Seven Steps in the Morning. Six at Night.

The short version: Seven steps in the morning, six at night, in the same order every single day. Below is exactly what that order is and why each thing sits where it does. I should say up front that I have never tested it — I follow it because it is what I was told, which is worth knowing before you take it as gospel. The rule everyone repeats turns out to be a rough stand-in for a better one.

The morning, in order

Cleanser. Toner. Aftershave. Serum. Eye cream. Moisturizer. Sunscreen.

Seven things, which I am aware is a lot more than the three I actually recommend to anyone starting. Those three are still the whole answer if you are beginning. What follows is what a routine looks like after it has grown for a few years around one specific complaint, and it is not a target.

A few notes on the ones that need explaining.

The aftershave sits third because I shave every morning, and it goes on a face that has just been scraped. I use Proraso, and after months of testing it I do now have a verdict: it takes redness down faster than nothing does. That is a smaller claim than the bottle makes, and it is the one I can actually stand behind.

The eye cream is the step I am least able to justify to you. I use one, it is the only thing on my shelf bought for a reason I cannot demonstrate, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Sunscreen is last because nothing goes on top of it. That one is not a preference.

The evening, in order

Cleanser. Toner. Retinol. Serum. Eye cream. Moisturizer.

Same sequence minus the sunscreen and the aftershave, with retinol slotted in after the toner.

The toner step is not the same product every night, which is the part most routines never explain:

• Monday to Friday — regular toner, then retinol.
• Saturday — regular toner, no retinol.
• Sunday — exfoliating toner instead of the regular one, and no retinol.

So there are two different toners doing two different jobs, and one night a week where the exfoliating one gets the space to itself. That last part matters more than the order does: putting an exfoliating toner and retinol on the same face on the same night is a reliable way to end up irritated.

What has changed since I wrote about retinol

When I wrote about starting retinol I said I had been at twice a week since March and had never graduated. That was true when I wrote it, and I am leaving it standing rather than quietly editing it — the point of writing this down as I go is that you can see where it actually went.

It is not true now. I am at five nights a week.

I got there gradually rather than in one jump — which is the advice I ignored the first time round and followed the second — and I had no irritation at any point. No redness, no peeling, nothing.

Two things about that are worth saying plainly rather than letting you infer them.

The lack of irritation is not evidence that this is safe to rush. My skin does not react to things. It never has. I have swapped cleansers, added a serum and changed sunscreen without a single bad reaction, and I have written before that this is luck rather than skill. Someone whose face does react would have found out somewhere between two nights and five, and the mark that irritation leaves lasts longer on skin like ours.

And the original argument still stands. The point of that article was that a routine you can keep doing for six months beats one you abandon in three weeks. I stayed at twice a week for months, saw my nose improve, and only increased long after that. That is not the same thing as building up quickly because a guide told you to.

The rule everyone repeats

Thinnest to thickest. Watery things first, heavy things last.

That is the rule I was given and the one I follow, and it is broadly right. Look at my order and you can see it: toner is the most liquid thing there, moisturizer is the heaviest, and they sit at opposite ends.

But texture is not actually the reason. The better version of the rule is about function: things you want absorbed go on first, because they need direct contact with skin to do anything. Those things are usually thin — so the familiar rule gets the right answer most of the time — but thinness is a side effect rather than the cause.

That distinction is worth carrying, because it tells you where to put something the rule does not obviously cover. You are not asking how runny is this. You are asking does this need to reach my skin, or is it here to sit on top.

The clearest case is an oil-based product on top of a water-based one. Put the oil down first and it forms a film the watery product underneath cannot get through. That is not a matter of a slightly weaker result — it is the second product largely not arriving.

Do you need to wait between layers?

The common advice is to leave thirty to ninety seconds between steps so each one absorbs before the next sits on top of it.

Run the arithmetic on that. Seven steps at a minute each is seven minutes standing in front of a mirror, twice a day, forever. I do the whole thing in a couple of minutes, which means I am plainly not waiting, and I have not been for the year my skin actually improved.

I am not going to tell you the advice is wrong. The mechanism behind it is reasonable, and a product that is still wet is more likely to be diluted or dragged around by the next one.

What I can tell you is that not waiting did not stop it working for me. That is one man's face rather than a study, and it does not prove waiting is useless. It does suggest the cost of skipping it is smaller than the cost of a routine so slow you start cutting steps to get out of the door.

If a pause is what turns your routine into something you resent, drop the pause.

The part I have never tested

Here is where I have to be honest about my own evidence, because I have none.

I follow this order because I was told to. I have never run it the other way round to see what happens. I have never applied moisturizer before serum for a month and compared. Not once in the year I have been running this routine consistently.

That is not laziness so much as it is the same problem this whole site keeps running into: you cannot learn anything from a routine you keep changing, and deliberately breaking a sequence that appears to be working is an expensive experiment to run on your own face.

So treat the order the way I do. It is a sensible default with a plausible mechanism behind it, followed by someone who has not personally verified it. That is a weaker claim than most routine guides make, and it is the accurate one.

The thing that actually matters more than order

I do not skip steps when I am in a hurry.

Not one, not ever, even on mornings when I am late. That sounds like discipline and it is really just that the routine has stopped being a decision — it is closer to brushing my teeth than to a project.

I am fairly confident that doing all of it in a slightly wrong order beats doing half of it in the right one. Nothing in the research I read suggests sequence matters anywhere near as much as consistency does, and the year where my skin actually changed was the year I stopped changing my mind rather than the year I optimized anything.

If you are going to spend effort somewhere, spend it there.

What I would actually tell you to do

• Start with three products, not seven. Cleanser, moisturizer, sunscreen. Order is a problem you earn by having enough products for it to be a question.
• Thin to thick is a good enough rule. Use it. Just know the real principle underneath is what needs to reach skin versus what is there to sit on top.
• Sunscreen goes last in the morning. That one is not negotiable and it is the only step with a fixed position.
• Never stack exfoliation and retinol on the same night. Give them separate days. This matters more than the order within a single evening does.
• If you increase retinol, do it slowly and mean it. I went up gradually over months and had no trouble. My skin does not react to anything, so that is not a promise I can make on your behalf.
• Do all of it badly rather than half of it perfectly. The step you skipped is doing nothing, whatever order you would have put it in.

The whole sequence takes me a couple of minutes. The reason it works is not that those minutes are arranged correctly. It is that they happen every day.