The Internet is all abuzz about why you should and shouldn’t use soap to wash your face. There are even plenty of people out there who have foregone washing altogether, except with water. At Soak Spa we value the input from a diverse array of sources when it comes to skincare, but feel compelled to weigh in from an esthetician’s point of view. This is why you should always choose a facial cleanser to clean your skin, and never soap.

1. Soap is incredibly drying. It pulls all of the water out of your skin and in doing so, upsets its elegant balance. Soap also often contains sulfates and sulfites which help with foaming but even further strip skin of its essential nutrients. This is especially important to consider when living at altitude: anything that dries out your skin even further than our already harsh environment will lead to tight, itchy skin that is more prone to breakouts and other problems.
2. Soap upsets your skin’s pH levels. Your skin’s mantle is acidic, and soap is alkaline. Adding soap to an acidic mantle inflicts an alkaline product on an acidic environment, and this in turn aggravates skin conditions and increases redness, drying, flakiness, itching and more. Your skin is supposed to be acidic, not alkaline, so putting a product on it that changes that is fundamentally harmful.
3. Soap is damaging to your skin. It leaves your skin looking dull and strips away its natural glow, because it isn’t formulated for use on facial skin. Your facial skin is much more delicate and requires more sensitive care than the skin on the rest of your body, which is what soap is designed for.

Lately, the online buzz has centered around using only water to clean your face. While water is wonderful for hydration, it simply doesn’t do enough, especially for the buildup of makeup, pollution and other environmental damage assaulting your skin on a daily basis. The most effective way to clean your skin remains a specifically formulated facial cleanser. There are two we recommend in particular at Soak Spa: Auspect’s Total Clean and Auspect’s Gentle Clean. Total Clean is formulated for most skin types, with coconut hydrofoam, natural fruit acids and milk extracts to thoroughly clean as well as superbly hydrate your skin. Gentle Clean is perfect for more sensitive skin types, with 7 different calming botanicals, including relaxing Melissa and Calendula.

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