Super-intense moisturisers for seriously dry skin

Finding just the right moisturiser for your skin type is a real triumph, and one that makes a daily difference to how you look and feel. For those with skin prone to extreme dryness (particularly as we get older, and as the wintery winds approach to nip at our faces) this choice is even more important. I have lined up a few of our most powerful deep moisturising treatments to see how they compare.

 First in line is an oil treatment beloved by natural skin care purists. Rosa Mosqueta Rose Hip Seed Oil  is just what it says, 100% pure oil with nothing added. It is a really intense dose of skin nutrients for exceptionally dry skin, for use alongside your usual moisturiser (well, they say you should use it alongside their usual moisturiser, which is lovely and quite rich – Aubrey Organics Rose Moisturising Cream). As a bonus, you can warm the rosehip oil up and use it as a hair treatment. Lovely and natural and intense – simple is best!

If you find that your day cream is too light but you don’t want to be using your night cream all day, have a look at this Soil-Association-Certified Organic Avocado Replenishing Cream by Essential Care. The superfoody goodness of avocado is cold pressed with olives and shea butter into a veritable salad of nutritional delights for starving skin,  and dressed with sweet essential oils, into a cream that is anti-oxidant rich. This is the lightest of these creams - for dry skin, but not the driest. 

The crème de la crème of the face-crèmes is, in fact, not a crème at all, but rather a blend of oils – Organic Argan and Vitamin E Nourishing Serum. Oils are usually the most direct way to give your dry skin a good drenching. Here, organic argan oil is blended with sweet almond oil (my personal favourite for skin treatments, as I may have mentioned before…), and a healthy dose of Vitamin E, which has long reigned queen of the skin supplements. This oil smells delightful (I take secret sniffs of it from my desk as I write) and does wonders for the skin, however dry it may be.

A final tip - our real wonder-cream for dry skin all over the body (including the face) is Essential Care's Ultra Rich. This balm was originally formulated for those with eczema and dry skin conditions, so if you need something that really goes the extra mile, and is not just for the face, try this blend of shea butter, beeswax, and olive oil.

In conclusion – creams are all well and good for dry skin, even quite dry or pretty dry skin. But if you have really dry skin, or mature skin that needs something extra, then oils are the way to go. And if these ones don’t float your boat, you can see a few more here, or ask us about them here.

Finally, Shampoos for a Sensitive Soul (and Scalp)

It’s easy enough nowadays to find skincare products for sensitive skin – Logona FREE, Essential Care, but for some reason still hard to get hold of a good scalp-sensitive shampoo. I am presenting here a few that we have managed to find, which really clean your hair, really leave it feeling lovely, and are really sensitive to irritable skin.

A classic tactic for the more delicate-headed among us is to use a baby shampoo, so I have found the very best of these, an eco-friendly Baby Shampoo & Body Wash by Weleda. This, and their other baby products, are made with calendula, a traditional skin-soothing flower. It contains no synthetic fragrances, colours, or preservatives, so you can be pretty sure it won’t get your allergies tingling. Best of all, the very third ingredient is sweet almond oil, my personal favourite for gentle skin moisturising, so it softens your hair and skin as well as cleaning.

Lavera also do a Baby & Kinder Neutral shampoo. It doesn’t have the essential oil scents that Weleda use, but then that suits some people fine. It is BDIH certified (i.e. super incredibly extra pure). It’s a stripped-down simple product that gently and thoroughly gets the job done without any flowery fuss.

Next we have a product that is for not only delicate but ‘Extremelydry and sensitive skin’ – it is Barefoot SOS from Barefoot Botanicals – a range specially crafted to rescue you from dermatological emergencies. Their treatment shampoo packs a powerful punch – willow and chamomile botanical extracts soothe the scalp, while jojoba and evening primrose oil nourish it (double whammy). Just in case that doesn’t do the trick, they’ve poured vitamins A, E and B5 to give your hair and scalp a strengthening nutrient boost. It’s also scented with zingy rosemary and sweet lavender essential oils, and has a sister-product conditioner that is equally excellent. I am lost for words. This shampoo does everything.

Before you get too excited about Barefoot’s scalp-saving SOS shampoo, we have a final contender. Handmade in Suffolk, this shampoo was the very first one ever to receive Soil Association Organic Certification - it's Essential Care's Gentle Herb Shampoo. It comprises some botanicals that are found more in remedies than cosmetics, which heal and soothe a delicate scalp – aloe, nettle, chamomile, and horsetail. Lesser known in the world of shampoos, these botanicals in this expert formulation do a truly wonderful job of cleansing and calming. With no artificial anything, parabens, petrochemicals, or GM ingredients, it gets a shiny gold star for being uber-natural. And once you’ve used it a few times, you no longer need conditioner – it’s just that good for your hair.

So you had better make up your own mind, and it won’t be easy. I think for now I’ll go with Essential Care and their gentle herbs, for starters, and see what I feel like when that bottle’s empty!