What to do when retinol tints my skin yellow?Updated a year ago
Retinol is best used at night. Exposure to the sun causes it to lose some of its efficacy, so using it before bed means that it can do a better job renewing the skin.
So at night, you’ll have to endure that bit of color on your skin. Try to avoid your skincare routine immediately before bed. If you apply your retinol serum half an hour before bed, it’ll have plenty of time to sink in, and there’s less risk that it’ll rub off on your pillowcase.
For most of our clients, the tint is usually gone by morning. If you still feel like your skin looks a little orange, though, rinse your skin with cool water and the tint will disappear. Then follow it up with your morning skincare routine steps. Easy!
Embrace the tint
We know that some of our clients don’t love the yellow tint that the Enzyme-Active Retinol Serum gives their skin. When formulating skincare, the Protocol Lab Team had to balance the idea of “cosmetic elegance” with actual results.
It’s an easy gap to bridge when moisturizing ingredients feel amazing on the skin or when soothing ingredients smell incredible. When it came to retinol, it wasn’t as easy.
We wanted to use retinal, the most powerful, transformative, bioactive form of this incredible but also difficult-to-formulate ingredient. It’s quite literally the next step from retinol, with 20x the results. It also happens to be bright orange. The only way to reduce the color would have been to dilute the retinal, thereby reducing its efficacy.
So to us, that tint is a glorious reminder that the Enzyme-Active Retinol Serum is truly the freshest, most potent form of vitamin A that you can find in skincare.
If you love results as much as we do, it’s time to embrace the tint!