Sensitive Skin Care Routine

If you live with sensitive, reactive, or inflamed skin and often feel like having healthy, glowing skin is just a pipe dream, you’re not alone. It can be a pain to have your skin break out whenever you try a new skincare product. Or become dry and flaky every time winter rolls around. And don’t even get us started on finding fabric types that don’t irritate your skin.

So, how do you take care of sensitive skin with so many potential irritants out there? By avoiding products that use harsh chemicals and steroids, incorporating a gentle, yet effective skincare routine that nourishes your skin, and making some lifestyle changes.

Let’s dive into how to understand your sensitive skin and give it the TLC it deserves.

Why Does Sensitive Skin Require a Specialized Routine?

Before we talk about the why, let’s first define what sensitive skin is. While there’s no one-size-fits-all definition, sensitive skin typically refers to skin that’s easily irritated or very reactive. These reactions can manifest as redness, irritation, itching, dryness, flakiness, acne breakouts, or burning sensations.

Some of the most common triggers for sensitive skin include:

Weather
Chemicals and irritants in bath care, beauty, and skin care products
Stress
Certain fabrics, such as wool and polyester
The environment (sun’s UV rays, smoke, pollution, etc.)
Your diet
Aging
Hormonal fluctuations
Underlying skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, or rosacea

In short, sensitivity means your skin is just very picky and will let you know if it doesn’t like something.

Anybody can be born with sensitive skin or develop it over the course of their life. Sensitive skin also doesn’t discriminate between skin types, meaning your skin can be oily, dry, normal, or a combination of these and still be sensitive.

The one thing that most people with sensitive skin do have in common, though? A compromised skin barrier. As the outermost layer of your skin, your skin barrier (also known as the moisture barrier) keeps the bad guys from the outside world (such as irritants, harmful bacteria, and pollutants) from getting under your skin. It also prevents moisture from escaping. All this keeps your skin soft and plump.

But when your barrier is damaged, moisture from your skin escapes more easily, leaving you feeling dry. Outside irritants can also get in and cause all sorts of troubles, leading to flare-ups. So, sensitive skin needs a specialized routine that helps repair and rebuild your skin barrier (as opposed to just soothing it).

Another thing to note is that standard skin care products with harsh ingredients often fall into the “nope” category for sensitive skin, as the irritants and allergens they contain can worsen flare-ups. When choosing products for sensitive skin, the ideal choices are often ones that are plant-based and steroid-free.

A Step-by-Step Skin Care Routine for Sensitive Skin

All the sensitive skin care routine basics you need to know.

Step 1: Use a gentle, sulfate-free cleanser

Cleansing should always be the first step in any skincare routine. Your skin tends to collect dust, dirt, oil, grime, bacteria, and dead skin cells throughout the day. If you don’t wash these impurities off, they’ll stay on your skin and continue to irritate, leading to possible flare-ups.

A build-up of grime can also block your pores, causing acne breakouts and red, itchy skin. When dirt clogs your pores, it traps the sebum oil (which is the natural oil produced by your skin to keep it hydrated) under the debris, preventing it from traveling to the outermost layer of your skin. This means your skin doesn’t get the moisture it needs from the sebum oil and could become dry, rough, and dull.

So, washing your face? Pretty important.

The type of cleanser you use can also make a big difference. As a general rule of thumb, a sensitive skin cleanser should:

Be sulfate-free as sulfates can strip the natural oils from your skin and damage your skin barrier, leaving it extra dry and red.
Have a pH of 4.5 - 5.5. Skin has a slightly acidic pH of between 4.5 and 5.5, which keeps the skin barrier strong and prevents harmful bacteria from gaining entry. If you use a cleanser with a higher pH, it could strip away your natural oils and make your skin dehydrated, tight, and irritated. Use one with a very low pH, and your skin might feel oilier and more prone to acne breakouts.
Be non-foaming, as foaming cleansers often contain a higher pH (more than 6) and harsh ingredients such as sulfates that can damage sensitive skin.
Not contain any synthetic fragrances as they are a common allergen and can cause inflammation and redness.

Once you cleanse your face, gently pat it dry with a microfiber cloth before moving on to the next step.

Step 2: Apply calming treatments

If you suffer from chronic skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, or rosacea, or even just have patches of dry, flaky skin, adding a calming spot treatment gel (such as the Phoilex Active ReLeaf Gel) to your sensitive skin care routine can help soothe your skin. A spot treatment essentially means applying a calming gel (designed specifically for sensitive skin) directly to the affected areas to soothe inflammation and irritation.

Phoilex’s Active ReLeaf Gel is a botanical powerhouse made with a blend of plant-based ingredients to help soothe irritation, reduce inflammation, and smooth the rough texture of dry and flaky skin. It’s also completely free of steroids or other harsh ingredients that aren’t very skin-friendly and often cause more harm than good.

Gently take a small dollop of the gel and apply it over the affected areas. You may notice a calming sensation setting in as your skin absorbs it.

Sarina Pilaroscia, Phoilex’s founder, says that Phoilex users have reported significant improvements in skin barrier resilience, reduced inflammation, and fewer flare-ups with consistent use.

“In our 8 week trial, 74% of patients saw a decrease in flare-ups. This means if a user had 1 flare-up per week, they noticed that during the 8-week time period, there were only 2 episodes.”

Many experience less reliance on steroids, quicker healing from irritation, and a noticeable decrease in redness, itchiness, and dry patches. Over time, their skin becomes more balanced, hydrated, and less reactive to stress or environmental triggers.

Restore balance to your stressed-out skin with Phoilex’s Active ReLeaf Spot Gel.
Shop now

Step 3: Lock in moisture with a rich, healing moisturizer

We saw how the main problem associated with sensitive skin is its damaged skin barrier, which leads to moisture loss, causing skin dryness. This dryness, in turn, can trigger flare-ups, especially for people living with skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, or rosacea.

This is where moisturizers come in. They can improve skin barrier repair, give your skin the hydration it needs, and even create a thin, invisible layer over your skin to keep moisture locked in. The right moisturizer can also reduce itchiness, inflammation, and dryness, making your skin smoother, resilient, and more supple.

Just like your cleanser, though, the moisturizer that will make up your hydrating routine for sensitive skin should be chosen carefully. An effective sensitive-skin moisturizer will ideally:

Be fragrance-free and hypoallergenic to prevent any inflammation that can be triggered by an allergy flare-up.
Be sulfate-free to avoid irritating your skin any further.
Be non-comedogenic, meaning it won’t sit heavily on your skin or clog your pores. Grapeseed oil is a great non-comedogenic, plant-based moisturizing ingredient to look out for in your sensitive skin products.
Contain soothing ingredients like colloidal oatmeal, an ingredient that calms inflammation and itching, pulls moisture into your skin (and keeps it there), and works on restoring your skin’s barrier.
Contain skin-friendly ingredients like ceramides and squalane. Ceramides are naturally occurring fatty acids found in your skin’s moisture barrier, while squalane is an oil that naturally mimics the sebum oil that your skin produces. These two ingredients not only add moisture to your dry-as-a-desert skin, they also help your skin hold on to it, making it soft and smooth.

Step 4: Protect with SPF daily

The sun, with its harmful UV rays, is notorious for causing skin damage, particularly when it comes to reactive skin. For starters, it can worsen your acne (even though it might seem otherwise initially). The sun’s rays strip away your natural oils and thicken the top layer of your skin. Your skin then produces more oil to fill in this gap, which actually makes your pimples worse.

Since the sun dehydrates your skin, the dryness can cause itching, making your eczema flare up. Sunburns can also inflame your skin and trigger your conditions. People with rosacea also find the sun to be a trigger, as sunshine can dilate blood vessels, leaving your skin red and flushed.

Finally, an overexposure to UV rays can break down your skin’s moisture barrier, cause signs of premature aging, and make your skin look dull. So, protecting your skin from the sun should make up an important part of your daily skincare routine for sensitive skin.

For sensitive skin, we recommend a sunscreen with a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) of 50+ for maximum protection. Pick a broad-spectrum sunscreen that protects you against UVA and UVB rays.

As for the ingredients, the sunscreen should be hypoallergenic, made with sensitive skin-friendly ingredients (and not contain any harmful irritants), and have some skin-soothing, anti-inflammatory components, such as ceramides.

Finally, opt for a mineral sunscreen (typically made with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide) over a chemical one as the former is much kinder and gentler on sensitive skin. The chemical ones, on the other hand, have a higher risk of irritating your skin (because they contain chemicals, obviously), which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.

The way these two types of sunscreens work also plays a role in the effect they can have on sensitive skin. Mineral sunscreens create a shield over your skin so that the sun’s rays bounce off of it. Chemical sunscreens, however, absorb the UV rays and convert them into heat before letting them escape your skin. This heat-creation process can trigger redness or inflammation, potentially causing a rosacea or eczema flare-up. So, if you have sensitive skin, it might be better to go with mineral sunscreens.

How to Support Sensitive Skin From the Inside Out

Here’s a fun fact: your liver actually plays a crucial role in skin health, and so do your stress levels. The stress hormone, cortisol, weakens your skin barrier and triggers inflammation, making your skin more sensitive and setting off eczema, psoriasis, or acne flare-ups.

Liver damage can also manifest on your skin in the form of itchiness, redness, inflammation, rashes, or dry skin. This typically happens when your liver isn’t able to do its job of clearing out the toxins and excess hormones from your blood (either due to a liver infection or stress). So, all the toxins in your blood starts building up in between the layers of your skin, triggering flare-ups.

Your liver also influences the microbiome (i.e., the bacterial and fungal ecosystem) of your gut. A balanced gut microbiome is what regulates your body’s metabolic and immune responses. When your liver doesn’t work as it should, it throws a wrench in your gut microbiome, causing an imbalance. Your unbalanced gut now struggles to keep your immune system in check, which becomes overactive and sparks off immune-mediated skin conditions like psoriasis.

An imbalanced gut can also trigger inflammation throughout your body, including your skin, making it more prone to redness, itching, rashes, and dryness (pretty much all the common triggers of chronic conditions like eczema and rosacea).

The bottom line is that liver, gut, and skin health are all woven together, so an imbalance in one can affect the others. And stress can absolutely impair your liver and gut function, leading to heightened skin sensitivity. So, if your skin is often breaking out in hives or itching, the problem may actually be your liver or gut.

This means taking care of your sensitive skin isn’t always an external process. At Phoilex, we believe in holistic skin care where you treat your skin from the inside out. We have the Active ReLeaf Gel for topical treatments, but what about for your insides?

Enter: Phoilex’s Liverty Dynamic Drops. Made with anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and liver-supportive plant-based ingredients like milk thistle, turmeric, and Medium Chain Triglyceride (MCT) oil, these drops help to heal your skin from within by reducing stress and supporting healthy liver and gut function.

Soothe your sensitive skin by providing internal inflammation relief with Phoilex’s Liverty Dynamic Drops.

Ingredients to Avoid and Embrace In a Sensitive Skin Care Routine

A gentle skincare routine needs gentle products. Here’s a glimpse of the ingredients to avoid and ones to embrace in products for sensitive skin.

What to avoid

Steroids: While steroids are often the first things prescribed for eczema, psoriasis, and rosacea, long-term usage can cause side effects such as dryness, inflammation, stretch marks, thinning of skin, and Topical Steroid Withdrawal Syndrome (TSW).
Fragrances: Both natural and synthetic fragrances may cause allergic reactions, itching, stinging, or redness. Make it a point to pick sensitive skin products that have a ‘fragrance-free’ label. It’s also worth noting that ‘unscented’ can also mean that certain fragrance compounds are included to mask the natural scent of the product, so they aren't always safe for sensitive skin, either.
Dyes: They can irritate your skin, so steer clear of them.
Parabens: They are chemical preservatives (enough said) added to skincare products to prolong their shelf life. These chemicals can irritate your skin and even disrupt your hormones.
Alcohol: While some alcohols are good for your skin, most of them are not. They can be extremely drying, leaving your skin feeling tight and parched for moisture, which makes them a big no-no for sensitive skin. Alcohol also disrupts your skin barrier, leaving you vulnerable to external irritants. Overall, it could make your skin conditions worse.
Sulfates: They take away your skin’s natural oils, causing it to feel tight and very dry. So, when buying a sensitive skin face wash, make sure it’s sulfate-free.

Not sure if your products contain any of these ingredients? Do a patch test first.

What to embrace

Botanicals: Plant-based ingredients are your friends. Soothing ingredients like colloidal oatmeal and aloe are great for calming irritation and inflammation.
Adaptogens: These natural substances reduce skin stress and inflammation. Some examples are licorice extract, ashwagandha, holy basil, chaga mushroom, and turmeric.
Antioxidants: Vitamin E (found in grapeseed oil), calendula, and green tea are examples of antioxidants that help protect your skin from UV damage, moisturize it, and calm inflammation.

All of Phoilex’s products are made with a blend of skin-loving ingredients and without any of the harmful ones mentioned above.

“We believe in the power of a well-rounded, targeted approach, which is why the Phoilex Phyto-Active Blend™ is essential!” says Sarina.

This is Phoilex’s proprietary blend, developed specifically to support sensitive, eczema-prone, and TSW-affected skin. It includes clinically backed botanicals that are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant-rich, and barrier-supportive. Together, they calm flare-ups, improve hydration, and help the skin heal over time without any rebound side effects.

Sample AM/ PM Skincare Routine for Sensitive Skin Using Phoilex

Here are two soothing skincare routine samples to help you get started.

Morning skincare routine for sensitive skin

Cleanse thoroughly with a non-foaming, gentle cleanser and pat (don’t scrub) yourself dry
Treat your flare-up zones with Phoilex’s Active ReLeaf Gel (skip if you’re not experiencing an active flare-up)
Moisturize your skin
Apply sunscreen to protect yourself from UV rays (even if it’s winter)

Night skincare routine for sensitive skin

Cleanse thoroughly to remove the dirt and grime of the day from your skin
Treat your flare-up zones with Phoilex’s Active ReLeaf Gel (skip if you’re not experiencing an active flare-up)
Moisturize your skin
Take 1 mL of Phoilex’s Liverty Dynamic Drops orally to support skin from within

Bonus: Lifestyle Tips to Support Skin Health

Some of your habits may unintentionally be contributing to your skin sensitivity issues. Here are some tips to avoid that.

Avoid hot showers and don’t stay too long in the bath as it can dry out your skin.
Eat a balanced, liver-friendly diet with fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
Incorporate stress-management practices such as yoga, meditation, and mindfulness.
Support your gut health with probiotic supplements.
Drink enough water to keep your skin hydrated.
Get at least 7-9 hours of sleep every night to give your skin the time to repair and rejuvenate.
Be consistent with your sensitive skin care routine.

Using a specialized sensitive skin care routine with gentle, steroid-free products from plant-based brands like Phoilex and making slow, intentional lifestyle changes will soothe your sensitive skin.

At Phoilex, we combine plant-based actives with science-backed data to ensure both safety and efficacy for sensitive skin, always.
Shop best sellers

FAQs

What is the best skin care routine for sensitive skin?

Less is always more when it comes to sensitive skin, so the best skin care routine is one that involves cleansing, spot treatment for any flare-up zones, moisturizing, and applying sunscreen.

What are the 4 types of sensitive skin?

There are four classifications of sensitive skin:

Naturally sensitive skin: Caused by inherent skin conditions like eczema, rosacea, or psoriasis.
Environmentally sensitive skin: Triggered by external factors such as sun exposure, wind, pollution, or extreme temperatures.
Reactive skin: Easily irritated by skincare products, fragrances, dyes, or harsh chemicals.
Thin skin: Caused by over-exfoliation, aggressive treatments, or age-related thinning.

What to avoid in skincare for sensitive skin?

If you have sensitive skin, you should avoid skincare ingredients such as steroids, sulfates, fragrances (both natural and synthetic), dyes, parabens, and alcohol, as these can irritate your skin and worsen any skin conditions you might have.

What skin treatments are good for sensitive skin?

For sensitive skin, gentle treatments that soothe and moisturize while protecting the skin barrier are ideal. These include hydra facials, oxygen facials, and light therapy.

Cart

Sensitive Skin Care Routine: Phoilex’s Guide to Calm, Glowing Skin