What Will A Facial Toner Actually Do For Your Skin?

Toners are often overlooked - thought to be an optional step in a skincare routine, sought out only by those with the available counter space. But our savvy GK clients know that a good spritz should always follow cleansing, and in our 10+ years of working with your skin, we know our toners pack a heavy punch. Still on the fence? Here's what you'll gain by adding a mist to your natural skincare routine:

Toners Add Essential Hydration To The Skin 

What do we want? Moisture! When do we want it? NOW. Our toners are packed with ultra-hydrating ingredients that bind water to your skin, restoring hydration after cleansing. It's their primary function. But there's a catch: you'll only benefit from that added hydration if you follow it up with a moisturizer or oil (or both if you are dry!). Like licking your lips, most of the hydration from a toner will evaporate unless sealed in with your moisturizer. It's called Transepidermal Water Loss, and it's a real bummer, but there's an easy fix! The Takeaway: A toner provides hydration; a moisturizer locks it in. 

Face Toners Make The Rest Of Your Skincare Work Better

Making sure you apply your products in a way that optimizes them is just as important as what's in the bottle. Toners help with that optimization. They prep your skin for better absorption of your serum's powerful, active ingredients. Consider a dry sponge vs. a wet one. Your skin responds like a damp sponge once your toner has been applied, allowing your high-performance serums a smooth application and access to a deeper layer of the epidermis. In contrast, dry skin struggles to absorb a serum evenly and thoroughly. Toners also help to dissolve excess oils and stubborn makeup missed by your cleanser. So we like to think of them as excellent primers for the rest of your skincare products. The Takeaway: toners make your serums happy.

Toners Help Treat Targeted Skincare Concerns

Toners are an easy way to add active ingredients that may be missing from other steps in your daily skincare routine. Our toners are packed with high-performance ingredients used as a targeted treatment for common skincare concerns. Here are some of our favourites:

Josh Rosebrooks Daily Acid Toner is the holy grail of multi-treatment toners. Powered by glycolic fruit and flower acids, this mist works to resurface and restore the skins texture but remains gentle enough for daily use on all skin types. The results, both short and long-term, are next-level. Here's what a GK regular had to say:

Treatment: Calm
CVs Rescue + Relief spray is a deeply soothing mist that helps restore the skins pH by relieving itching, burning, irritation, and inflammation. These symptoms could be caused by sun exposure, rosacea, eczema, rashes, laser treatments, chemical peels, shaving, waxing, minor burns, and radiation treatments. This award-winning product is a sigh of relief for our clients who need it. 

Treatment: Strengthen
We talk a lot about strengthening your skins moisture barrier - most everyone could use a little boost in this department. Enter - a super hydrating fine mist from Glow Jar Beauty. This dewy French-pharmacy-inspired mist is natural, non-stripping and moisture-rich. Made with aloe, green tea extract, seaweed extract, and glycerin, it's a simple formula with impactful results and is suitable for all skin types, even the most sensitive. Très Bien!

Treatment: Balance
Our mists are formulated to rebalance the skins pH level, which is sensitive to over-cleansing and environmental stressors like free radicals. Indie Lee's CoQ10 Toner is particularly good at this job. Inspired by Japanese essences, this product is great at priming your skin as your first defence against pollution. It contains hydrating and nourishing ingredients like cooling hyaluronic acid, aloe vera and antioxidants vitamin C, cucumber extract, and papaya leaf extract. The powerhouse ingredient, though, is CoQ10 (Coenzyme Q10). Unlike some flashier ingredients, CoQ10 works behind the scenes to promote collagen and elastin production (major players in healthy aging). 

GK Pro Tip: Consistent use helps remove excess oil throughout the day, so we love the travel-size spritzer for a mess-free, mid-day pick-me-up, between Zoom meetings, or after the gym.

Treatment: Serum in a Spray
Josh Rosebrook's Hydrating Accelerator has developed quite the fanclub for its ability to deliver a vitamin cocktail that rounds out a healthy aging skincare regimen. This toner is also a great team player, wearing nicely under makeup while prepping the skin to receive and retain moisture from your serums and oils. Also ... it smells like the spaaaah. 

Treatment: Makeup Setting Spray 
Fitglow's Sea Ceramide Mist excels at many things, but makeup setting is one of its hidden talents. This natural skin toning mist from Fitglow Beauty is supercharged with sea nutrients and extra calming ceramides to rehydrate and restore skin for a calm, balanced, healthy complexion. It also promotes skin cell renewal with its protein-rich seaweed infusion. Our In-House Aesthetician (and Skin Whisperer) noticed it helps prevent her makeup from sliding, smudging, creasing, and fading, making it an excellent pick for a clean makeup setting spray.

GK Bonus Tip: Professional makeup artists won't even consider beginning a makeup application without first spritzing the skin with a toner. Why is this? Toners can help to reduce the appearance of pores and control shine. 

When & How To Apply Your Facial Toner  

How you put on your products is just as important as the products themselves. Mists are most effective as the second step in your skincare routine, applied to cleansed, exfoliated skin - when it's most permeable - before you move on to your serum. Remember, this is because they really help to support the function of all other products applied afterwards. If your skin tends to be on the dry side, something we see more of around this time of year, make a moisture sandwich! A hydrating toner can be used more than once, in-between skincare steps to hold water and moisture close to the skin and reduce transepidermal water loss. Cleanse, or double-cleanse if you wear a lot of sunscreen and makeup, then spritz, serum, spritz, moisturizer, spritz, SPF. As you move on to each step, ensure your skin is still damp from the previous step. Glazed donut skin awaits.

GK Pro Tip: For extra grime removal post-cleanse, you can apply your toner with a reusable organic cotton round for a satisfying (and sustainable) squeaky clean. Then, take that very same toner and spritz it onto the face for your boost of hydration and proceed with the rest of your skincare steps.

Toners are the unsung heroes of the natural skincare space. Instead of stripping your moisture barrier with old-school alcohol-heavy toners, today's mists act more as a skincare treatment, rebalancing pH levels post-cleanse, boosting moisture, and helping other products work their way deep down into the skin. Adding hydration to your skin before applying the rest of your skincare routine is an essential step in getting that plump, dewy, and bouncy skin we are all after. The right ingredients to look for in a toner will depend on your skin's specific needs. There is no one-size-fits-all face mist. Reach us here for your complimentary skincare analysis and give your skin a drink. Hydrated skin is healthy, happy skin.