Take your make-up off at night, it's the best thing for skin
Despite it being drummed into us that we shouldn’t sleep with our make-up at night, half of young women are still doing it once a week.
Nearly half of British women under 30 sleep admit to sleeping with their make-up on at least once a week due to a big boozy night out.
Traditional mothers’ wisdom used to say keeping make-up on overnight would age your skin by seven days.
Clearly these wise old words haven’t sunk in and 47.9% of the young women surveyed by online beauty retailer Escentual.com said they would sleep with their make-up on at least once a week, and nearly a third admitted they would sleep with their slap on twice a week.
The vast majority of the 778 women surveyed confessed it would be because they’d had a big night out and after several drinks they couldn’t be bothered to remove their make-up before going to bed.
Escentual.com beauty editor Emma Leslie said: “The younger generation of British women aren’t taking their mother’s advice to take off their make-up every night. The old adage passed down from mothers to daughters used to be that if you didn’t take off your make-up it would age you seven days, it looks like young women these days are happy to take that risk.”
Most young women admitted that they knew leaving cosmetics on would be harmful to their skin, but they estimated that it would prematurely age their face by 2.15 days on average – not seven. Even so, this would mean half of them thought they were prematurely ageing their skin by 111 days a year – over three-and-a-half months.
In addition, they admitted to other harmful side-effects – well over a third would get bad spots and acne after wearing make up to bed. Another third would end up with dry and dehydrated skin, and 13.4% revealed they would get brittle and weak eyelashes.
Most young women said they took less than ten minutes to take off their make-up and many used only two or three cleansing products, but despite this quick and easy beauty regime at least once a week they still they couldn’t be bothered to make the effort.
Escentual beauty editor Emma Leslie said: “There really is no excuse for not taking your make-up off. It doesn’t take long and it’s so important in order to keep your skin looking youthful. It’s shocking that so many young women are taking their looks for granted; previous generations of women would never have considered keeping their make-up on overnight. Young women today may well live to regret their behaviour in later years.”
And she added: “We all have late nights every now and again – and when we kick off our shoes and climb into our pyjamas, the very last thing on our mind is cleansing our skin. I’ve been so tempted to dive under the duvet in the past that I have woken up in the middle of the night with sore eyes and a smudged pillow – only to have to muster up the enthusiasm to get out of bed and head to the bathroom sink in the dead of night. So somewhere along the line, I decided to make things easier for myself…
“Cleansing doesn’t have to be a chore – it can take 30 seconds if you want it to. And whilst a good, thorough cleanse is best for your skin as a routine, the odd night of cutting corners isn’t going to hurt anyone.”
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