How many makeup products on your dressing table, what is most often used? Toner, Liquid refreshment is often missed because it feels does not meet the practical steps. Most women prefer to use 3 in 1 cleanser or makeup remover and facial wash or soap.
What is Facial Toner?
Facial toner can refer to two things. First, it can refer to a cream or topical lotion that you apply on your face to cleanse, refresh and protect your skin (more on that below). Facial toners can come in a few different varieties including standard water-based, astringents, which are alcohol-based or fresheners, which are like astringents, only made with natural ingredients such as caffeine, chamomile tea and grapefruit extract.
The second type of facial toner is a facial toning machine. Facial toning machines work by stimulating your facial muscles with safe, electrical currents. This effectively gives you a facelift without the danger of an invasive procedure or injection. The stimulation builds up muscle volume, thereby giving your face more structure and definition. It also increases the flow of blood to your face, further helping you get that youthful look, feel and color back in no time at all.
While you can use both of these types of facial toner separately, the best results occur when you use them simultaneously. Using your facial toning machine just a few minutes a day will stimulate your muscles so your face gets more structure. Using the facial toning cream on your skin will make sure that the skin that is sitting on that beautiful structure is just as tight, smooth and beautiful.
What Does Facial Toner Do?
Of course, the toner works for all skin types, but you have to be careful to choose the right one if you have dry skin. In general, there are three types of toners that you can choose from:
- Basic facial toners cleanse your skin while keeping the pH balance correct. These prepare your skin for the rough daily activities (i.e. putting on makeup, dealing with the elements) that your face will encounter, giving it a restoration that rejuvenates your face daily.
- Astringents are alcohol-based and perform a deeper cleansing job, removing the dirt and makeup your other skin care cleansers might have missed. After the dirt and oil is removed from your pores, the alcohol in the toner closes your pores up, thereby tightening and firming your skin.
- Fresheners are pretty much like astringents except they replace the alcohol with natural ingredients such as plant oils, chamomile tea, caffeine and green tea. This is ideal for people who need the benefits of an astringent but whose skin is too sensitive for alcohol.
Now, let’s take a closer look at what toners do for your face.
What Does it Do for Your Face?
Depending on the type of face toner you purchase, it will be better at doing certain things. For instance, an astringent will cleanse your face and pores much better than a plant oil type of toner (i.e. aloe vera), but it will dry it out more than the plant oil-based toner will. Here are just a few things that skin toner will do for your face:
- It cleanses your skin deep down, removing dirt, oil and makeup from clogged pores.
- Toners also shrink your pores down after they are unclogged, thereby firming up your skin, giving it a younger, healthier look and feel.
- Restores the ideal pH balance to your skin, 5.5. This allows your skin to be resistant to harm while not drying out by adjusting the acidity level on your skin (which changes from your surroundings as well as the alkalinity of soaps and facial washes).
- Keeps the amount of oil on your face ideal, helping it to not dry out, yet stay moisturized.
- Adds a layer of protection by closing pores and tightening up the cellular gaps in your skin, making your face resistant to infections and harmful environmental contaminants you encounter every day.
What Does it Do for Your Skin?
Not to be confused, facial toners and skin toners are the same thing. Some products might be specifically for your face, but overall, all toners have the same effects on your skin. In addition to the benefits of facial toners mentioned above, you will also have:
- Moister skin thanks to toners that bind the moisture to your skin (called humectants). This is great for those with dry skin who still want the best looking skin care products on the market. Just stay away from astringents which are better for those with oily skin, looking to fight the slick on their face and cut down on acne.
- Rejuvenated, fresher skin thanks to its deep cleansing powers and skin enhancing qualities. Toners leave your face looking and feeling brand new, preventing the common signs of aging as well as blemishes and acne from occurring.
- Protection from ingrown hairs with toners that contain alpha hydroxy acids such as glycolic. This is a big problem for some people, especially men who shave, giving males a great reason to use facial toner as well.
The ingredients inside of the facial toner you purchase has different effects, benefits and drawbacks. Choosing the right one for your face will help you tackle the problem issues you’ve struggled with despite doing everything else the right way.
Are Facial Toner Machines the Same as Face Toning Creams?
Facial toner machines work differently than creams. Instead of providing a topical solution for sagging, oily skin, the machines stimulate the facial muscles to build volume and thus, firmer skin through a fuller, healthier face.
By using electrodes that hook up to your skin, tiny microcurrents are sent to key areas and muscle groups under your skin. This doesn’t hurt and you barely feel it. In fact, this is actually referred to as “face yoga” since it’s so relaxing.
The muscle groups targeted are responsible for supporting the structure of your face. As they are stimulated, they gain more muscle volume and thus, hold your entire face up more firmly and higher. It’s essentially a facelift that actually tones the muscles of your face. This gives you a younger look and feel to your skin because you are reversing years of age-related muscle loss and sag.
How to Pick It Out for Your Skin
Although many of the benefits that we will get, you also have the right to choose a toner according to skin type. Toner will do its magic for very oily skin. You can use it several times a day. Usually after rubbing toner, the skin will feel more taut and dry. For very sensitive skin, you should avoid toner with alcohol content. Now let’s find out!
Best Toner for Oily Skin
For those with oily skin, the best facial toners are going to be astringents and fresheners. Astringents are alcohol-based, meaning they are great at drying up the extra oil from your pores as it cleanses deep into the top layers of your skin. Astringent toners also tighten up and firm your skin, leaving it not only refreshed and clean, but younger looking and feeling as well.
Of course, if you have sensitive skin, you likely want to stay away from alcohol-based products such as astringents. Enter the freshener toner. Freshener toners are simply astringents but with natural ingredients and without the alcohol. We’ll get more into what to look for in your freshener ingredients below in our “best natural facial toner” section, but here’s what to look for in the best facial toners for oily skin:
- A biomedic acid formula
- Exfoliating capabilities
- Detoxifying factors
- A mattifying toner
- Micronized zinc oxide
- Olive leaf extract
Best Natural Toner
If you are looking for the natural toner, then you will want to stay away from astringents and move more towards a basic, water-based face toner or a freshener. The more vitamins and minerals that are in the toner you buy, the more soothing and rejuvenating the facial toner will be. Be sure that you are looking at the outside of the labeling to find out if the toner is for oily or dry skin.
All in all, there is a wide variety of ingredients that can go in a natural skin toner. Look at the labeling for the toner’s specialty. Here are a few great examples of ingredients in the best natural toners on the market today:
- Green tea and chamomile tea are amazing soothing cleansers.
- Mineral provide hydration for tired skin.
- Cucumber reduces puffiness while keeping your skin refreshed.
- Shea extract firms up your skin while hydrating it.
- Botanical grapefruit is a great firming agent.
- Vitamin C reduces the appearance of dark marks and helps blend discoloration.
- Aloe protects and repairs your skin.
- Ceramide hydryates your skin while leaving it silky smooth.
- Some ingredients might not sound natural (e.g. glucosamine and derived salicyclic acid) but they are and they are wonderful exfoliating and clarifying facial toners.
- Rose water tones, restores and hydrates your skin.
- Other popular ingredients include pro-vitamin B5 and allantoin.
Best Facial Toner Machines
If you’re looking for a long-lasting solution for sagging, aging skin, going with a facial toner machine might be an option worth looking into. When looking for the best facial toner machines, there are a few things that you want to keep in mind to ensure that you get the perfect blend of quality and cost-efficiency:
- The machines have microcurrent technology—if yours doesn’t, you have an outdated model.
- The machines will have high customer ratings and reviews, so start there. Look for people that have similar skin problems to you and see how each one worked for their problem areas.
- Although they are relatively new in the big scheme of things, look for brands that have been around for a while and have proven track records.
- The quality of construction materials is important. Look for a long warranty to ensure that you are getting exactly what you pay for.
In Conclusion
So in the end, what is the best one on the market? We’ve discussed a few options for different skin types already, but there are so many more such as infusions of alpha hydroxy and beta hydroxy for added skin beautification or salicylic acid to cure blemishes by penetrating the pores and clearing out dead skin cells.
The bottom line is that there is no one best facial toner overall—rather, there are many different types of skin toners out there and finding the one that’s right for your skin type is the first step. Once you’ve selected the type of skin toner you need, then it’s time to go for the best one of that type.
