Should You Mix and Match Your Skin Care Products?

When we lay awake at night, thinking about life’s existential questions, our minds often drift to us. As in ourselves. Who we are, what we are and, more often than not, how we look are high on our list of 3am musings.

(Sound familiar? It’s good to know we’re not alone, isn’t it?!) Whilst we don’t have the answers to the “who are we” type questions, we can help out in the image stakes. We specialise in skin - more specifically skin that gets stressed out, is prone to acne or that simply loves to act contrary.


Non conformist skin is our bag, so to speak. So when it comes to those middle of the night wishes for more well behaved skin, we’re your saviour. Because, as you may or may not know, we’ve been there with the stressed out skin. We’ve suffered acne and we’ve had sleepless nights thinking about how we could soothe and calm our skin.

It turned out that the best way to calm our skin down, was to create our own skin care brand. Many a fruitless search for nourishing, gentle yet effective skin care products led us to Sönd. We created Sönd to care for skin that’s prone to acne as well as other skin conditions. It’s suitable for anyone with dry, oily, sensitive or ‘normal’ skin and helps those with acne, psoriasis, eczema and rosacea.


So it’s safe to say, we know a thing or two about skin. For that reason, so many of you, our cherished customers, come to us with skin care related questions. By far, one of the most common, is mixing skin care products and brands.


Should we mix and match our skin care products? Or should we stick to one brand? As ever, here’s all our advice, this time on the matter of mixing, all in one handy place.

All systems go!

Our collection of skin care products has been developed to work as a system. That is, all of our products are designed to work together and complement each other.


This means that starting a whole new skin care regime with us is really simple. In fact, it's the best way, if you’re looking to start from scratch.


We specialise in alkalising silica salts. We’ve added these to our skin care products because they not only nourish the skin, they support it too. Deep down in the lower layers, they work to help tackle the root causes of skin complaints such as acne and oiliness.
 That’s why we’d always recommend starting a new skin care regime with our products as they’re all going to support the work of each other. But as with all things, there is a limit to what your skin may be able to tolerate...

Don’t get overwhelmed

Overloading the skin with lots of different products, even if they’re from the same brand, can cause the skin to overreact and break out. That’s why we’d always suggest using one product at a time on your skin to start with. This way, you can be sure you’re not going to overwhelm your skin.


Our Day & Night Trio of hero products was designed for this very purpose. It consists of our Clean Slate Cream Cleanser, Sidekick Day Cream and Midnight Feast Night Cream. (All of which are also available separately.)


By using a cleanser, a day cream and a night cream, there’s no crossover of products. There’s only ever one product on your skin at any one time. It’s best to stick to this simple skin care regime of cleansing and moisturising twice a day for a few weeks whilst your skin gets used to the new products.


We’d advise this for any skin care brand or set of products, not just for ours. This is especially important if you have overly sensitive skin that tends to react to new products by breaking out or becoming more irritated.

Make sure you’re on the sensitivity go slow

If you have very sensitive skin and would like to be even more cautious, it’s best to start products in isolation for a few days at least to ensure you are not sensitive to them.


This might mean using our cleanser on it’s own and sticking to your usual day and night moisturisers for a few days. Or just using either the day or night moisturiser and keeping everything else the same until you’re sure your skin isn't going to act all contrary.
 To take things even further (you know your sensitive skin better than anyone after all), patch test first. Choose a product and use it on one area of your face for a few days. For example, you might choose our night cream, and use it on one side of your jawline or cheek.


When you’re certain your skin is loving it (which we know it will), feel free to go ahead with either all three products, or patch testing another one on another area for a while.


Our Sample Trio is ideal for this purpose, and what’s more, you can get it for the cost of P&P only, if you sign up for our subscription service!

Hello, pleased to meet you

Once your skin has gotten used to using our trio of cream cleanser and day and night creams, you can add in other products. If you did experience some initial sensitivities, after a few days or weeks, you should notice that they’ve settled down.


After two weeks of calm, non irritated skin, you may then want to try our other products. Our Refreshing Essence Toner resets the skin after cleansing and our Strength Training Serum brightens, plumps and smooths the skin.


It’s best to do things one at a time. So don’t start using our toner and face serum on the same day. Begin by using one as an addition to our trio of basic skin care. Then, if after two weeks your skin is fine, say hello to another.


That way, if your skin does start to break out, then you’ll know what product is causing it.

Overwhelm, part 2

By all means, use different skin care products and brands as part of your skin care regime, along with your Sönd products. You may have a cleanser you love or have always used, or you might like to use a product that we haven’t developed. Yet.


Just be aware of the type of product you are adding. For example, is it a retinol serum? Is it something which will make your skin slightly worse before it gets better such as a salicylic acid exfoliant?

If so, perhaps it’s best to leave your facemask out that week to help avoid overwhelm. As a general rule, don’t use any new product in the same week as any other new product. Similarly, avoid using ‘extra’ products such as masks and exfoliants in the same week as anything new.

Simplifying things with Sönd

Sönd absolutely can be used with other products, that’s perfectly fine with us. You just might need to be careful and wait a while before using other products at the same time as ours.

We wouldn’t want you to waste your efforts on trying new skin care products if using other products that don’t suit your skin (that you might not necessarily know about) are causing damage.
 We’re developing new products all the time, so if there is something that you wish we had in our range but we don’t, then watch this space. Or drop us a line and ask us if we could consider it. We’re here for your skin, and we love hearing from you!