Among the questions most often asked by someone who has just started using a hand serum, one of the commonest is how many times a day to use it. With a face serum there is no doubt: morning and night. A serum for the hands is rinsed away with every wash, which makes the right number harder to see.
Soie's answer is: as many times as the hands are washed. But that answer lands with the same weight on someone who washes three times a day and someone who washes fifteen. This article sets out how to settle on a number, the idea of the turning points of the day, the worry about applying too often, and how to find out what your own frequency really is.
The basic rule is every wash, and the reason is the sebum film
Every time the hands are washed, the film of sebum on the backs of the hands is rinsed away. That film is a thin layer that holds water in the outer layer of the skin, and the back of the hand has little sebum to begin with and takes time to replace what it loses. Much of any serum applied earlier goes with the wash too. So the unit of frequency is not the day but the single wash.
Seen this way, the number is bound to differ from person to person. Four on a day working from home, ten on a day spent in the kitchen, more still in work that involves meeting people. Counting the washes shows how many times a day one's own hands lose their sebum film.
Three ways to set the number
Every wash is the ideal; in practice there are moments when applying is not possible. Three guides make the decision easier.
- Apply at the turning points. Getting ready in the morning, before going out, on coming home, before bed. Whatever the number of washes, these four are the ones to keep even on days when the hands are washed less often.
- Apply when the hands feel dry. Bend the back of the hand gently; if it feels tight, that is the cue. Going by feel lets the number rise and fall naturally with the season.
- Apply after long wet work or sanitiser. Detergent and alcohol take more of the sebum film than an ordinary wash does.
Put the three together and the count comes to four a day for some people and more than ten for others. Both are correct. The aim is not a high number but the number that fits one's own day.
The number also moves with the season. In the months when the air is dry, or when washing and sanitising become more frequent, the count goes up. The basic rhythm of wash, then moisturise stays the same all year; only the frequency changes.
Is there such a thing as too often?
Some people worry about applying more than ten times a day. With a hand serum whose texture leaves no stickiness, repeated applications do not build up a film on the palms or get in the way of a keyboard or a sheet of paper. Keep each application to about one pearl-sized drop and the hands stay smooth and dry however often it is used.
The thing to watch is not frequency but applying to wet hands. Serum applied over droplets evaporates with the water and leaves little sense of having been applied. Before increasing the count, check that the order of drying first and applying second is being kept. If the product does not agree with the skin, stop using it, whatever the number.
What a 30 mL bottle can tell you
Few people remember how many times a day they actually apply. This is where the rate at which the bottle empties becomes useful. A 30 mL bottle lasts around a month and a half for someone who uses it several times a day, with one or two pearl-sized drops per application. From that baseline, a bottle gone in a month means a high frequency; one that lasts three months means a low one.
If the bottle seems to be lasting too long, check whether one of the four turning points is being missed. Morning applied but not the return home; bedtime kept but going out forgotten. The missed point tends to be the same one each time, and putting a bottle there corrects the count by itself. Basin, hallway, desk, bedside: the number of places where a bottle stands sets the upper limit of the number of applications.
Another reason to count
Paying attention to the daily count changes how the washing itself is seen. Is the water too hot and the wash too long? Are the hands being rubbed dry rather than pressed? How many minutes do they stay dry and untouched afterwards? The habit of counting applications becomes a habit of looking at the hands every time they are washed.
Amounts, order and timing are brought together in our hand serum guide. Frequency, in the end, is a matter of translating one line in that guide, at the turning points of the day, into the shape of one's own day.
In Soie's hand serum
Soie's Enlight Hand Serum is a beauty serum for the hands designed to be used many times a day. It contains five ceramides and peptides (moisturising ingredients) and EGF and KGF (skin-conditioning ingredients), and leaves no stickiness once worked in. The more often it is used, the more the fragrance composed by the brand's dedicated perfumer becomes a small punctuation mark at each turning point of the day.
How many times? There are as many answers as there are pairs of hands. Count the washes, keep the turning points, check against the bottle. Out of that repetition, one's own number settles on its own.
