Kerry’s Question…I’m never exactly sure what kind of products I should be buying for my skin. How can I tell what my skin type is?
The Right Brain Answers:
Kerry, there isn’t one simple answer for you but there are plenty of places you can go online to type your skin. You might like the Mayo Clinic’s simple 3-question approach:
1) My Skin Looks -
Shiny and Supple
Dull and Tight
None of the Above
2) I’m prone to acne
Always
Sometimes
Never
3) The surface of my skin feels
Smooth
Rough and Flaky
None of the above.
Just select your answers, click calculate, and poof, out pops your skin type.
Then there’s Holistics-online.com’s 6 question quiz that goes into a little more depth. To make their determination they ask how your skin feels after you wash it, how it looks by mid-day, and how it reacts to rich overnight creams, among other questions.
But our favorite skin type site can be found at Dr. Leslie Baumann’s site. Dr. Baumann breaks skin types into 16 categories by asking four questions:
Is your skin oily or dry?
Is it sensitive or resistant?
Do you see dark patches on your face or uneven skin tone, or not?
Have you developed or are you likely to develop wrinkles?
Each answer is assigned a letter so your skin can be OSPW (O for oily, S for sensitive, P for pigmented and W for wrinkles.) Or you can be DRNT or ORNW and so on. While I won’t divulge the skin types of The Beauty Brains, I can tell you the Left Brain’s ends in W. Oooooh boy, is it a W!
Why is this our fave skin typing system? Because Dr. Baumann puts your skin type on a cool bracelet! Yes, it’s kind of geeky, but that’s what we’re all about.
So check these sites out, Kerry, and let us know your type.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s a pity the typing isn’t done objectively for things like this — I’ve seen people shriek over how blotchy and hideous there skin is, and I can’t tell what they’re complaining about. I wonder if there isn’t a way to test this sort of thing in an unbiased fashion? Scanning a photo, testing oiliness of four or five calibration pints on the face, testing skin elasticity with a pinch test or whatnot. There has to be.
There actually are test like that. BeautiControl used to have a 4 dot system, you’d stick 4 round stickers on your face, leave them for 5 minutes while answering a few questions on the card, then putting the stickers on black squares on the card. Then you match them up with a chart, add up your number. They simlified it later, with just two spots on paper that you held up to your face for a few seconds, and now have gone just to an online questionaire (http://www.beautinet.com/empowerU/eprofile/CL/home.asp). The problem I’m having with that one is if anyone says they have acne or sensitive skin, they place them in that skincare when they may just be a little of either.