Summer makes two contradictory demands of the hands. You want to wear sunscreen but to layer as little as possible. You want moisture but will not tolerate a second of stickiness. A hand serum is chosen in the hot months because, as a form, it answers exactly this contradiction.
At the end of June the sun turns serious, and every building you enter is air-conditioned. Ultraviolet light outside, dry air inside. The hands travel between the two many times a day.
This article considers what it means to use a hand serum in summer from three angles: the lightness of its texture, its order with sunscreen, and how to use it in air conditioning.
What a light texture means
A hand cream is built mainly on oils; it covers the surface of the skin and prevents water from evaporating. In winter that film is a comfort. In summer it feels heavy. It mixes with sweat, turns sticky, and leaves marks on a phone screen. Many people simply give up hand cream when the heat arrives.
A hand serum is a beauty serum built mainly on water and beauty ingredients. It melts in the instant it meets the fingertips, giving moisture without leaving anything sticky behind. The summer idea of hand beauty is not to stop moisturising but to switch to a lighter form.
Lightness has a second meaning. Because nothing sticks, you can apply more often: after washing, when the hands feel dry in a cool office, when you come home. Several small applications suit summer hands better than one large one.
There is also the matter of what else the hands touch in summer: a cold glass, sunglasses, a child's hand, the strap of a bag. A film of cream picks up and transfers; a serum that has settled into the skin does not. For a season lived largely with bare hands and bare arms, that difference is felt many times a day.
The order with sunscreen
The backs of the hands are never covered by clothing and are said to receive more sun than the face. Yet sunscreen tends to stop at the face, and the backs of the hands take ultraviolet light all year round. UV is one cause of dryness and dullness, and most spots on the backs of the hands are considered to be the result of sun exposure.
The order is serum first, sunscreen second. In the morning, wash the hands, smooth in the hand serum, and once it has settled apply sunscreen to the backs of the hands as well. A hand serum has no sun-protective function of its own, so this step should never be skipped.
- In the morning, wash with lukewarm water and pat dry with a towel, leaving no drops.
- Take one or two pearl-sized drops of hand serum onto the back of one hand and work it over both hands, between the fingers and around the nails.
- Once it has settled, apply your usual sunscreen to the backs of the hands. The usual guide is SPF 30 or above, covering both UVA and UVB.
- On days spent outdoors, reapply roughly every two hours. Sunscreen comes off the hands with every wash, so after washing is the moment most easily forgotten.
One hand on the steering wheel, both hands on a bicycle's handlebars, the few minutes spent hanging out laundry. Even at home, the hands catch the sun more often than you might think. Applying sunscreen as far as the backs of the hands is the foundation of summer hand beauty. We cover sun protection for the hands more fully in our article on summer UV care for the hands.
Hands that dry out in air conditioning
Every summer brings the same remark: my hands are dry, in summer of all seasons. The cause, more often than not, is air conditioning. The air in a cooled room is dry, and the hands, always on the outside of the body, meet that stream directly. Long hours at a computer in air conditioning are said to slow circulation, and dullness and dryness tend to follow.
The answer is light moisturising during the day. Keep a 30 mL bottle on the desk and apply a little whenever the hands feel dry. Because nothing sticky remains, you can return to the keyboard straight away. The fragrance is designed to be enjoyed at the hands rather than to fill a room, so it causes no awkwardness in an office.
Then, on returning home, carry out the sequence of washing and moisturising with a little more care than usual. Rinse away the sunscreen and the sweat, wash with a soap formulated to moisturise with every wash, and smooth in the hand serum. This is the evening hour in which hands that have shuttled between sun and air conditioning all day are set in order.
Summer hand beauty in three points
Put simply, summer hand beauty comes down to three things. Keep moisturising, but in a lighter form. Layer sunscreen over the serum and reapply every two hours. In air conditioning, sustain the hands by frequency.
None of this is laborious. The basic sequence of washing and then moisturising is the same all year; summer merely adds daytime sun protection to it. If a product does not seem to suit your skin, stop using it, and if a symptom that concerns you persists, consult a dermatologist.
With Soie's hand serum
Soie's Enlight Hand Serum is a beauty serum designed only for the hands, combining EGF and KGF (skin-conditioning ingredients) with five ceramides and peptides (moisturising ingredients). Its texture, which dissolves into the skin like silk, is easy to wear in the hottest weeks, and a phone or keyboard can be used the moment you finish.
Light moisture for summer hands. The serum is described in full on the Enlight Hand Serum page.
