The world of facials has come a long way since the days of mud and clay masks topped with cucumber slices on eyelids. With an array of facial treatments to choose from, each serving its own purpose, the modern woman is spoilt for choice with this luxury beauty treatment that leaves you feeling pampered and spoilt.
Even so, the common facial treatment is far too often overlooked and underrated. This article explores the world of facial treatments, explaining the value and benefits of each. Whichever you choose, one thing is for certain – you will walk away glowing, feeling like a Disney princess.
Sadie is a qualified aesthetician who enjoys receiving facials as much as giving them. It is precisely because of the joy she has experienced in her own skincare routine that she ensures delivering the highest quality experience for her clients.
Opulent Aesthetics, with its professional studios in Caterham and Purley, maintains this ethos across all its service offerings, bringing sparkle and joy to your skin and life.
What is a facial?
Facials refer to skincare treatments involving cleansing, exfoliating, moisturising, and massaging the face to improve skin quality, product absorption and blood circulation.
They are typically oriented around each individual’s skin type to ensure the best results. This is because each skin type faces unique challenges. Oily skin commonly experiences clogged pores, while dry skin lacks moisture. Opulent Aesthetics recognises these nuances and adapts treatments to give your skin precisely what it needs.
What are the benefits of facial treatments?
Facial treatments enhance skin quality by removing bacteria and debris, and by promoting cell turnover and collagen production, making the skin appear more plumped and refreshed.
It is one of the simplest and most enjoyable ways to take care of your skin. By regulating the effect of oil production, increasing moisture, and removing blockages in your pores, you can make your pores smaller, reducing “breakouts” in the long term. Facials also assist with regulating hyperpigmentation and balancing your skin’s pH levels, ensuring a healthy skin dynamic.
Frequent facials assist in maintaining skin quality over the course of your life. While they are not specifically an anti-ageing treatment, they support anti-ageing efforts considerably. Think of it as refurbishing and maintenance that protects the structural integrity of your skin.
Along with other treatments like microneedling, skin booster injections, and polynucleotides, facials are a worthy device in your beauty and anti-ageing arsenal.
Must read: The Importance of Aftercare
Facial types
Even a standard facial consists of a wide range of treatments. These typically include:
- Deep cleansing – to remove debris and bacteria clogging your pores, often left behind from makeup, pollution, and beauty products that are poorly absorbed. Some facials also include the extraction of blackheads and whiteheads, often through facial steaming.
- Exfoliation – often achieved through the use of a face mask or a light chemical peel – removes dead skin cells and dry skin, leaving behind a fresh layer of skin.
- A bespoke skin mask – applied for the specific needs of your skin, whether that is to remove excess oil, or provide natural minerals to enhance skin health.
- Moisturiser – to increase your skin’s hydration and improve plumpness, leaving your skin glowing and radiant.
- Light massage – to your neck and face to improve lymphatic drainage and blood circulation, enhancing your skin’s ability to remove toxins and impurities, and absorb nutrients for collagen production.
- Application of serums and creams that suit the specific needs of your skin.
Brightening facial
This facial treatment addresses hyperpigmentation, uneven skin tones, and general dullness caused by dead skin cells through a deep cleanse and exfoliation with a gentle scrub or enzyme-rich peel. Serums containing vitamin C and niacinamides are applied to help replenish the skin. Sometimes, a face mask containing specialised ingredients that inhibit melanin production – the hormone responsible for pigmentation changes – is applied. It concludes with a quality moisturiser with SPF to improve hydration and protect you from the sun, further limiting melanin production.
A brightening facial helps to reduce dark spots, providing a more uniform complexion, and undoes some of the damage caused by photoageing (from the sun).
Complexion Clearing Facial
This facial is ideal for those prone to breakouts, especially from acne. Mainly targeted at oily skin, it aims to prevent future breakouts by managing the congestion of pores.
Complexion-clearing facials purify the skin by removing black and white heads, often through facial steaming, and a gentle peel using salicylic or glycolic acid to remove dead skin cells and unclog pores, before applying an anti-bacterial face mask to prevent further bacterial growth that exacerbates breakouts. The result is fresher, cleaner skin that is better regulated.
An oil-free moisturiser is applied to improve hydration without compromising your skin.
The complexion-clearing facial treatment is ideal for teenagers or those who have a history of acne breakouts.
Cinderella / Black Tie Facial
If you have a special event and want to make a powerful entrance, the Cinderella/Black tie facial is the ideal choice. Known as the red carpet-ready treatment, it is celebrated for instantly improving the appearance of your skin, showing off a radiant glow.
It starts with a light exfoliating peel, followed by a hydrating or oxygenating mask, lymphatic drainage massage that reduces puffiness, and sometimes includes advanced technology like LED light therapy or microcurrent treatment to tighten and tone the skin.
Smoothing and refreshing your skin, the Cinderella/Black tie facial is ideal for anyone needing an instant transformation and a facial makeover. Not only will you look and feel amazing, but others will notice it too.
Carboxytherapy Facial
Carboxytherapy is a novel and innovative treatment that utilises carbon dioxide to stimulate the skin’s natural healing and rejuvenation processes by oxygenating the skin, improving circulation.
Although it sounds complex, it is rather simple in principle. A gel containing CO2
is applied to the skin, followed by a specially designed sheet mask. This combination creates a “Bohr effect” where the body’s haemoglobin releases oxygen to the surrounding tissues in response to the high concentration of CO2. The outcome is increased blood flow, growth factors, and nutrient delivery to the skin, enhancing regeneration.
The carboxy therapy facial can help reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles and improve skin quality over time. It is definitely an invaluable treatment in your anti-ageing and beauty routine.
Final thoughts
Facials provide a step-up to your daily skincare routine. They are like the spring-clean equivalent of house-tidying. It is important to maintain your daily home skin care routine, but every so often, that deeper cleanse is not only beneficial but necessary.
Having a facial resets and refreshes your skin, bringing it back into balance. It is the underlying foundation that paves the way for all of your other treatments to be more effective, particularly your daily routine.
No single treatment provides a magic bullet, although many of them come pretty close. In reality, it is the combination of treatments over the long term that ensures your skin quality is enhanced or, at the very least, maintained. That’s because each treatment focuses on achieving a different beneficial outcome.
Facials, microneedling, skin peels, skin boosters and polynucleotide injections bring the latest advancements in beauty science, allowing you to look your best and for longer.
Opulent Aesthetics is passionate about looking and feeling beautiful, and we share that passion with you by providing the highest quality treatments that enhance not only your look, but your confidence too.
You can visit us in our professional, yet cosy studios in Purley and Caterham. Book an appointment today and discover the beauty in you.
