The end of the toner

I had used a toner every morning and evening since I was nineteen. The product changed over the years — first a drugstore astringent, then a more expensive alcohol-free version, then an exfoliating acid toner, then a hydrating mist — but the step was a constant. After cleansing, before moisturising, there was always a toner.

Then a friend who works in cosmetic chemistry told me, over coffee, that the modern toner is, for the vast majority of skin types, an unnecessary step. The original purpose of a toner — to remove residual cleanser and to restore the skin's pH — was solved fifty years ago by the development of pH-balanced cleansers. Modern cleansers do not throw the skin out of balance. There is nothing for a toner to correct.

What I did with this information

Stopped using the toner. The next morning I went from cleanser to moisturiser with no intermediate step. I expected, having done this thing daily for two decades, that there would be some negative consequence — dryness, breakouts, a stripped feeling. There was none. My skin felt exactly the same.

Two weeks later it felt slightly better. The acid toner I had been using, which I had assumed was helping, had been mildly irritating the skin in a way that was so chronic I had not registered it. Without the daily acid input, the skin settled. The faint persistent redness around my nose, which I had assumed was just my face, faded.

What I learned about subtraction

It is the most underrated skincare move. The industry sells additions. New serums, new actives, new steps in the routine, new things to put on the face. Almost no one sells subtraction. But the most useful skincare change I have made in twenty years was removing a step, not adding one.

I have since removed two other things — the weekly chemical exfoliant, which the cosmetic chemistry friend told me was redundant with the acids that were in the rest of my routine, and the eye cream, which the same friend told me was mostly a marketing category rather than a chemically distinct product. The shelf is now down to four things, and the skin is the best it has been since I was twenty-five.

On the small psychology of doing less

It feels uncomfortable at first. The routine, however over-engineered, was a way of feeling like one was taking care of one's skin. Doing less feels like negligence. It takes a few weeks of skin not falling apart to start trusting that less is, in fact, more.

If you have a long routine and your skin is not as good as you would like it to be, try removing one step. The toner is a good place to start, if you are using one. Give it two weeks. Notice what happens. The skin, given less to react to, will often quietly improve, and you will have learned the most useful piece of skincare wisdom there is — that the face is usually trying to take care of itself, and most of what we put on it is, at best, neutral.