Toner: Is It Really Needed?

For most women skin care means cleansing, moisturizing and exfoliating, while toning doesn’t appear anywhere in the schema of things. The prime reason why using a skin toner goes almost ignored is the lack of awareness about what the toner actually does for your skin. Most women are confused whether the toner is meant to clean the skin or remove the traces of the cleansing lotion.

Skin toner has an important role to play in keeping your skin healthy, as it works towards restoring the natural pH balance of your skin. The natural pH balance of the skin is 5.5, but because the pH balance of water and the cleansers and soaps that you use vary drastically, their application on the skin tends to disturb the natural pH balance of the skin.

After every wash, your skin has to work hard to restore the natural pH levels, and it takes about 30 minutes to one hour to achieve the target. That’s where the toner comes in handy to restore the pH balance instantaneously.

Additionally, some toners perform the tasks of cleansing and exfoliating, thus giving you a skin completely free of oil, dirt and dead skin cells. But usually such toners would contain some amount of alcohol which can lead to dehydrating your skin and thus should be avoided. Drop the idea of managing cleansing, exfoliating and toning tasks with just one bottle of toner; instead buy a toner which does nothing more than restoring the pH balance of your skin.

Not wanting to spend a lot of money on the commercial toners available in the market, you could opt for natural rose water, which is gentle, chemical free and yet good at restoring the pH levels.

Once you’re through with the cleansing process, follow it with the application of a toner. And the best way to apply toner to your skin is directly using your palms instead of using cotton, because with cotton you might end up scrubbing your face skin and that certainly won’t be rewarding.