A skin-care routine for humid Lagos
Heat, humidity and dust ask different things of your skin than a cool climate does. A short routine that works on the Island or the Mainland, morning and night.
Most skin-care advice is written for cool, dry places. It tells you to layer creams, and in Lagos a layered cream has slid off your face by ten in the morning. Humidity means your skin is rarely dry, but it is also rarely clean: sweat, sunscreen, dust from the road and the oil your skin makes all day end up in the same place. A routine for Lagos is short, light and done twice a day without fail.
Morning
1. Cleanse. A gentle gel or foaming cleanser, with water. Skip the scrub. If your skin is oily, a cleanser with a little salicylic acid helps keep pores clear; use it every morning and watch for tightness.
2. Treat, if you treat. A vitamin C serum in the morning helps with the uneven tone that sun and old breakouts leave behind. Three or four drops, pressed in, is enough. If it stings, it is too strong for you right now.
3. Moisturise lightly. A gel moisturiser or a light lotion. Your skin still needs moisture; it just does not need oil on top. If your skin is dry in patches, use the lotion only there.
4. Sunscreen. This is the step. Broad spectrum, SPF 30 at least, every single morning, including the days you spend indoors near a window. On dark skin a sunscreen that leaves no white cast matters, and there are many now that do not. Reapply at midday if you are outside. Sun is what deepens dark marks and what makes them last.
Night
1. Cleanse twice. First with a cleansing balm or micellar water to lift sunscreen and the day's grime, then with your morning cleanser. This is the single change most people in Lagos benefit from. One wash does not get sunscreen off.
2. Treat. This is where the stronger things go, because there is no sun to argue with them.
- For breakouts: a leave-on salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide, on the areas that break out, not all over.
- For dark marks: niacinamide or azelaic acid. Both are kind to dark skin and do not bleach it.
- For texture and fine lines: a retinoid, starting twice a week and working up. Retinoids make skin more sensitive to sun, which is another reason the morning sunscreen is not optional.
Pick one. Adding three at once is how people end up with a burning face and no idea which product did it.
3. Moisturise. The same light moisturiser, or something a touch richer if your skin feels tight after the treatment.
