Dry vs. Dehydrated Skin: What’s the Difference (And How to Fix Yours)

Manufacturers of beauty products make claims on their labels about whether or not

their products are hydrating or moisturizing. To ensure that you are choosing the right product and its function for your skin type, it’s essential to know the difference between the two.

Let’s begin with a basic chemistry lesson on both hydration and moisturization.

Hydration

When you think of hydration it’s only natural to think of water. To hydrate something means to increase its water content. In relation to skin care, hydration means increasing the amount of water in your skin cells, which results in a healthy, smooth and plump complexion.

Moisture

Oil comes to mind when we speak of moisture. Sometimes cake does, too, but we’ll save that for a different day.

Attached to our hair follicles we have our sebaceous glands. These aptly named glands produce “sebum,” an oily substance that helps to protect, lubricate and nourish our skin, preventing it from drying out and causing premature aging. For those with acne or oily skin types, there might be an overproduction of sebum, while those with dry skin types might have a lack of it.

What’s The Difference?

So now that we have a basic understanding of the functions of both hydrating and moisturizing the skin, we’ll answer how, when, and how often.

Since the purpose of hydrating is to bind water to our skin and moisturizing is to prevent the water from leaving our skin, it’s important that hydration comes before moisturizing (when applying products topically).

This is why serums are to be applied first, as most hydrating treatment serums contain a humectant. Once you get that layer of hydration on, you want to seal it all in with a lipid (facial oil). This combination creates a healthy sebum balance within the skin.

Dry vs. Dehydrated Skin

Dehydrated skin lacks water and dry skin lacks oil. So your skin could be dehydrated, dry, or both. This is why it is important to choose the right products and know how and when to use them.

Dehydrated skin tends to look dull and feel tight, even when properly moisturized. If you don’t already, use a hydrating serum with some of the humectant ingredients we mentioned above. Apply your serum before your oil to lock in the hydration.

With dry skin, lack of moisture (lipid content) can result in rough, dry or flaky skin. If this is your skin, make sure you’re using the right moisturizing ingredients. We recommend oils because they penetrate deep into the skin and allow the skin to breathe (rather than creating a barrier, which many facial lotions will do).

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