Why Your Skin Breaks Out After a Facial

Why Your Skin Sometimes Breaks Out After a Facial

You treat yourself to a facial expecting glowing skin, and a few days later you spot a breakout. Frustrating, and a little confusing. Before you swear off facials, here is what is probably happening, because in many cases it is not what it looks like.

Meet "purging"

There is a phenomenon estheticians call purging, and it is different from a normal breakout. Certain facial treatments, especially those that exfoliate and speed up your skin's cell turnover, can bring congestion that was already forming deep in your pores up to the surface faster than it would have arrived on its own. In other words, the facial did not create those breakouts. It pulled forward blemishes that were already on their way, getting them over with sooner.

It feels like a step backward, but it is often a sign the treatment is doing its job of clearing things out. Purging tends to show up in the areas where you usually break out, and it typically resolves faster than a normal breakout would.

Purging vs. an actual reaction

The key is telling purging apart from a genuine reaction or irritation. A few clues. Purging generally appears in your usual problem areas and clears up relatively quickly, often within a week or two. A reaction, on the other hand, tends to show up in places you do not normally break out, may come with redness, itching, stinging, or rash-like irritation, and can stick around longer. Purging is the skin clearing out. A reaction is the skin objecting to something.

If what you are seeing looks like irritation rather than your usual breakouts, that is worth flagging to your esthetician, because it may mean a product or ingredient did not agree with your skin.

How to handle it

If it is purging, the best thing you can do is be patient and gentle. Keep your routine simple, do not pick, stay consistent with cleansing and sun protection, and let it run its short course. Resist the urge to pile on harsh products to "fix" it, since that usually irritates the skin further. If you are ever unsure which you are dealing with, ask. A good esthetician would much rather you check in than quietly decide facials are not for you.

The takeaway

Breaking out after a facial is often purging, where treatment brings already-forming congestion to the surface faster, and it usually clears quickly in your normal problem areas. A true reaction looks more like irritation in unusual spots. Knowing the difference keeps a temporary, normal process from scaring you off a treatment that is actually working.