My DIY Retinol Home Peel

This is my At-Home Retinol Peel Experience (please do not take this as medical advice)

Like spring cleaning, but for your face.

With the lack of face to face human contact and no travel plans in sight, what a perfect time to experiment with new skin care.

You may have seen this floating around the internet over the last few weeks, a way to use skincare products that you can get at home (or may already have at home) in a more intensive way: the at-home retinol stimulation peel.

Why would I want to undergo an at home peel? Well for starters, there aren’t a lot of other options at the moment. I try to get in some form of facial treatment every 6 weeks, whether that be a peel, Hydrafacial, or microneedling. Given that it could be a while before I can get a professional treatment again, this allows me to stay on top of my skin care routine from the comfort of home. Secondly, retinol is a power house ingredient that addresses a number of my skincare concerns including hyperpigmentation, acne, photo-damage, and last but not least fines lines and wrinkles.

This at-home peel is customizable and can be mild, moderate, or intense depending on the amount of retinol used and the number of days you continue for. You can also stop at anytime if things get too intense.

Since I have had many peels in the past, use a retinol regularly, and have no where to be for at least the next 2 weeks (2 months??), I decided to go for it and do the aggressive peel. 5 pumps of 1% retinol, day and night, for 5 days.

My routine looked something like this:
AM: Cleanser, apply alpha hydroxy acid (AHA) of choice (eg. glycolic or lactic acid), protective serum, retinol, moisturizer, sunscreen
PM: Cleanser, AHA, protective serum, retinol, moisturizer

Day 1:
All in all not much to report on day 1, except that it feels weird putting retinol on in the daytime as it’s usually reserved for nighttime application only. This brings up the very important point that if you do this peel at-home, even if you’re only staying indoors, you MUST use sunscreen. Retinol increases cellular turn over so you need to protect that fresh fresh skin and also protect the retinol as it breaks down with UV rays.

Day 2:
My skin is definitely feeling a bit dry and red in some places. Overall things are just starting to feel a bit itchy and by the PM skincare routine, I can definitely feel the “activity” aka burn of the products.

Day 3:
Woke up this morning with my face feeling pretty tight and dry. I may or may not have teared up doing my skincare routine this AM. That sh*t is spicy. The good news is that at least it’s pretty short lived. After a few deep breaths and a count to 10, the burning subsides, at least until I get to the next step. This is definitely the last time I will be using my AHA solution.

Day 4:
I am red, and flaky, and just generally not looking very cute. My boyfriend continues to ask if my face hurts lol, but I carry on. At this point, every thing I put on my face is VERY SPICY, including my moisturizer: it hurts, but then feels sooo much better. Maybe this is what they mean when they say beauty is pain.

Day 5:
The redness and flakiness continues, I don’t think that’s it’s any worse than day 4 though. Applying anything to my face continues to feel very spicy. This is perhaps the most I’ve cried in years, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Day 6 & 7:
Things will get worse before they get better. As expected my skin is still very dry, red, and flaky. My under eyes and neck have gotten the worst of it, but also what I would consider my areas of concern so I’m excited for all that cellular turnover. Peel baby, peel.

Day 8 & on:
My skin is essentially back to normal, but renewed for sure (glowing skin with no where to be). For anyone that has had a medical grade peel before, I think the results are similar…but not quite as good, making this an excellent solution while we’re all stuck at home, but not a replacement for an in-office treatment.

My takeaways:

1. Easy at-home procedure that (*almost) anyone can do….remember this is not medical advice.
2. *probably not for everyone. If you have sensitive skin, rosacea, very inflamed acne, or any other active skin conditions, this is probably not for you and you should likely only undertake medically supervised in office peels.
3. Even if you don’t have sensitive skin, proceed with caution. More is not necessarily better. If you’re new to using active ingredients or peels, start low and go slow (eg. 3 pumps of retinol, for 3 days AM/PM, or perhaps PM only). STOP if it is too intense.
4. Use good products. When trying something more aggressive like this at home, only use professional, medical grade skincare. This is a very delicate time for your skin and not the time to skimp on the good stuff. If purchasing these products for the first time, know that you will get several at-home peel treatments out of them, or that they can just continue to be used as a part of your everyday skincare routine.

What you’ll need if doing this at home:

AHA:
https://www.alumiermd.ca/products/bright-clear-solution-13404
Protective serum:
https://www.alumiermd.ca/products/ultimate-boost-serum?taxon_id=18
Retinol:
https://www.alumiermd.ca/products/retinol-resurfacing-serum-1-0?taxon_id=18
Moisturizer:
https://www.alumiermd.ca/products/recovery-balm
Sunscreen:
https://www.alumiermd.ca/products/sheer-hydration-broad-spectrum-sunscreen-spf-40?taxon_id=19

You can order Alumier products through us using the following link:

http://www.alumiermd.ca/join?code=3E83F559