What is My Skin Type?

In this article:
What are the main skin types?
What does skin type mean?
How to identify your skin type
Can skin type change?
How skin care products can hide your real skin type
How to choose the best products for your skin type

Figuring out your skin type is no easy task. The process is often riddled with confusion, conflicting advice and pesky outside influences. However, determining your skin type is key to caring for your skin.

Do you have combination, dry, normal, oily or sensitive skin? And which skin care products are best suited for your individual skin type? Below, we’re walking you through how to easily identify your skin type, how to ensure your skin’s health and which skin care products will best suit your skin type.

What are the main skin types?

The American Academy of Dermatology Association outlines five skin types: combination, dry, normal, oily and sensitive (1). Skin types vary greatly; one produces excess oil, one doesn’t produce enough oil and one produces a combination of too much and not enough oil!

Although five skin types are outlined, we’d like to demystify two of them up front: normal and sensitive. First up, let’s tackle the normal skin type. “Normal” skin is a misnomer; it should really be referred to as “well-balanced” skin. Even then, this skin type isn’t permanent, it’s more of a transient state that skin care products, the environment, lifestyle factors and stress can influence. Well-balanced, healthy skin is always the goal, no matter your skin type.

What about sensitive skin? At Paula’s Choice Skincare, we recognise that everyone can experience sensitive skin, no matter their skin type. It’s a fact of life that external aggressors like pollution, sun damage from unprotected sun exposure, midlife changes, health concerns (whether chronic or temporary) and more impact skin and can bring about sensitisation.

These factors make skin vulnerable, temperamental and unpredictable. From that viewpoint, it’s easy to understand why sensitive skin is often an experience, and less of a formal skin type because everyone can come up against sensitive skin. Despite this, some people have extra-sensitive, more reactive skin and this may be accompanied by hallmarks of other skin types, such as dryness or excess oil. This group needs to use more caution selecting the best skin care products for sensitive skin.

Summing up, Paula’s Choice Skincare views oily, dry and combination as the primary skin types, with sensitive skin being a possible subtype of any of the primaries.

What does skin type mean?

A skin type is a basic way to categorise the skin on your face so you can correctly care for it. However, skin types aren’t the be-all and end-all.

While the typical categories of oily, dry and combination are a great place to start, they don't address the wide variety of other conditions, concerns or nuances that impact your skin and skin type. These can include blemishes, sun damage from years of unprotected sun exposure, redness or duskiness and darkening on dark skin, temperamental skin, clogged pores or a mix of these concerns!

The basic skin type categories also don’t take the degree of each skin type into consideration. For example, dry to very dry, oily to very oily or oily and dehydrated at the same time. Your skin type is rarely as simple as what the basic categories represent.

Confusing? Yes! But knowing your skin type is exceptionally important as it drives everything about the texture and types of products you should use. The more you know about your skin type, the more you'll help your skin look and feel as normal as possible. Well-balanced, healthy skin is the goal.

How to identify your skin type

Identifying your skin type is an easy process. However, before you set sail on this journey, it’s important that you cut out harsh, sensitising skin care ingredients like essential oils, fragrance and denatured alcohol and quit using physical scrubs, drying cleansers and other icky skin care products. The reason is these can impact skin and make it harder to identify your skin type.

Once you've stopped using problematic ingredients and products on your skin, your real skin type will begin to reveal itself. Now you can take a closer look at your skin’s characteristics and start seeing improvements!

Here's how to quickly and effectively identify your skin type:

1. Wash your face with a gentle cleanser. Avoid cleansers with fragrance or other sensitising ingredients. Pat your face dry.
2. Skip out on the rest of your skin care routine. Although it’s tempting, don’t apply any skin care products following washing your face as it can alter your skin and make it harder to determine your skin type.
3. Wait 15 to 30 minutes, then examine your face in the mirror.

Skin type hack: If you’re struggling to determine your skin type even after following the above steps, check out our Skin Analyzer. This quick knowledge-powered quiz uses your personal insights paired with research about skin physiology to recommend a skin care routine suited to your skin type and concerns.

If your skin:

• Quickly starts showing oil diffused over the face, you have an oily skin type.
• Starts experiencing some dryness and feels tight, you have a dry skin type.
• Begins developing oil on your T-zone (the area around your nose, chin, and central forehead) but your cheeks and jaw area start feeling slightly to moderately dry, you have a combination skin type. This is the most common skin type because everyone has more oil glands in the center of their face than on their cheeks (2).

Can skin type change?

Yes! Your skin type can change due to internal and external factors; it’s not a static experience, but shifts with changes in environment, lifestyle and age.

Some factors that can contribute to a skin type shift include:

• Environmental damage
• Intrinsic and extrinsic ageing
• Genetic factors
• Hormonal changes
• Lifestyle pivots (diet, stress, etc.)
• Medication

Because of the way skin changes, it’s important to evaluate your skin type after any of the above or if you note any differences in skin appearance or feeling.

How skin care products can hide your real skin type

Your skin care products can hide your real skin type. We touched on this briefly above, but when skin care products contain harsh, abrasive or skin-aggravating ingredients, they can trigger problems that wouldn’t normally be there.

For example, if you have dry skin, using the wrong products can make your dry, flaky skin even worse. If you have blemishes and you aren’t using products containing the critical ingredients like salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide, you’re unlikely to ever get the bumps and clogged pores under control or just make matters worse.

If you have oily skin and use emollient products, you’ll make your skin oilier. If you’re using a mix of skin care products with harsh ingredients and products that are emollient, you could be creating combination skin. This is why it’s so easy to alter your natural skin type with the wrong products!

All of this ends up being the very definition of running your skin around in circles. The merry-go-round stops now. All skin types must avoid these things:

• Denatured alcohol or SD alcohol, especially when listed among the first five ingredients
• Sensitising ingredients such as menthol, peppermint, eucalyptus, citrus oils, citrus juices, lavender and witch hazel. Non-irritating and gentle are the only appropriate choices for everyone!
• Thick, heavy occlusive emollients (unless you have extremely dry skin)
• Fragrance (natural or synthetic, even those couched with the term "essential oils")
• Abrasive scrubs
• Stiff-bristled cleansing brushes
• Harsh or drying cleansers

If you need assistance identifying skin-sensitising ingredients in your skin care products, try our Beautypedia Skin Care Ingredient Checker. This tool analyses ingredient lists and ranks individual ingredients from “best” to “worst” so you can better assess whether it’s suited for your skin type and concerns.

How to choose the best products for your skin type

When you finally discover what your skin type really is you can make better decisions about the products you should be using. Although all skin types absolutely need the same essential skin care staples such as broad-spectrum sunscreens, antioxidants, skin-replenishing ingredients and skin-restoring ingredients, the textures of skin care products need to be very different based on your skin type.

Here’s how that works:

• The best skin care products for oily skin have a light fluid, liquid, thin lotion or gel texture. Other textures (rich creams, heavy lotions) will make your skin feel oilier and risk clogging pores.
• If you have dry skin, you should only be using dry skin care products that have rich lotion, cream or velvety serum textures.
• If you require skin care products for combination skin, you may need to use a mix of products for the dry and oily areas. For dry skin, you would need more emollient products and products with the lightest weight texture are for the oily areas—but can be layered beneath products for the dry areas.

Regardless of the product type, moisturiser, toner, serum, booster or treatments, a brilliant cocktail of nourishing ingredients must be present, but the product texture is what should differ based on your skin type. And as we mentioned, Paula's Choice products are formulated to be appropriate for those with sensitive skin. Taking gentle, beautiful care of your skin is our only mission.

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References for this information:

1. American Academy of Dermatology Association, Webpage, Accessed August 2024
2. Skin Research and Technology, September 2023, ePublication