Facial redness can occur from rosacea, a sunburn, or general irritation. Learn 9 ways to calm redness for a more even complexion.
A healthy rosy cheek is one thing, but if you are dealing with persistent facial redness, blotchiness, or ruddiness, it’s often not a desired look.
Facial redness can stem from many things from rosacea, to acne, to too much sun, or not using the right skincare products for your skin. No matter what the cause of your redness, there are ways to help attain a more even-toned complexion.
Below, we will cover 9 ways to help reduce excess redness, flushing, or blotchiness on the face.
A lot of people have a skin condition called rosacea without even knowing it.
If you battle with skin redness off and on, or even persistently, you may have rosacea. Rosacea tends to come along with the over-dilation of the vessels under your skin, making it look red and feel hot or flushed sometimes.
This condition may even lead to small blemishes across the face, eye irritation, or thickened skin on the nose. If you want to figure out if your facial redness is rosacea, you can have a free online consultation with our U.S. licensed doctors in 10-15 minutes.
If your skin seems like a good match for prescription treatment, we can formulate a prescription rosacea cream for you and your medication can be shipped to you with our free 2-day shipping.
Not all redness means there is a clinical problem, and prescription treatments for rosacea may be overkill or not work. In some instances, your skin may be red from dryness and irritation. If you normally opt for a no-nonsense wash-and-forget-it skincare routine, your skin may be crying out for a little more attention.
Redness can be a sign of dryness or irritation from stripping off too many naturally protective oils without replacing the moisture with regular moisturizer.
First, take the step to include a gentle moisturizer into your post-wash routine, and then consider rotating in a once-weekly nourishing face mask to help cool any redness from dryness.
If it is obvious that your facial redness stems from a non-clinical situation like being out on a really hot day for a while, or having just broken your best 5k running time, you can try some DIY measures to calm the redness.
Invest in a gel-filled facial pack that you can keep stored in your fridge or freezer, or make up a cloth cold compress by dunking a clean cloth in a bowl of ice water.
Apply the cool mask or cloth to your flushed skin for a few minutes and reapply as needed until everything calms down. However, avoid applying ice straight to the face as this may be a little too cold and can be damaging to the skin if left too long.
Exfoliation is good for your skin, and can help remove extra layers of dead skin cells to reveal smooth and healthy skin.
But, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and overdoing it on exfoliation, retinoids, and facial acids can leave skin looking raw, red, and irritated.
Everyone has different sensitivity levels when it comes to exfoliation, but start with a gentle low-percentage exfoliation product and keep to once or twice a week, max. With retinoids, start slow and work your frequency up as your skin can tolerate.
If your skin is red, inflamed, and angry, external factors on your skin may not be the whole story. Your whole body is connected, so if you are eating an inflammatory diet and shunning veggies, your skin might protest with more redness and irritation than you would like.
Boost your consumption of fruits and vegetables, plus omega-3 rich foods, and avoid excess sugars, refined carbohydrates, and overly processed foods to give your skin a little calming help from within.
For those dealing with rosacea, review your food and beverage triggers and cut out the common culprits like alcohol, hot beverages, spicy foods, chocolate, cinnamon, citrus, and tomatoes.
You may just be having a day of facial irritation, or you were laying out in the sun too long at the beach. Either way, you may be able to find natural ingredients known to help soothe and calm the skin in your kitchen. Aloe gel comes from the aloe plant and may be a welcome relief to the sting of a sunburn.
You can cut off a small portion of the plant and squeeze the gel right out from the center of the plant to apply directly to the skin. Other common household ingredients that can soothe inflammation include oatmeal, chamomile, or cucumber.
While this is not a fix, trying to cover up the red for a few days while you wait for treatments to work is a good way to go about your day without worrying about facial redness.
The opposite of red on the color wheel is green, so as strange as it may seem, using a color correcting concealer with a little green tint to it can help balance the appearance of your skin tone.
Rash-like redness and irritation from contact dermatitis can pop up from using skincare products that don’t work well with your skin, or just have way too many fragrances, colors, and other questionable ingredients.
If your redness started up just after a new addition to your routine, stop the product and revert back to your tried and tested calming basic routine until your complexion returns to normal. In the future, pick out new products carefully by avoiding lots of preservatives, synthetic scents, or vivid unnatural colors.
Sure, you apply sunscreen when you’re heading out for a hike or day at the beach, but what about every day? Some people have extra sensitive skin either from their natural complexion, current skincare routine, or even medications they are on, and even small amounts of sun can cause facial redness.
Given the additional benefits of wearing a daily sunscreen like reductions in UV-induced premature skin aging, sunscreen is a must. A sunscreen with at least SPF 30 needs to be the last step in your daily skin routine if you want to keep redness (and skin aging) at bay.
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