June. The hand gripping the umbrella is damp. You reach the station, wipe your hands on a handkerchief and pass through the gate. The air is as humid as it could be, and yet the backs of your hands feel rough. This is the contradiction of hands in the rainy season.
It is natural to assume that skin cannot dry out when humidity is high. But the hands live under rather different conditions from the face or the body. They are washed many times a day, soaked, wiped, and held in the stream of an air conditioner. This is why the reading on a hygrometer and the feel of the hands so often disagree.
This article sets out why hands dry out during the rainy season and proposes a hand beauty routine for these weeks in particular. The key is to keep hands feeling clean while moisturising them without any stickiness.
Four reasons hands dry out in damp air
No single factor is responsible. Several small burdens accumulate, and one day the backs of the hands are rough.
- Washing more often. Wanting to rinse away the clammy feeling, people wash their hands more often without noticing. Each wash removes the sebum film, upsetting the balance between the water held in the stratum corneum and the film that covers it.
- Evaporating sweat. In the muggy heat the hands sweat too, and as that sweat dries it carries moisture out of the skin with it. Hands that have sweated are the hands that dry out afterwards.
- Air conditioning. The air in trains and offices is a dry air, quite separate from the humidity outdoors. The hands are always on the outside of the body, and they meet that cold stream directly. Long hours at a computer and air conditioning are said to slow circulation, with dullness and dryness tending to follow.
- Left wet, then rubbed. Drips from the umbrella, a damp handkerchief, a towel used many times over. Hands are left wet or rubbed hard. Friction is a real burden on the thin skin of the back of the hand.
High humidity cancels none of this. If anything, the damp sensation produces a false sense that the hands are not dry, and moisturising slips down the list.
Clean, without stripping
Washing less often is not realistic in the rainy season. What matters is how you wash and what you do in the thirty seconds afterwards.
Keep the water lukewarm rather than hot, because hot water removes sebum and breaks down the moisture barrier. Choose a soap that is not harshly cleansing, wash with a cushion of foam, and rinse thoroughly. Pat dry with a towel rather than rubbing, and leave no drops behind: wet hands exposed to air conditioning dry out faster still.
Choosing a hand soap formulated to moisturise with every wash has particular value in this season. It makes the tight feeling after washing far less noticeable and suits anyone who washes frequently. A soft foam, and a fragrance that lingers in the washroom, also lift the mood of a damp, grey month.
The condition: moisturising without stickiness
Moisturising in the rainy season comes with a condition. It must not feel sticky. On a muggy day few people want to apply a heavy cream, and the usual result is that moisturising stops altogether.
This is where the serum form earns its place. A hand serum built mainly on water and beauty ingredients sinks in the moment it touches the fingertips and leaves nothing behind. After washing, take one or two pearl-sized drops onto the back of one hand and work it over both hands, between the fingers and around the nails. You can pick up a phone or a document at once.
Serum alone for lightness during the day; serum followed by a cream, if you feel you need one, at night when air-conditioned hands feel parched. With this division, moisturising need not be abandoned even in the heat.
Clean hands and moisturised hands are not opposites. In this season people often feel they must choose between the two, washing away the clamminess and then leaving the skin bare so as not to feel coated again. A light serum resolves the dilemma: the hands feel fresh and dry to the touch within moments, yet the stratum corneum has been given back what the wash took away. Fragrance helps here too, since a soft scent at the hands reads as cleanliness rather than as something applied.
One bottle at the desk, one in the bag
A 30 mL bottle fits a desk drawer or a handbag. When the office air conditioning makes your hands feel dry, or when you wash your hands away from home, apply it there and then. In the rainy season, hand beauty is sustained by frequency.
A habit that is not misled by humidity
The basic sequence, wash and then moisturise, is the same all year round. In dry seasons, but also in any period when hands are washed more often, the number of times you use a hand serum should rise. The rainy season is precisely such a period.
Judge by touching the back of your own hand, not by reading a hygrometer. That is the first step of hand beauty for these weeks. Seasonal guidance is gathered in our hand beauty guide.
With Soie's soap and serum
Soie's Moist Fragrance Hand & Body Soap contains moisturising ingredients such as glycerin and aloe vera leaf juice and is formulated to moisturise with every wash. Enlight Hand Serum contains five ceramides and peptides (moisturising ingredients) in a texture that leaves no stickiness, making it easy to use during the humid daytime hours.
Even in a damp season, the hands are asking for moisture. The soap is introduced on the Moist Fragrance Hand & Body Soap page.
