Your esthetician has probably told you to take care of the skin on your neck. Your friends have probably told you to take care of the skin on your neck. Instagram has probably told you to take care of the skin on your neck. But nothing drives the point home more than when you’re watching a movie at home with your boyfriend and when the leading actress appears, he exclaims, “Yikes... Her neck does not match her face!” (Just me?) Yep, aging hits us hard — and our décolleté even harder.
The reason for the sensitivity is largely because the skin on our neck is so much thinner than the skin on the face, which makes it more susceptible to the ravages of aging, free radicals and sun damage. Even worse, we have in recent years, unleashed a new form of damage on our neck skin, causing deeper and more pronounced horizontal lines and creases. This phenomenon, known as “tech neck,” comes from the constant bend in the neck from looking down at our various devices, mostly the cell phones in our hands. While it seems unlikely that we will move past cell phones any time soon, there are luckily some steps we can take that may help.
What Products Should I Use On My Neck?
To help keep the skin on your neck healthy, it is critical that you treat your neck as you would your face. When you wash your face, bring that cleanser down a little to get your neck. When you apply your serums and moisturizer, massage those guys into your décolleté. And most importantly, when you apply your SPF, make absolutely sure you get full coverage!
Expert advice: An important tip to take into consideration is to be careful when applying extremely active ingredients. When using retinol and acids, be sure to start gently, diluting solutions in more gentle serums or moisturizers, only a couple times a week. As you build up a tolerance, you can feel free to increase the dosage.
What Techniques & Tools Are Most Effective?
Routine adjustments can easily be made at home to keep your neck looking nice and youthful, the easiest of these being massaging during product application. This barely takes any additional time but yields lovely results in the health of your skin!
Just follow these steps:
When applying your serum and moisturizer, use gentle upward massaging pressure. Upward strokes encourage lift, just as looking downwards at your phone encourages creasing. Massage also stimulates circulation, which is critical to keeping a healthy glow and also helps ensure product penetration. Try to work mostly with your fingertips to avoid letting more products penetrate into your hands versus your neck. The popular jade roller works very well for this purpose as well.