Beauty Sleep: What Your Skin Does While You Snooze

We’ve all rolled out of bed in the morning, running low on sleep, and have noticed our skin looking far less than perfect.

A good night’s sleep is essential to waking up alert and full of energy, but if you get enough quality pillow time, will you also wake up with better skin?

Various health benefits come from getting enough sleep, and it turns out there really is a reason why people call it ‘beauty sleep’.

Getting enough sleep is essential for allowing the skin to repair and rejuvenate. When we snooze, our stress hormone (cortisol) reduces while our sleep hormone (melatonin) increases. Essentially, our body and our skin are in repair mode.

Want to learn more about how the skin repairs as you snooze? Yes you do! Keep reading.

What Your Skin Does While You Sleep

The skin carries out specific processes best at night. Throughout the day, your skin is working hard, as it’s being attacked by UVA (year-round sunlight that attempts to penetrate the skin and cause damage) and sometimes UVB rays (those that lead to sunburn).

There’s also pollution, humidity changes, and much more for your skin to deal with. Phew!

As your skin must focus on protection during the day, when you’re curled up in bed, inside in the dark, your skin can work better on other processes at night.

Here are a few processes your skin works hard on during the night.

Exfoliation

That’s right – the skin exfoliates itself. It produces new skin cells and then sloughs off dead ones on its own. This is known as skin cell proliferation.

Skin cell proliferation occurs much faster at night than during the day.

It’s thanks to our natural exfoliation process that our skin looks radiant. The process helps stop our pores from getting clogged up and allows space for new skin cells.

Healing and Repairing

Your skin does all the hard work of repairing and healing when you’re fast asleep. Nighttime is when our skin works to repair the damage caused by the sun’s harsh UV rays and pollution through cell renewal.

Nutrition

When we sleep at night, our body increases blood flow. This means that extra oxygen and nutrients contribute to the health of our skin cells.

Oxygen keeps our skin luscious and glowing (hello, oxygen facials and masks). This is why we never look our best after a disrupted sleep, especially when we clamber into bed after a few too many cocktails.

Hydration Is Optimal In The Daytime

Interestingly, as all the other processes happen much faster as you sleep, so is trans-epidermal water loss. This refers to the loss of hydration through your epidermis.

When you roll out of bed in the morning, you may find that your skin feels a little tighter than it usually does during the day. If you have dry skin, the morning is probably when it feels driest. But not to worry – wash your face, and pop on your daily moisturizer, and your skin should feel as it usually does.

Products To Use While You Snooze

Lucky for us, there are plenty of beauty products out there to help maximize the work our skin does for us when we sleep. Here are some of the best types of products out there to help your skin work its magic.

Exfoliators

As our skin naturally exfoliates quicker at night, it’s best to exfoliate in the PM rather than the morning. Plus, the extra help can lead to even better exfoliation.

There are many exfoliants out there, but we’d recommend the PCA Skin DailyExfoliant.

Gently buff away dead skin cells for radiant, younger-looking skin with this moisturizing exfoliant. The light and gentle solution is suitable for all skin types and effectively removes dirt, debris, and impurities from the skin.

Not only that, but this formula is an eco-friendly choice, too, containing 100% biodegradable and renewable exfoliants.

Night Cream

A high-quality night cream locks in any nighttime aging skin rejuvenation products and treats and protects your skin while you’re cuddled up in bed.

The RevisionRestorative Night Cream is an excellent choice. The lightweight, oil-free formula contains palmitoyl tripeptide-3 to increase collagen production and treat the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles as you snooze. Algae extracts enhance the skin’s energy and boost the radiance of your skin, while vitamins defend and nurture the skin.

Serum

A nightly serum is another must-have for optimizing your PM skincare routine.

We love the PCA Skin Resveratrol Restorative Complex, specifically designed to use before bedtime. The antioxidant serum uses the patented OmniSome™ delivery technology to time-release powerful antioxidants and anti-aging ingredients deep into the skin overnight.

The serum strengthens the skin and protects it against cell damage while reducing redness, increasing hydration, and soothing skin.

Want more skincare advice? Here’s how to protect your skin while skiing on the slopes this winter.