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How to Keep Your Skin Looking Healthy While Traveling
Perfecting your skincare routine at home is one thing, but making sure that your skin looks in tip-top shape during travel is a whole different ball game. As quarantine restrictions loosen up, we’ll be taking more vacations in the upcoming months. But how do you keep your skin looking healthy when exploring different places?
There’s a lot of adjustment that goes into your skincare for traveling. Your routine will be different whether you opt for a hot, summery trip in the tropics or go for a ski resort in the snowy mountains up north. The important thing is to know how to tweak your routine depending on where you go.
You also have to ensure that you take all the extra measures to keep your skin looking healthy and glowy even with the additional stress and jet lag that comes with travel. Ready to satisfy your wanderlust? Here are some of Vine Vera’s top tips for skin care for traveling.
What Happens to Our Skin When We Travel?
Even just flying, the first step of most travel adventures, can cause harm to our skin. That’s because when you’re high up in the sky, the plane will have little to no humidity, so the air is very dry.
For long-haul flights, this means your skin can get dehydrated because of the re-circulated air. Your skin can feel tight and sensitive while you’re flying. It can get so bad that you might even end up having to deal with dry patches on your skin once you land.
This can also cause an uptick in breakouts. When the air is super dry, oily skin tends to overcompensate by producing even more oil, which can clog the pores and result in acne.
Another thing is the stress and anxiety that come with travel. There’s a lot on your mind when you travel, from getting in line at your boarding gate on time to making sure you have everything you need at every step of your trip. This can increase cortisol — aka the stress hormone — which causes breakouts.
One more reason for breakouts during air travel is you’re tempted to lean your head on things that might not be as clean as you think. You might rest your head or cheek against the armrest of your seat or even on the plane window. This can cause friction or the transfer of bacteria, resulting in pimples.
You should also watch out for what kinds of food you try out on your travels. If you’re not used to spicy food or cuisines with lots of allergens, like fish and peanuts, try the foods out a little at a time. Your skin can experience culture shock too.
Here are some tips on skin care for traveling that you might find useful as you explore new places:
Always Wear SPF, No Matter Where You’re Going
SPF is important in every step of your travel, from stepping onto the plane to when you’re finally relaxing and exploring your destination. Sunscreen is a must when it comes to skin care for traveling, and here’s why.
When you’re on the plane, you’re a lot closer to the sun than you would be if you were traveling by land. This means the sun’s harmful UV rays won’t have to travel that far to get to you since you’re at such a high altitude. Plus, most plane windows aren’t UV-proof, so sun damage is highly likely.
And when you finally make it to your destination, you’ll still need SPF too. You’ll likely be outdoors a lot to see tourist sites or just to explore the streets. This heightens your chances of getting sunburn, which can lead to redness, swelling, and itching. Sunscreen lowers this risk.
Another benefit of using SPF when you travel is that it shields your complexion from UV damage that causes the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines in the long run. So, the more diligent you are with your SPF, the more you’ll be delaying the visibility of skin aging.
To make sure your skin is properly moisturized and protected against the harmful rays of the sun, use the Vine Vera Resveratrol Cabernet Replenishing Moisture Cream, which provides an SPF of 30.
The formula also contains aloe vera, camellia extracts, and vitamin E to leave skin feeling hydrated. Meanwhile, green tea extract and resveratrol soothe the feeling of the sensitivities that can arise from the stress of travel.
Incorporate Antioxidants in Your Routine
If you’re exploring big cities, you could be exposed to a lot of smog and pollution in the air. In the gray smoke of pollution, there are free radicals — little unstable molecules that can break down the healthy collagen and elastin in your skin. This can result in the early appearance of wrinkles and age spots.
Free radicals have missing electrons and try to find a “host” to latch onto so that they can become stable again. They do this by attaching themselves to your skin, which then causes something called “oxidative stress” — a culprit of skin cell destruction.
To keep free radicals from causing harm to your skin, incorporate antioxidants in your routine. Among the best antioxidants is vitamin C.
On your next trip, make sure you pack the Vine Vera Resveratrol Vitamin C Serum. It’ll give your skin tone a brighter and more even finish. Perfect for all your Instagram travel photos!
Keep Your Lips Moisturized to Avoid Chapping
Moving around and traveling will expose you to ever-changing weather. Aside from the skin on your face and body, your lips might have some trouble adjusting too. So, don’t forget your lips when you’re planning your skin care for traveling.
The dry air on a plane and the extreme climate in some destinations can render your once soft and supple lips feeling chapped instead. This is because cold and dry air evaporates every ounce of moisture, even from your lips. Not only is this annoying to deal with, but it can ruin how you look in travel selfies.
Avoid chapped, rough-feeling lips by including the Vine Vera Resveratrol Vitamin C Lip Balm when you’re packing your skin care for traveling. It’s bursting with vitamins that leave the lips feeling soft and strengthened.
It contains ingredients like shea butter and avocado oil, which will leave your lips looking hydrated, plump, and silky smooth all day.
Make Sure Your Hands Continue Feeling Smooth and Soft
Just because travel restrictions are letting up nowadays, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be extra careful about getting sick. We still have to sanitize our hands with alcohol whenever we touch stuff in public, such as trains, elevator buttons, and doors — especially when traveling in an unfamiliar city.
However, this can leave your hands feeling dry. That’s why you should always have a high-quality hand cream as part of your regimen for skin care for traveling.
One that we highly recommend is the Vine Vera Travel Hand Cream. It’s a deluxe size, so it’s easy to toss in your purse while you explore the sights on your bucket list.
The formula contains glycerin, a humectant with moisture-binding properties. It also has other moisture-binding ingredients to help your hands retain all that hydrating goodness for longer. One use of this cream and your hands will immediately feel velvety soft and smooth again.
Don’t Wear Unnecessary Makeup on Your Flights
It’s always tempting to look extra cute while traveling. Who knows what kind of travel photo ops you’ll find along the way, right? But one basic rule of skin care for traveling is that you shouldn’t cake on so much makeup during your flight. It’s better if you do without it instead.
Wearing a matte foundation will completely dry your face in flight. The same goes for lipstick, which can dry out your lips. Instead of packing on the makeup, go bare and use a moisturizer and lip balm instead. It will be much more comfortable for you and your skin too.
Another tip for skin care for traveling is to keep a travel-sizes moisturizer in your carry-on at all times. That way, you can reapply your moisturizer whenever your skin is feeling a little thirsty and needs to be quenched.
Pack Skincare Products That are Apt for the Climate
One other thing that will strongly affect how your skin is going to react when you travel is the destination you’re looking to go to. Your skin will have different needs if you end up going to the Maldives vs the Swiss Alps. So, you’ll have to adjust your skincare routine to fit the climate of wherever you’re going.
The rules are quite simple. Hot and humid places need lightweight skincare, while areas with colder weather will require you to build an extra rich routine.
First, let’s talk about hot weather. When you’re in a scorching, summery setting under the sun, your body will produce more sweat to try and cool itself down. But sweat mixed with dirt, dead skin cells, sebum, and makeup can end up clogging your pores, resulting in breakouts.
So, when you’re going on an island vacation, it’s better to build a skincare routine with lightweight, water-based products. Focus on aloe-infused gels or mists you can spray on your face whenever it’s getting extra hot.
Now, if you’re going somewhere colder, like European countries in the dead of winter, you need to adjust in another way. Cold and dry air will cause your skin to look flaky and dehydrated, so you need intense moisture.
Be sure to pack up some hydration masks, thick night creams, and rich body butter for the trip. Look for ingredients like ceramides, proteins, and oils to keep your skin feeling as soft possible even in the cold climate. The Vine Vera Resveratrol Merlot Travel Kit is perfect for this!
Get Enough Beauty Sleep Throughout Your Trip
Getting the right amount of sleep every night is of huge importance for your skin. Cell repair and collagen regeneration are at their peak when you’re in deep sleep, so if you only get a couple of hours per night, your skin might suffer later on.
But sleep is tricky when you’re traveling. You could get jetlagged if you’re traveling somewhere really far from your time zone. Or you could also get caught up with going to so many tourist attractions that you lose track of time and return home late every day of your trip.
However, if you don’t get at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night when you travel, you’ll likely develop puffiness and dark eye bags. Big yikes when you’re trying to look cute in travel pictures!
So, make sure that you prioritize sleep when you’re traveling, no matter how hard this may be! As a backup, pack yourself a few eye care products too, such as our Resveratrol Eye Collection Age-Defying Eye Serum.
Conclusion
There’s plenty to think about when getting ready to travel — your passport, tickets, hotel accommodations, budgeting. But you can’t neglect the look and feel of your skin, which will likely be very sensitive to new environments.
So, make sure you follow our skin care for traveling tips listed above. Moisturization of dry skin is key in cold places, while lightweight skincare works best in the tropics. And wherever you go, sunscreen and antioxidants will be your best friends. Keep all these in mind, and you’ll be golden.
