Skin Toners

In the realm of cosmetics, apart from cleansers, skin toners exist for skin care. But as they are classified different from skin care products such as skin cleansers and moisturizers, it is because skin toners act in a different method in “caring” the skin.

Skin toners are skin care products intended for the main purpose of revitalizing the skin, or more popularly called “exfoliating” the skin. Skin toners acts this by exfoliating, peeling the uppermost epidermal layers, coaxing the lower skin layers to grow, which in effect would present a healthier looking, vibrantly colored, “new” skin. This fast skin turnover presents several benefits; it disallows clogging of pores due to hardened sebum, which in turn would also prevent acne formation. Some skin toner types shrinks the pores of the skin, hereby inhibiting the chance of these pores getting clogged with dirt and sebum. Skin toners add a degree of moisture, thus giving the skin enough elasticity to withstand breaking and tearing that could lead to other skin diseases. And lastly, the face washing skin toners would require for application would also serve to clean the facial skin further. Skin toners tend do both cleansing and moisturizing though its effectiveness aren’t on the same level with the former.

It should be stressed that skin toners, though, don’t have any quantifiable value at eliminating acne vulgaris, other types of acne diseases, or any form of skin diseases, or should they be used to eliminate such. This is due to the fact that many of these solutions don’t contain enough chemicals to kill the skin bacteria responsible. It is still best to use the prescribed treatment and medications than substituting treatment with skin toners. Skin toners can, however, immensely help alleviate the symptoms.

Your Homemade Skin Toner

Due to it’s in between nature in cosmetics, its hardly a surprise that anyone can homebrew his or her own skin toners. This can be achieved by the use of common household elements, such as fresh milk or cucumber.

Rose water is a good ingredient for skin toner. A kind of humectant, it maintain moistures by preventing it from evaporating, “trapping” moisture on the upper layers of the epidermis. A mixture of 50 grams of rose water with half tablespoon of alum and 100 grams of glycerin makes an excellent dry skin toner.

Cucumber is also a rare treat for the skin. After every bath, chop off an end of a whole cucumber and apply it to the skin, leaving it to dry for 15 minutes. The cucumber can be reused again by chopping off the used end. A cucumber is a nice skin toner for normal skin.

There’s also honey and egg toner for oily skin. To make this toner, the skin toner recipe is 1 egg white mixed with 1 tablespoon of honey. This is then beaten until it thickens. Honey is excellent absorber of oil and the white allows it to bond to oil and sebum. Apply it to problematic areas. However, avoid using it in delicate areas such as the eyes since it could remove too much oil in the skin. After 10 minutes, the honey and egg toner can be washed off with warm water.

Boiling 2 handfuls of mint leaves with 100 grams of water can make another skin toner recipe for dry skin. Let it boil for two to three minutes. Every time you make the toner, have two drops of the mint water with half tablespoon of alum. Due to the mint, this toner can be very refreshing.

One of the biggest question concerning toners is the need of them. With cleansers to clean the face and moisturizers to add and maintain moisture, skin toners might become redundant, and somewhat useless. However, those that disdain using moisturizers can always use skin toners as alternatives.