The pillowcase I finally changed

I used to change my pillowcase every two weeks. Sometimes longer. The pillowcase did not visibly need changing, and the rest of the bedding had a different schedule, and the pillowcase quietly went weeks at a time accumulating face oil and product residue and whatever skin cells the night had shed.

Then about a year ago a friend who works in cosmetic dermatology mentioned, in a slightly horrified way, that she changed her pillowcase every two days. Every two days. The number sounded extreme. She explained: the pillowcase is the surface that is in contact with the skin of the face for the largest single block of time in a twenty-four hour day, and the accumulated oil and bacteria on a five-day-old pillowcase are doing more for the small persistent skin problems than most people realise.

What I do now

I have eight pillowcases. They rotate. Each one gets used for two nights and then goes in the wash. The change takes thirty seconds. The wash happens once a week with the rest of the white laundry. The cost of this was the cost of buying four additional cotton pillowcases — about thirty euros total — and the small additional load of laundry.

Within about a month the small persistent breakouts along my jawline, which I had blamed on a half-dozen things and had been treating with various spot products, were gone. Not improved. Gone. The pillowcase had been the cause. The skincare had been the chasing of a problem that was being re-created every night by the surface my face was pressed against.

On the silk question

I tried silk for a few months because I had been reading about it in skincare circles for years. The argument is that silk causes less friction on the skin and the hair, and is more breathable, and is gentler for the same reasons that silk pyjamas are more comfortable than cotton ones.

I am not sure. The silk pillowcase I tried was beautiful, and felt nice against the face, and was very expensive. After three months I could not see any difference between the nights I slept on silk and the nights I slept on cotton. The cotton was costing me four euros a pillowcase. The silk was costing me sixty. I went back to cotton.

I am open to being wrong about this. People with very fine hair report a real difference with silk and I believe them. For my skin, on its own, the variable that mattered was frequency of change, not fabric.

The smaller lesson

The skin is a surface and the surfaces it touches matter. The pillowcase, the bath towel, the scarf you wrap around your neck on cold mornings — these are all skincare products of a kind. The frequency of cleaning them is part of the routine even though it does not look like skincare. It is, in some cases, doing more than the products are.