorous testing ensures purity, potency, and stability during the manufacturing process, which occurs in controlled laboratory conditions. DIY skincare simply does not provide the same level of quality control, raising concerns about the safety of the ingredients, sanitation, and durability.