How to find your skin type
Your skin type describes how much oil (sebum) your skin tends to make and where. Most people fall into one of four: dry, oily, combination, or balanced.
Why it matters
Knowing your type helps you pick textures and ingredients that suit your skin instead of guessing, which can save you money and a lot of irritation.
The one thing
Do the tissue test after a clean face to see where you make oil, rather than trusting how your skin feels one random morning.
Your skin type is mostly about sebum, the oil your skin makes on its own, and how much of it shows up across your face. At Skin Bliss we sort skin into four types: dry, oily, combination, and balanced. The type you land in shapes which cleansers, moisturisers, and sunscreens tend to feel right on you.
A lot of people genuinely don't know their type, and that's normal. Most faces are a mix. Your forehead and nose might run oily while your cheeks stay drier, and the whole picture can shift with the seasons, so you may feel oilier in summer and tighter in winter.
A simple way to check at home
The tissue test takes about half an hour and tells you more than a mirror will.
- Wash your face with a gentle cleanser, pat dry, and wait 30 minutes without putting anything on.
- Press a clean tissue against one area, like your forehead.
- Hold the tissue up to the light. Oily spots show up as faint translucent patches. Note whether you see none, a little, or a lot.
- Repeat on your forehead, cheeks, nose, and chin so you can compare zones.
Reading the results: oil everywhere points to oily skin, almost no oil anywhere points to dry, oil mainly in the T-zone (forehead and nose) points to combination, and a little oil spread evenly usually means balanced.
One thing worth separating out: skin type isn't the same as being dehydrated. Type is about oil; dehydration is about water, and even oily skin can be short on water. So if your skin feels tight, that's a clue, but not the whole story.
If you'd rather skip the tissue, the Face Scanner in the Skin Bliss app reads your skin from a selfie and builds a profile for you. Either way, start from what your skin actually does, not what you assume it does.
Going deeper
Related
Oily skin is a type where the sebaceous glands make more oil (sebum) than average, which can leave the skin looking shiny or feeling greasy, especially by midday.
Dry skin is a type where the skin makes less oil (sebum) than average. With fewer of its own lipids to seal in water, it can feel tight and look a little dull or rough.
Combination skin makes more oil in some areas (usually the T-zone of forehead and nose) and less in others (often the cheeks), so different parts of your face behave differently.
Balanced skin makes a moderate, fairly even amount of oil (sebum) across the face, so it's neither noticeably oily nor noticeably dry. It's sometimes called "normal" skin.