What To Know About The TikTok Skin Flooding Hack For Ultimate Hydration

Winter is infamous for causing a number of beauty woes, especially for the skin. Cracked knuckles and lips are common, but sometimes faces are forgotten in the battle against winter dryness. Our faces are often the most exposed part of our bodies in the winter, which can lead to flakiness and then breakouts when you overuse products to moisturize that really just end up clogging pores.

So how do you combat dry skin this winter without messing up the sensitive ecosystem of your face? There's a new TikTok hack called "skin flooding." It comes with some new tips, but there are some tried-and-true techniques involved as well. The technique is simple to pull off and doesn't actually differ that much from what many people are already doing as part of their usual skincare routine. Regardless of your skin type, skin flooding is a great technique to use if your skin is screaming for hydration. 

So how do you achieve this hack of inundating your skin with hydration? Refinery29 Beauty Director Jaqueline Kilikita breaks down the concept of skin flooding on TikTok, although there is no official trend name just yet. Basically, after cleansing your skin, you add hyaluronic acid serum and then niacinamide on top of that while the skin is still slightly wet, so don't dry your skin too much after cleansing it. After these two serums, make sure to use a hydrating moisturizer, especially one with SPF during the day.

So, what does all of this do for dry skin? As Healthline reports, hyaluronic acid is known to be a good hydration tool for the skin. The body naturally produces hyaluronic acid, but makes less as you get older. The point of using products containing this acid is to give your body some of what it's lost. "In skin care products, hyaluronic acid is used as a humectant — a substance that helps the skin hold on to water," board-certified dermatologist Fayne Frey, M.D., told the website.

Frey noted that hydrating the skin with products containing this molecule helps the appearance of the skin as well. You do, however, have to make sure you use products with less than 2% hyaluronic acid so it's not too powerful and irritating.

Similarly, niacinamide is a vitamin used to minimize pores, restore hydration loss, and even out skin tone, per Paula's Choice.

The reason this technique is called "skin flooding" is due to the fact that the damp skin in conjunction with the products and overall goal of giving your face a ton of hydration is a sort of flooding effect. You're dowsing yourself with moisture in hopes to override the winter dryness. As Healthline explains, hyaluronic acid holds onto moisture really well, so the products used in the hack amplify its benefits.

Skin flooding is very similar to moisture sandwiching. According to Camille Styles, this trend simply involves layering your skincare products to fend off dry skin, adding a spritz of hydrating mist in between each product. An optional step in the process is locking in your products with an occlusive barrier, such as Vaseline, which is not recommended for those with acne-prone or oily skin.

If you're feeling especially dry this winter, try out skin flooding for yourself and reap the benefits of this moisture-bomb trend.