How to use retinol in your 20s to 30s

Your skin has different needs depending on your age. And in your 20s and 30s, the goal is typically about protecting what your skin is still naturally doing well.

“In your mid-20s to early 30s is when you’re just starting to kind of have fibroblasts decrease their ability to produce collagen,” Castilla says. “So you’re losing a teeny tiny bit of collagen, but those fibroblasts are still responsive to things.

“You want to try to preserve the fibroblast function so that they’re still producing the collagen, because you want to kind of try to produce as much collagen as you can during those ages and protect your collagen, so that as those fibroblasts become less responsive with time, you just kind of have a better base.”
Castilla recommends reaching for Avène Retrinal 0.05% Multi-Corrective Cream  if you’re starting out, then moving along to the stronger Avène Retrinal 0.1% Intensive Multi-Corrective Cream. 

“It has retinal, which is the strongest kind of over-the-counter retinoid available, so it’s really effective,” she says. “It also has things that will help support the skin barrier, which is helpful, like to prevent irritation.

“Typically you want to start with something that is weaker, and so you could start with the 0.05,” Castilla says. “When you introduce it, you want to introduce it slowly, like a couple of times a week. And then you build up to every single day as your skin tolerates it. 

“In an ideal world, you would get to every single day, and you would use it every single day for a number of months. And then after that you can try, you can decrease how often you use it.”

How skincare needs change as our skin ages

As women enter their 40s and 50s, Castilla says hormonal changes are important to take note of because they can affect everything from dryness to how the skin appears over time. “It’s really common for women in their mid-40s just noticing that they’re in perimenopause to be like, ‘What happened? Like, I feel like my face just fell apart.’

“[There’s a] decrease in estrogen decreases lipid production, ceramide production, so you have increased dryness and potential for irritation,” she says. “The fibroblasts, those cells that produce the collagen, become even less responsive. And your ability, your production, and your destruction kind of change. So you’re destroying more than you’re producing.”

If this sounds familiar, Castilla recommends Medik8 Crystal Retinal. One reason is that there are six strengths, so you can start low and adjust based on previous use and on how your skin reacts.

“You can start at the lowest strength and work your way up,” says Castilla. “At this age, you want to be gentler in general with your skin barrier.” 

From there, the Medik8’s vitamin A-based formula helps decongest and firm your skin to combat  the loss your skin is going through hormonally. 

Best retinol-style product for your 60s and beyond

If your skin is doing well with Medik8’s formula, Castilla says it’s something you could use well into your 60s and 70s. 

“If someone has been tolerating it for a while, it’s possible that they can just continue,” she says. “It’s not like all these fancy products that they’re switching in and out all the time [that help the most with antiaging]. It’s the women who had a relatively healthy lifestyle, aren’t smokers, use their sunscreen and a retinoid. They look amazing into their 60s and 70s just by doing that and not necessarily doing other things.”

“Neutrogena has a retinol, versus retinaldehyde, which is kind of like a step down in strength versus the other products that I mentioned,” Castilla says. 

“They also have some different strengths and different formulations of that retinol. But that could be an option for people who, even at the lower strengths of those other products that I recommended, get irritated. This potentially can be something that they can use.”

“That’s encapsulated; it has hyaluronic acid; it has ceramides in it, so it can help kind of create a slower release of retinol into the skin, so your skin’s not seeing it all at once,” Castilla says. 

But, and probably most importantly is consistency with whatever retinol and skincare routine in general that you choose. 

“I see so many women, and the women who kind of age the best are the ones that have been most consistent with their routine for the longest amount of time,” Castilla says.