After applying makeup when you wake up, should you remove it before sleeping? The history of makeup dates back to ancient Egypt when women wore eye makeup known as “mesdement,” according to Neatorama. Several millennia later, issues besides which makeup to wear include whether removing makeup at bedtime can help you sleep better like when you choose the right mattress.
Let’s take a closer look at how wearing makeup to bed actually affects your skin.
Is One Night a Big Deal?
It turns out that it is. There are times when the right lipstick, eyeliner, or blush might seem too good to remove. You also might just feel too sleepy to spend two minutes wiping, rubbing, and rising off cosmetic products.
Here’s the thing. The body’s nighttime recovery through sleep can be affected by one layer of makeup. This could result in a few spots that you have to wash off in the morning. However, if you avoid removing foundation multiple times, for example, this can result in factors like under-eye circles, eye bags, and dehydration.
Here are some of the main ways of wearing makeup to bed can affect your face:
Effects on Skin
Skin Cell Damage
When you sleep in with makeup, it can damage skin cells. The reason is stuff like air pollutants, and free-radical molecules get trapped. This can result in clogged pores, blackheads, pimples, uneven complexion, etc.
Clogged Pores
This is one of the main effects of going to bed with makeup on. The makeup blocks pores, which causes bumpy skin. If your skin is acne-prone, then there’s a chance you could experience breakouts.
Human skin is made of lots of stuff like:
- Water
- Chemicals
- Minerals
- Protein
- Lipids
Meanwhile, the pores allow people to sweat and release natural oil known as “sebum.’ So when you have clogged pores, this increases the risk of conditions like dry skin. That’s a bad thing.
Effects on Eyes and Mouth
Mascara
While mascara isn’t technically on the skin, it can cause unwanted side-effects on the eyes if you don’t remove it at bedtime. That’s because they remove the eyelashes’ natural oils.
So if you wear mascara to bed, it can cause eyelashes to become brittle and break. Besides that, a mascara eyelash can be stiff and cause other eye problems.
Besides removing the mascara, skin experts also recommend adding a moisturizer or serum to keep the tiny hairs hydrated.
Lipstick
Skin experts explain that sleeping with lipstick can cause your lips to become dry and chapped. It also doesn’t matter what kind you wear since they can all cause such results.
A better option is moisturizing lip balm. Avoiding dry/chapped lips can help you to sleep better at night like your mattress selection.
Other Skin Effects
Repair Process
Besides affecting skin cells and pores, wearing makeup to bed can also interfere with the natural process of skin repair.
A key part of the repair process is the skin releases sebum oils through the pores. This helps to protect the skin from free radicals that attract healthy cells. That, in turn, affects skin health.
Skin Regeneration
Fun Fact: The human body loses an average of up to 40,000 skin cells per day. Skin regeneration is an important process to replace them with new cells. However, when your skin pores are blocked, it slows down how many new cells your body produces.
Conclusion
Cosmetics have been part of the skin beautification process for at least 7,000 years. You should still consider removing all lipstick, mascara, and foundation at bedtime. This can help your body to hydrate skin, unclog pores, and regenerate cells. Healthy skin can provide many of the same effects of mattress selection. So make sure to take off makeup before you lie down!
Brett is a writer at ID-Mag. An enthusiast and expert when it comes to sleep products, Brett dedicates a lot of his time reading, researching, and reviewing about both traditional and emerging sleep brands that manufacture varied types of sleep products – from eco-mattresses, smart pillows to cooling sleep systems, Brett has probably reviewed them all. Brett also finds sleep especially important since he juggles a small business which he runs from home, makes sure he spends time with his daughter and he also writes during his spare time – you can definitely see that he needs a great forty winks all night, every night so he’ll make sure that you get great sleep, too!
