Welcome to Ask a Derm, a series from SELF in which board-certified dermatologists answer your pressing questions about skin, hair, and nail health. For this installment, we tapped Shasa Hu, MD, the director of the cosmetic division at the University of Miami Dr. Phillip Frost Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery. Her specialties include skin cancer detection and treatment, concerns of aging and ethnic skin, and skin rejuvenation.
With some skin care ingredients, timing is everything: Tretinoin is most effective at night, for example, since light exposure can cause it to degrade. And you should aim to apply sunscreen at least 15 minutes before you head out the door so it can fully absorb (and keep you fully protected).
Another timing tip we’ve heard from derm after derm: Slather on vitamin C serum in the morning, since, as a topical antioxidant, it can help shield your skin from environmental aggressors like UV rays and air pollution. So when we started seeing a bunch of people on SkinTok breaking this golden rule and using vitamin C in their evening skin care routines, we were a little judgy at first—Uh, they’re doing it wrong. But then we got curious: Is there any benefit to using the all-star antioxidant at night? We asked Shasa Hu, MD, board-certified dermatologist and associate professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, to weigh in.
Turns out, it’s not a totally pointless move. If you apply vitamin C at night, you’ll still reap some of its rewards, Dr. Hu tells SELF—namely, its ability to help reduce hyperpigmentation and increase the production of collagen, a protein that keeps skin firm and minimizes wrinkles. But using it in the evening isn’t the smartest move, either.
Back to those antioxidant perks we mentioned above: A well-formulated vitamin C serum essentially neutralizes free radicals—volatile molecules your body creates in response to environmental hazards like air pollutants (including cigarette smoke) and UV radiation from the sun—which can damage your skin and hinder its ability to repair itself. As a result, using a vitamin C serum in the morning can help prevent sunburn (particularly if it also includes vitamin E, another standout antioxidant) and curb DNA damage from UV exposure, Dr. Hu says. It’s not a substitute for SPF by any means, she adds, but “applying vitamin C under sunscreen is like adding a booster to give your skin extra all-day protection against UV damage.”
Daytime-specific benefits aside, there are also a couple of good reasons you might want to skip vitamin C before bed. For one, if you use other potent actives in your evening routine, adding another strong antioxidant to the mix can be irritating, Dr. Hu says. Applying vitamin C at the same time as retinol or an AHA like glycolic acid, for example, may be too intense and lead to reactions like redness, stinging, dryness, and peeling—especially if you have sensitive skin.
Plus, regardless of the other ingredients in your regimen, if you use vitamin C in the morning and at night this double dose can similarly damage your skin barrier and make your face freak out, she adds. (On that note: If you want to err on the gentle side, Dr. Hu says tetrahecyldecyl ascorbate is a less irritating type of vitamin C compared to L-ascorbic acid, the purest but strongest form.)
To sum up Dr. Hu’s advice, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with applying vitamin C at night, it makes way more sense in the morning. And since we subscribe to the WWDD (what would dermatologists do?) philosophy around here, we’re going to follow her lead: “I personally use vitamin C in the morning only because I find skin care is more of a marathon than a sprint—slow and steady over time gives the best results in the long run!”
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