Whether it’s due to gruelling hours in the office or staying up watching Netflix, tiredness can take a toll on your skin.

Tired of constantly feeling – and looking – exhausted? From new skincare to makeup and wellness, we pull back the covers on some effective ways of coping with fatigue. It can also show on your face in the telltale sign of dull, dehydrated skin.

We share the factors that can cause a less-than-glowing complexion, and offer advice to combat it.

1. Stress and sleep

It’s no accident that a calmer lifestyle shows in your appearance. Stressed skin is highly reactive, often due to too much cortisol coursing through your system – an unfortunate reality for many in today’s busy world. This is where rest and relaxation come into the equation: sleep is vital in the journey to repairing fatigued skin. During slumber, your body is in repair mode, working to restore and replenish itself after exposure to damaging environmental factors and daily aggressors. Ideally, you should be aiming to get seven to nine hours
of sleep each night. While you sleep, your cell turnover can increase up to three times what it is during the day, so any less than the recommended amount could result in sagging skin becoming a sad reality.

2. Dehydrated skin is tired skin

There’s no denying the beauty of dewy skin that glows like it’s lit from within. And while genetics play a part, so does hydration. A complexion in need of replenishment will make itself known with fine lines, redness, tightness or a sallow tone. Proper skincare can play a big part in improving a wrung-out complexion. One of our got-to’s is Estée Lauder’s new Advanced Night Repair Intense Reset Concentrate.

3. Dial back the dullness

Tiredness can cause dull skin to look darker than it normally would. Stress and fatigue encourage our body to pump blood to our organs – our face isn’t a priority when we are in fight-or-flight mode. Thankfully, there are a number of ways the correctly prescribed skincare can tackle this problem day to day. Investigate exfoliating, brightening and hydrating products to help diminish dullness, slough off dead skin cells and offer an intense hit of hydration. Seek out serums, exfoliators, masks and moisturisers that are designed to address these issues. They can promote cell turnover and offer formulations with active ingredients to brighten, hydrate and replenish a dull complexion.

Whether you’re affected by under-eye darkness, loss of volume in the cheeks, deepening marionette lines or a jowl area that doesn’t seem to be playing ball any more, modern appearance medicine boasts treatments that can provide correction in as little as an hour. Thanks to injectable fillers such as Juvederm and Restylane, hollow areas can be treated to replace the loss of volume,plumping out deep lines and offering a fresher appearance. There’s also PRP, or platelet rich plasma, which uses platelets taken from a small sample of your own blood that are reinjected to stimulate cell rejuvenation. A process like this can be used to treat your whole face, or a specific area that is prone to showing signs of fatigue, such as the delicate skin around the eyes.

Words: Sarah Simpson, Lucy Slight & Megan Bedford

This story originally appeared in Fashion Quarterly Issue 3, 2019