What are the recommended skincare products for men?Updated a year ago
The best skincare products for men will come together into an easy-to-follow routine, and they’ll keep your skin looking and feeling its best.
Face wash for men
Cleansing your face occasionally will remove debris collected over the course of the day, excess oil, and harmful bacteria from the skin. Cleansing also preps your skin to absorb whatever products you’d like to apply next.
Men often fall into one of two traps: 1) They don’t cleanse at all, which can lead to clogged pores and breakouts, or 2) They scrub with harsh products that leave the skin dehydrated, disrupt its pH, or totally strip it of oil and beneficial microbes.
That’s why using a dedicated face wash is so important. Face washes should be formulated with a low pH to maintain the skin’s healthy acidity level and a gentle blend of surfactants that clean gently without disrupting the skin’s natural protective barrier.
If your skin is oily or acne-prone, it’s important to use a facial cleanser at least once a day, in the evening, but some men prefer to cleanse twice a day. More than that and you risk significantly irritating your skin. Men with dry or sensitive skin may not need to cleanse their face as often.
We developed our Double AHA Cleanser with all of these needs in mind. The gentle formula cleanses the skin in a balanced way. It also contains lactic and glycolic acids, so it doubles as a gentle chemical exfoliant that encourages the surface layer of dead skin to shed on its own. The result is skin that’s clean but strong, and free from the flaky, pore-clogging buildup of dead skin.
Moisturizer for men
Moisturizing is an underrated but important step. Many men prefer to skip it, perhaps because of fear of breaking out or a simple distaste for the texture.
However, if you want your skin to be as resilient and healthy as possible, moisturizer is a must.
Moisturizers prevent dehydration and help reinforce the skin’s barrier by adding a layer of protection. We discuss this in detail in our guide to essential moisturizing ingredients.
Moisturized skin is better protected from inflammation. It sheds dead skin cells in a healthier way, which is important for preventing breakouts and addressing issues like texture and pigmentation. Moisturizers can also reverse skin discomfort like itchiness, tightness, or tenderness from being too dry.
While any affordable, fragrance-free moisturizer from the drugstore will probably work to keep your skin fortified without causing breakouts, the issue is that many formulas are too greasy.
At Protocol, we recently developed Water Lock — it’s a moisturizer that delivers a maximum level of hydration using a mesh of silky water-sealing molecules. It spreads over the skin easily and seals in moisture completely, but without leaving a sheen or feeling greasy.
Sunscreen for men
Even if you decide not to use anything else, sunscreen is essential, especially if you spend any time under the sun. The sun’s rays are responsible for some of the worst stuff that can happen to your skin: Sunburn, of course, but also skin cancer. On the looks front, cumulative sun exposure causes hyperpigmentation, wrinkles, and loss of firmness.
So yeah, sunscreen is important. In the morning, slapping on some sunscreen can easily be your only step. You’ll want sunscreens that feel very light and fluid, and don’t leave a noticeable residue on your skin — for that, we love Korean and Japanese sunscreens.
Treatment serums for men
While fundamental skin concerns like dehydration can be addressed with cleansing, moisturizing, and using sunscreen, specific skin concerns often require targeted treatment.
Serums are skincare products with a light and fluid texture, so they’re more effective at penetrating the top layers of the skin. This makes them the ideal delivery vehicle for most “actives” which are the skincare ingredients powerful enough to address the most common skin concerns.
There’s a dirty little secret with a lot of skincare actives, though — a lot of them are not as effective as brands will lead you to believe. And considering how expensive skincare serums can be, it makes for a lot of skincare products that we don’t buy or use at Protocol.
The most evidence-based ingredients in skincare are classified as topical drugs, like salicylic acid or retinoic acid. These types of ingredients are usually prescribed for conditions like acne.
As for ingredients available in normal skincare, we’ve only identified a handful of options with convincing evidence for noticeable results. The short list includes vitamin A, vitamin C, niacinamide, and a few exfoliating acids. But if you only had to pick one active treatment for your basic men’s skincare routine, you’d want to go with vitamin A.
There are a few types of ingredients related to vitamin A in skincare, normally referred to as retinoids. They improve the underlying reproduction and differentiation process of skin cells.
This makes for an ingredient that can soften wrinkles, increase skin firmness, fade discoloration, and reduce breakouts. In other words, it addresses almost all of the major skin concerns that most people face!
In skincare, vitamin A usually comes as retinol, but we prefer its more active form retinaldehyde, which you can find in our Enzyme-Active Retinol Serum. Also known as retinal, it’s approximately 20 times more powerful than retinol.
It’s the ultimate skin-renewing ingredient, formulated to be as bioavailable to the skin as possible, and bottled in a unique process that keeps it potent and fresh. If you want a simple skincare routine with transformative results, you’d have a hard time finding a serum more worthy of inclusion.