From perfect preparation to common mistakes: this is what you need to know.
According to Tamara Alting, who has been working at Cosmetique Totale Haarlem for years, there is nothing as important as preparing the skin before you can really get started with a deep skin treatment. The products of ZO Skin Health are absolutely indispensable for this. We got a full update on preparing and improving your skin, and the mistakes we want to avoid.
Total Cosmetics
It was not always clear to Tamara that she wanted to become a skin therapist, until one day her sister dragged her along to an open day for skin therapy studies.
“That was a real eye-opener for me. I found it all so much fun and so interesting!”, Tamara remembers. She has been active in the cosmetics industry for fifteen years now and currently works at the Haarlem branch of Cosmetique Totale. Here, the protocols of ZO Skin Health are now an indispensable part of the treatments.
Getting Skin Ready
Tamara shares that they use ZO Skin Health products a lot to fully prepare their clients’ skin for further treatment. “We always start with a skin analysis and then work on a customized protocol to get the skin healthy and prepare it for further treatment. Before you can do a laser treatment or peeling, for example, you want the skin to be really permeable and the skin barrier to be strong enough to handle the skin treatments.”
The concept of Getting Skin Ready is therefore very important within the ZO Skin Health protocols. Tamara briefly explains: “Getting Skin Ready is literally preparing the skin and consists of three simple steps. I always explain it as a kind of mini-peeling.” Within Getting Skin Ready, there is thorough cleansing, exfoliation and ensuring that the skin is fully prepared to optimally handle the active ingredients of the skin-improving products.
What exactly does it include? That varies from person to person, because every skin is unique. “For oily skin, with a lot of sebum, you start with Exfoliating Cleanser, Dual Action Scrub and Oil Control Pads in terms of Getting Skin Ready, but you don’t do that with very sensitive or weak skin. For that, I would recommend the Hydrating Cleanser, Balancing Cleansing Emulsion, Exfoliating Polish – you can build that up slowly – and Calming Toner. The Hydrating Crème is also very nice for this, because it restores and strengthens the skin. For example, I like to use the Exfoliating Cleanser myself,” says the skin therapist. “Then you coordinate the protocol with the client. Exfoliating the dead skin layer remains important – we use the Exfoliation Accelerator for that in some protocols.”
The importance of a well-prepared skin cannot be underestimated, Tamara explains. “We often see people come in here who have had a treatment that they were not well prepared for, such as laser or peeling of a skin that is not ready for it. Then you can of course get all kinds of different reactions and even create problems. We want the treatments to be predictable. And that only happens if you have a perfectly prepared skin in front of you. Only then do you know: this skin is clean, this skin is healthy, this skin is well-permeable – that is how it will react to this treatment.”
Her golden tip for healthy skin is simple: “Always go to a skin therapist for advice about products and don’t blindly accept what you read on the internet. Every skin is different and has different needs.”
Sun protection
Because ZO Skin Health approaches skin improvement scientifically, the development of their products does not stand still. Tamara mentions as an example that in recent years more and more has become known about the damage that the sun and other forms of light can cause. In addition to sunlight with all its UV radiation, blue light – think of laptops, telephones, or LED lamps – and infrared light can also penetrate deep into the skin and cause skin aging. Fortunately, there is a solution!
“A triple spectrum protection offers many advantages over a classic SPF. For example, not all sun products protect against UVA and UVB, while you do need that. ZO Skin Health has the Smart Tone Broad-Spectrum Sunscreen SPF 50, for example, which gives you a nice tan right away, or the Daily Sheer Broad Spectrum SPF 50. I am a big fan of the Daily Sheer myself – it also works well against sweat, even if you are busy at work all day.”
In addition to the Daily Sheer, Tamara likes to use the Sunscreen + Powder SPF 30, a particularly handy brush-on SPF – a lightweight sun protection in powder form that is ideal for a quick touch-up in between. This prevents your skin from looking greasy, even on the hottest summer days. An added bonus: the Sunscreen + Powder is also easy to apply over your make-up and comes in three shades and has refills, which is also beneficial against environmental pollution. You can reuse the brush! An added bonus: you don’t have to worry about smearing your make-up off your face when you apply a new layer of SPF. Handy!
Also indispensable? Daily Power Defense, of course. “It contains a huge amount of antioxidants, which counteract the effects of free radicals from sunlight and exhaust fumes, for example. So that is also a piece of natural sun protection.”
In short: with a well-prepared and well-protected skin, we will get through the summer healthy and radiant. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it?
Header image: Adobe Stock
