Essential Wellness Center Facial treatments are performed by licensed estheticians.

Benefits of facials.

Think of how you might treat your overall health: You’ll have annual checkups with a physician to address any concerns, but you might enlist the help of a dietitian and/or personal trainer to meet specific nutrition and fitness goals. With skin care, you can see a dermatologist for regular check-ins, but you might also see an esthetician to help manage the upkeep.

Estheticians manage that upkeep in a very meaningful way. Appointments are usually an hour or more, so the expert can really spend time with your skin and address any concerns or goals you have. Plus, they treat a vast range of skin types every single day, so estheticians have a repertoire of knowledge that can help you along your skin care journey.

Of course, like nutrition and fitness, it’s also up to you to put in the work. After all, you can’t completely ignore your diet and workout regimen at home and expect any miraculous changes from your dietitian or trainer. Same with skin care.

How often should you get a facial?

Generally, the pros recommend opting for a facial once a month, if you can. The skin regenerates about every 28 days. The skin cells come back and accumulate. Therefore, it’s best to treat the skin at the end of the skin-life cycle just about every month. On that note, you don’t want to get more than one facial per month, lest you overwhelm your skin. Remember: It’s a pretty deep clean.

A monthly cadence is also great for people with specific skin concerns—like acne, scarring, dryness, etc.—as you’re able to regularly check in with your esthetician and discuss results. Your esthetician will also be able to analyze your skin to determine the perfect routine for your skin, and monthly facials are a great way to see what’s working and what isn’t.

If that time frame doesn’t seem realistic for your budget or schedule, experts recommend getting a facial whenever the seasons change—so two to four times a year. The right esthetician for you will work with you on an individual schedule and honor any constraints you may have. A good esthetician should be able to curate your home care routine around how often you can or want to come in for a facial and still help you achieve your skin care goals.

Which facial is best for your concern?

Before booking a facial, it’s important to understand what you want to get out of the treatment (is it lift? Hydration? A deep clean?). Again, your esthetician will be able to tweak the best facial for your skin’s needs, but here’s what they’ll generally recommend for each concern:

1. Aging Skin
If skin aging is your main concern, you’ll want to seek rejuvenating facials that promote collagen production and increase cell turnover. Think firming or microcurrent facials to lift and tone, LED treatments (especially red LED light) to support elasticity, and lymphatic facials to improve circulation.

2. Dry Skin
For drier skin types, it’s best to do treatments, like hydrafacials, that focus on a deep clean and hydrating the skin at the same time. This treatment infuses a lot of calming ingredients like aloe, hyaluronic acid, that help calm, soothe, hydrate, and plump the skin.

3. Breakouts
Those with breakouts will want to seek decongesting acne facials to target clogged pores, as well as LED treatments to minimize acne-causing bacteria. Blue LED is often used in tandem for the best results.

If you do have active breakouts, your esthetician might also go light on the massage work or skip it entirely. This step might be omitted for those who are dealing with severe breakouts, since it may be too much stimulation.

4. Dull Skin
Typically, massage work is great for dull skin, as it stimulates blood flow, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the skin cells (resulting in a brighter glow). Estheticians are trained in facial massage to encourage brighter, glowing skin by increasing circulation.

That said, lymphatic facials (which encourage flow) are especially helpful, as are firming facials that help stimulate the muscles with sculpting tools. The vibrations also boost circulation to increase the skin’s oxygen uptake, resulting in more glowing, youthful skin. Hydrafacials can also work here since you’re infusing the pores with antioxidant-rich serums—plus, hydrated skin appears much brighter.

TYPES of Facials

Here, we have your standard facial. Every esthetician has their own unique order and products, but here’s the gist:

Skin analysis: The consult – the esthetician will begin by chatting with you and asking you questions so they can determine the best treatment plan for your skin.

Cleanse: To create a clean canvas for all treatments to follow.

Exfoliation: This can take many different forms, but a gentle exfoliating acid or enzyme peel, ultrasonic exfoliation, microdermabrasion, or bio-brasion are the most common.

Steam: To increase blood flow and make it easier for the esthetician to perform extractions.

Massage: Arguably the best part of the treatment (IMO). Techniques and timing may vary, but most estheticians will perform some sort of facial massage to promote better product absorption, encourage circulation, and sculpt the facial muscles.

Manual extractions: If you’re facing congested skin, an esthetician might perform some extractions to clear out the clogged pores. The specific order here varies.

Mask: Options vary, depending on your skin’s needs (hydrating, pore refining, etc.).

A hydrafacial combines exfoliation and hydration by using a microdermabrasion-like device that simultaneously sucks all the gunk out of pores and infuses them with nutrient-rich serum “boosters” to rejuvenate the skin.

Hydrafacials are noninvasive, and they’re gentle enough for most sensitive and acne-prone skin types to handle. This is often best for a patient with very dehydrated, dull, flaking, or otherwise tired, sallow skin that needs a deeper clean and overall replenishing refresh.

There are still some questions about how exactly low-level light therapy works, but it’s been praised by many for healing scars, promoting collagen production, and fighting bacteria. Different colors may provide different benefits, as they represent different wavelengths that enter the skin at different depths—which means they can help treat different skin concerns.

Example:

Red light supports healthy elasticity in the skin, which plumps and firms, helping to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Blue light helps to minimize blemish-causing bacteria, which helps to heal current breakouts and prevent new ones from forming.

Also called a “workout facial,” this treatment is meant to sculpt and tighten the skin. Again, many professionals will add a few minutes of facial massage to lift and tone the muscles, but a firming facial will typically involve more time with tools and perhaps devices. It lifts, sculpts, and firms the skin to help prevent sagging, using tools and devices with current and energy.

This centuries-old technique helps aid the body’s natural detox process. This unique massage technique stimulates lymph flow and enhances the clearance of accumulated waste in the body.

And because you have a high concentration of lymph nodes in your face and neck, specific movements can help encourage flow—an esthetician or licensed acupuncturist might use their hands, a gua sha stone, or facial cupping tools.

Also called a “decongesting facial” or “deep cleaning” facial, this treatment will often include extractions and a high-frequency device to kill acne-causing bacteria on contact. The former removes clogged pores, and the latter targets active blemishes.

Of course, treating acne takes balance—you don’t want to simply overwhelm the skin with peels and extractions. The goal is to remove the excess surface sebum, dead skin cells, and buildup in pores while eliminating bacteria without inducing a sebum response.