A night cream is a must in a skincare routine, even if you’re in your 20s (and your collagen reserves are off the charts). Beauty sleep isn’t just an idle name: often, the key to better skin is not over-applying product in the day but using a heavyweight nighttime product, so your skin can repair itself without exposure to outside elements. In your 20s, it’s mostly about prevention rather than super-targeted treatment, but it can’t hurt to have some skin-loving ingredients in your arsenal. Here are some superstar night creams that will seriously plump and replenish your skin:
If you’re looking for a moisturizing cream with minimum bells and whistles, what you need is a product with a reliable central ingredient that focuses on just one aspect of responsible skincare, like hydration or improving hyperpigmentation. Take The Body Shop’s classic Vitamin E Nourishing Night Cream ($24), for example, which uses wheat germ oil to rebuild your moisture barrier and reestablish smooth skin by the morning. It works for all skin types and is supremely nourishing without clogging pores.
If you’re looking to fill in some fine lines and smooth out the minor creases in your face, you need something so dense that your skin becomes flushed with ingredients it can use to repair and renew. Lancôme’s High Résolution Night Refill-3X ($103) is chock-full of collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid, which is used by skin cells to develop more elastic and bouncy skin with continued use.
This moisturizer is both a good all-around hydrator and anti-ager, and can be used day or night. Fresh Lotus Youth Preserve Face Cream ($56) works for all skin types, hydrates for 24 hours, and is packed with antioxidant-rich lotus root extract to help fight wrinkles. It also boosts radiance and is lightweight enough to work well as a canvas under makeup. You’ll wake up to clearer, glowier skin after using this.
For those of us with extra-finicky skin and issues like scarring and sensitivity, sometimes the best night treatment isn’t a cream but a lush, fatty oil that can deeply nourish the skin while not clogging pores. There’s really nothing quite like rosehip oil for the job, and The Ordinary’s 100% Organic Cold-Pressed Rosehip Seed Oil ($9.90) is shockingly well-priced for the benefits it delivers.
Most often, people tend to prefer nutrient-rich night creams for repair and renewal, but a skin-soother can be equally beneficial as a night treatment if you want to reset your skin from the inflammation of the day. In those cases, sometimes a light gel is much better than a cream, and Peter Thomas Roth’s Cucumber Gel Mask ($64), with its ultra-healing cocktail of cucumber, sugar maple and chamomile extracts is perfect at calming your skin and letting it breathe even as it sweats off the nasty stuff overnight.
