M.O. Clinical

What Does It Really Mean When a Skincare Product is “Brightening?”
As you may have realized from some of my previous blog posts, the beauty industry can be quick to hop on a trend—whether that be a hot new ingredient or a promised effect.

The word “brightening” falls into a similar predicament, in a way.

Because “brightening” can mean so many different things, many beauty brands, bloggers, etc. use the word to mean a multitude of things.

Most commonly, brightening is used to mean lightening, fading, or, at its most extreme cases, bleaching.

Brightening is also used to describe products that may block the production of pigment and/or lift pigment out of the skin (think dark spots from the sun or acne scars).

Brightening can also be used to describe products that help to increase cell turnover and therefore speed up the flaking away of damaged upper layers of the skin to reveal the beautiful baby-soft skin below (think of it as a great compliment to your exfoliator).

Because of the variety of effects that the word “brightening” is used to encompass, the most effective way to figure out what a product really does is to take a gander at the ingredients list.

But, before we get into the ingredients, let’s tackle the topic of why you may want to brighten your skin.

 

The Benefits of Brightening
As I mentioned, one of the benefits of brightening can be reduction and/or complete erasure of dark spots from scarring, acne, sun exposure, etc.

Depending on your skin type, you may be more prone to dark spots, and if that’s the case you’ll definitely benefit from brightening products or procedures.

If you suffer from a skin condition such as melasma, brightening products should always be in your arsenal, not to mention your daily skincare routine.

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Even if you don’t currently have melasma, you may suffer from melasma during pregnancy (as I did), which is where brightening products can lend a hand.

As an added bonus, most of the ingredients used in brightening products also do double-duty in that they provide moisture and antioxidants for your skin to drink up—and who among us couldn’t use some more of that?

For this reason, many women love brightening products not for their ability to fix what many women see as skin “problems,” but also to give them that glowy look that we get after a tropical vacation (or simply after we’ve actually had a full night of sleep).

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While there are a slew of benefits to brightening that can alleviate many of our most common skincare problems (especially as we get a bit older), there are a few drawbacks to brightening.

Most importantly, certain brightening products do not work as well on darker skin tones, and you have to be careful so that you don’t end up over-correcting your dark spots by making them brighter than your base skin tone.

This is one of the reasons I recommend applying a brightening product all over your face rather than only in certain problem areas.

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Another thing to look out for in brightening products is their ingredients list.

Not all brighteners are created equal, and certain ingredients and procedures have not been tested for their long-term effects on our skin, not to mention on our overall health.

This brings me to my next point—where I’ll dive deeper into which ingredients to go for and which to avoid—so keep reading!