Skip the face wash. A dermatologist says your skin might thank you.

• Many dermatologists and skincare experts don’t scrub their faces, or use a daily cleanser.
• Harsh scrubbing strips away the skin’s protective barrier, and isn’t needed most of the time.
• As winter approaches, experts say moisturizing is the essential step to prioritize.

When Ariel Ostad gets into the shower, he pretty much ignores his face. He’ll soap up quickly in the “smelly” areas of his body, including his armpits and down there, and then he’s done.

“Just rinse with water,” said Ostad, who runs a cosmetic dermatology and surgery practice on New York City’s Upper East Side, administering Botox, fillers, and treating acne, among other conditions. He says he gives patients this advice roughly “20 times a day” and sees so many with irritated skin who would do well to cut back on the daily face cleaning.

“You don’t need these cleansers unless you’re rolling in mud,” he told Business Insider. “Honestly, I’m not using anything to scrub my face.”

You certainly don’t have to shun face soap altogether as Ostad does, but most people could benefit from a gentler cleansing routine. As winter approaches, Ostad and others say keep it simple: Spend less time scrubbing your face, and it will thank you.

America is obsessed with scrubbing itself clean

The US appetite for face cleaning is large and growing. Market intelligence firm Coresight Research estimates that Americans spend roughly $31 billion annually on face wash, when you add up spending on everything from cheap drugstore foams to specialty dermatological cleanser prescriptions and private-label washes.

The market is being propped up by millennials raised on splashy Neutrogena cleanser ads, and Gen Z-ers keeping track of multi-part cleansing, scrubbing, serum-ing, eye cream-ing, patching, and moisturizing routines on TikTok. Across US retail, facewash accounts for a whopping 42% of all skincare spending, Coresight reports.

Today, more consumers are shelling out for premium active ingredients in their cleansers, analysts note, as the face-cleaning market is growing at about 5-6% — outpacing growth in the broader skincare category, according to Bank of America Global Research. People who might’ve previously upgraded from the $8.99 bottle of translucent-orange Neutrogena acne wash to a $13.99 bottle of CeraVe foaming cleanser are now opting for niche brands with higher prices, milder soaps, and seemingly “clean” ingredients.

The American Academy of Dermatology recommends a very gentle approach to cleaning your face, saying to wash it no more than twice a day with a gentle, non-abrasive cleanser, and also after any hard, sweaty work or exercise.

“Resist the temptation to scrub,” AAD says in its “Face Washing 101” tutorial.

Ostad advises that if you really must cleanse to remove dirt, sunscreen, or makeup, a brief 15-second soaping is “more than enough.”

Stop scrubbing away the natural protection on your face

Any cleanser, no matter how gentle, is designed to strip away our skin’s natural barrier. Even the gentlest of facial cleansers has surfactants inside that dissolve away the protective dead skin (and yes, also the dirt) on our faces.

America is especially harsh on our skin in this regard. In Korea, complex 10- and 12-step skincare routines typically focus more on hydrating than cleansing. In France, where the tap water can be especially hard and rich in minerals like calcium, World War I pharmacists developed gentle micellar water splashes and hydrating sprays to clean the skin without soap. To this day, many women skip some daily face-cleaning at the sink in favor of these gentler face splashes.

David Futoran, the founder of virtual dermatology clinic Honeydew, used to be one of those guys doing the most to get clear skin, including harsh benzoyl peroxide cleansers and sulfide wipes to clear away dead skin and oil. But since he partnered with his long-time dermatologist and opened up a telehealth practice for treating acne and other skin conditions, his own routine has gotten much, much simpler.

“Overall thesis: less is more,” Futoran said. “The more products you have, the more likely you have something that you’re irritated by. It becomes counterintuitive.”

“If I have dirt on my face, I will cleanse,” Futoran said. “But daily, I don’t do that. I found it really dries my skin.

As Futoran has learned more about skin health, he’s started taking a far gentler approach to cleaning his face, and he feels that his skin is happier for it.

Ostad says many inflammatory skin conditions are due to, or exacerbated by, overcleansing, which strips away the natural protection we have against elements like wind, cold, and dry air.

“Patients with rosacea, they get aggravation of their rosacea, people with dry skin get eczema, people with acne, their skin produces more oil to combat the dryness,” he said. “Especially as we get into the winter weather, people just wreak havoc on their skin,” Ostad said.

Moisturizing is the step you should never skip

The most important step in your skin routine, both Futoran and Ostad emphasized, is moisturizing to replace the skin’s lost barrier. It should be done as soon as you’re out of the shower or after washing or rinsing your face.

“My favorite thing after a shower is putting on moisturizer,” Futoran said. “I’ve just had water on my face, and the moisturizer locks it in.”

When choosing your moisturizer, Ostad recommends trying face creams that contain moisturizing ingredients such as niacinamide or ceramides.

“The most important step is moisturizing,” he said. “Cleansing is not actually that important. If anything, it’s harmful.”

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