The order you apply things in, and which parts of it matter

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Researched. We have not used this one long enough to give you a verdict, and we would rather say so than invent one. What follows is how it works, who it suits, and what it will not do. When we have used it properly, this page carries the verdict and the date.

CeraVe Moisturizing Cream

Most advice about the order of a routine arrives as a numbered list of ten steps, presented as though every position on it were load-bearing. Almost none of it is.

There is one principle underneath the whole thing, and it is dull: thinnest to thickest.

Not because thin things are more deserving of first contact. Because of what the layers physically are. A thick cream is a film. A watery thing applied on top of a film mostly sits on the film. Applied underneath it, it is where it needs to be, and the film holds it there. That is the entire mechanism, and once you have it you can work out most orderings yourself and stop consulting charts.

What thin to thick means in practice

Water first. Then the things suspended in water. Then oils and creams. Then, in the morning, sunscreen.

If two products are both watery, they are interchangeable and you may stop thinking about them.

The orderings that genuinely matter

Sunscreen goes last. A sunscreen is tested as a film of a particular thickness sitting on the surface. Anything rubbed on top of it moves it around and thins it unevenly, and you have no way of knowing by how much. Makeup is a separate argument and one nobody is going to win, but skincare stops when the sunscreen starts.

Cleansing comes before anything you want to do work. This morning's sunscreen is, by design, still there. It is built not to go anywhere. An active applied over it in the evening is being applied to sunscreen.

Anything that stings goes on dry skin. Damp skin takes up more of whatever you put on it. That is useful under a hydrating layer and unhelpful under an acid. When an acid stings, the fix is often not a lower percentage but a properly dry face and three more minutes of patience.

There is a fourth rule people try to solve by reordering, and it cannot be solved that way: one strong thing per night. No sequence rescues a retinoid and an acid used together on skin that does not want both. It is not an ordering problem, which is why no ordering fixes it.

The orderings that do not matter

• Which of two watery serums goes first. Minutes of difference in a process measured in weeks.
• The exact number of minutes between steps. The rule is: until the previous layer stops being wet. Any specific number is somebody's guess that got written down and repeated.
• Toner, before or after. It depends entirely on what is in the toner. If it hydrates, it goes early. If it exfoliates, it is your acid step and it obeys the acid rules, whatever the label calls it. That distinction matters more than the position, and it is worth checking before you buy a jar of pre-soaked pads on the assumption that they are a gentle first step.

The step people move around and then drop

Moisturizer.

There is a widely held belief that a moisturizer applied over an active blocks it, and the conclusion people draw is to leave it out. The belief is roughly half true and the conclusion is wrong.

It does slow delivery a little. That is exactly what buffering is — moisturizer first, acid on top, or the two mixed in the palm — and it is a legitimate technique used deliberately by people who cannot take an acid neat. It reduces the sting and it reduces the effect, in that order of noticeability.

But a slightly slower routine you keep doing beats the full strength of one you abandon in week two. An exfoliating routine with no moisturizer in it has a fortnight-long gap already built into it that you have not scheduled yet, and an acid is the step that does this properly is only true of the weeks you actually use it.

The whole thing, written out

Morning: cleanse or rinse. A watery thing, if you use one. Moisturizer. Sunscreen. Stop.

Evening: take the day off your face. A watery thing. One active, if it is that active's night. Moisturizer.

That is the list. If yours is longer, the extra items are optional — which is useful to know in advance of the week you decide the whole routine is too long to bother with.

What the order will not do

• It will not make a product work that was not going to work. Sequence is not a potency setting.
• It will not stop things pilling. Pilling is usually too much product, or a slippery layer laid over a gel that had not finished drying. Use less and wait longer; that is the whole fix.
• It will not compensate for three actives. If your face is unhappy, the answer is subtraction, not rearrangement.

The thing that decides whether the order matters at all

Whether you carry it out.

An imperfect order done five nights a week beats a correct one done twice, and it is not close. Ordering is a rounding error next to attendance. The reason people obsess over it anyway is understandable: the order is a decision you make once, sitting down, with a cup of tea. Attendance is a decision you have to make again every night at eleven, when you are tired and it is warm under the duvet.

The product

It is the step this article says people shuffle around and then drop, so it may as well be a plain one. It has been on shelves a long time, the formula is unglamorous, and it is cheap enough that keeping a tub in two rooms is not an extravagance.

The one people are searching for is the CeraVe Moisturizing Cream.

CeraVe Moisturizing Cream

We do not print prices here, because a price we typed last month is a price that is wrong today.

Written by JamieG in Garner Town, Tennessee.