Can't tell if your skincare product is actually working?

Why it is so hard to tell

A new serum rarely changes your skin overnight, so the judgment you make is about weeks, and memory is bad at weeks. Three things usually get in the way:

• You don't know how often you used it. "Most nights" can mean six a week or three. If the product sat on the shelf for half the trial, its result says little about the product.
• Several things changed at once. A new serum, a new sunscreen and a new season in the same month leave you with no way to say which one made the difference.
• You only remember the extremes. A bad breakout week sticks; four calm weeks fade. Without a note made at the time, the trial is judged on one memorable day.

Give the product a fair trial

1. Start one new product at a time. The American Academy of Dermatology advises introducing one new product at a time, and adds that consistency matters more than a 10-step routine.
2. Decide the trial length before you start. Take it from the label or your dermatologist and write the end date down. For acne treatments, the AAD says to use a product for 6 to 8 weeks and to try another one if there is no improvement by then, rather than switching every week or so.
3. Use it exactly as directed. Same step, same time of day, on the days the label says. A trial with many missed days is not a fair trial yet.
4. Rate your skin the same way each day. Same mirror, same light, ideally in the morning before any product goes on. A word or two is enough: "calm", "two new spots", "dry patch on chin".
5. Keep progress photos where you keep photos. Same spot and light each week, in your phone's camera roll.

If your skin reacts (redness, itching, swelling), the AAD says to wash the product off and not use it again. That ends the trial; whether something is a normal adjustment or a reaction is a question for a dermatologist or pharmacist, not for a log.

Log every use and a daily skin check

In EasyRoutine, give the new product its own activity, for example New serum in your PM skin routine, next to Cleanser and Night cream. Add a photo of the bottle and you can log it by pointing the camera at it with the round AI snap to log button in the middle of the tab bar: a match logs it at once with the current time. Or tap + Log on the day and tick it with the other steps. How the photo scan works.

Then add one more activity, Skin check, and log it each morning with a flag: green for a good day, amber for so-so, red for a bad one, plus a short note when something changes. Logging, notes, flags and the scan are free.

Keeping the skin rating on its own activity matters: it gets a rating every day, including the days you skipped the product, so you can compare the two.

Read the record: use first, then the flags

At the end of the trial, check consistency before you judge the product:

1. Tap the product's tile above the calendar to highlight its entries.
2. Switch to the month view. Each day you used it has a dot in its color. A month with long gaps tells you the trial was not fair yet; extend it rather than give up on the product.
3. Switch back to the week view and tap the Skin check tile. Flags show as small colored dots on each log. Step back week by week: did the amber and red days thin out after you started using the product consistently?

The month view shows when you used something, not the flag colors, so read the flags in the week or day view. If the flags turned green in the same weeks you were consistent, that is a reason to keep going; if they did not change after a full, consistent trial, that is worth raising with your dermatologist.

What a log can and cannot tell you

EasyRoutine records that and when you used a product, plus your flag and note. It has no charts, does not analyze ingredients and does not judge whether a product works. Skin also changes for reasons that are not in your routine, so the record is something to think with and to show a dermatologist, not a verdict.

If the question is the opposite one, which product caused a reaction, see how to find which skincare product caused a reaction. For a product you use for a fixed number of weeks, the skincare treatment tracking template shows how to give it start and end dates. More on the skincare routine tracker.

Common questions

Keep reading

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