Can You Combine Niacinamide and Vitamin C?
With so many active ingredients in skin care products, it can feel both difficult and overwhelming to find the right combination — and know the right order to use them for the best results.
For example, can you combine niacinamide and vitamin C? Are there any special rules that apply to using them appropriately? The answers are yes, as long as you know how to do it safely and effectively.
We’ll go over everything you need to know so that you can get all the benefits of both ingredients.
What is niacinamide?
Niacinamide (also referred to as nicotinamide) is the name for one form of vitamin B3. Niacinamide is not to be confused with niacin, which is a slightly different derivative of B3.
What are the benefits of niacinamide?
So, what does niacinamide do for your skin?
One of the biggest benefits of niacinamide is its ability to support the skin’s hydration. Not only does it provide the skin with moisture, but it can also help strengthen the moisture barrier to retain more moisture. It does this by helping your skin produce ceramides (lipids), a key component of your moisture barrier.
Niacinamide can also help reduce the look of pigmentation. In higher concentrations, niacinamide may be able to gradually reduce the appearance of dark spots and slowly fade them until they're far less noticeable. This approach takes patience, but it can be a helpful addition to other methods of managing dark spots.
Another positive benefit of niacinamide is that it may help to decrease the visibility of pores, leading to a more even skin texture. This benefit is tied to the increase in skin hydration as well, as skin with the right amount of moisture is less likely to have larger, more obvious pores.
What is vitamin C?
Vitamin C may be most well-known for being a key component in citrus fruits like lemons and oranges, but it’s also an incredibly effective skin care ingredient. In fact, vitamin C is the most abundant antioxidant that’s present in human skin.
Antioxidants perform a number of jobs in the body, but their primary job is to help support skin during exposure to free radicals. Free radicals, or unstable oxygen molecules, are one of the primary triggers for many age-related skin concerns.
What are the benefits of vitamin C?
The main reason that people add vitamin C to their skin care routine is its potential brightening properties.
If you’re stuck with a dull skin tone and uneven texture, vitamin C can help brighten things up. It’s even more beneficial when used in tandem with an exfoliant, like retinol, to help shed those old, dull skin cells even more effectively, although you'll likely use vitamin C in the morning and retinol at night.
The same process that helps vitamin C brighten and even the skin can also help reduce the look of dark spots and imperfections on the skin. Vitamin C can help the body synthesize collagen protein, which helps repair damage and keeps your skin resilient.
Vitamin C is also beneficial for sun protection in two separate ways. First, as a powerhouse antioxidant, vitamin C can help combat damage done by free radicals in the skin (which lead to issues like fine lines and wrinkles, thinning skin and hyperpigmentation). In addition, vitamin C may also be able to help boost the effectiveness of sunscreen.
Can you combine niacinamide and vitamin C?
As you can see, niacinamide and vitamin C are powerful ingredients on their own, but they can be even more effective and beneficial when combined.
However, like other active ingredients, it's key to know when and how to use both to get the most benefit from each product.
The first and most important tip we have for you is to start incorporating just one product at a time. Although it’s tempting to get excited and want to introduce multiple products all at once, using just a single new product at a time is much easier on your skin.
Plus, if you do have a reaction to either of your new products, it’s much easier to narrow down which one you may be sensitive to.
Once you’ve successfully added both niacinamide and vitamin C to your skin care routine (with no negative side effects), it’s time to learn how to layer them appropriately. But first, make sure that you start with a freshly cleansed face.
It’s crucial to clean out your pores before applying other skin care products so that the products you do apply will be able to get as deeply into the skin as possible.
After your skin is clean, dry and ready for your products, the best order of application is to start with your lightest, thinnest actives and move up to your thickest one. For example, if your vitamin C serum is thin and slides easily through your fingers and your niacinamide is in a thicker cream form, you’d start with the vitamin C.
Can you combine niacinamide and vitamin C in both your morning and evening routines?
While both of these active ingredients can be used both morning and night, there are a few caveats to take into consideration that may impact your skin’s health and their effectiveness.
One of those caveats is the use of retinol in your skin care routine. Retinol is one of the most popular active ingredients, and for good reason. Retinol is a real game-changer for helping the skin maintain a youthful appearance, supporting the turnover of skin cells to help skin appear firmer, brighter and smoother.
However, combining retinol and vitamin C can be a little too much for people with sensitive skin. It may work better to break these products up, applying your vitamin C in the morning (where it can work in tandem with your sunscreen) and your retinol at night.
On the flip side, niacinamide works great as a pre-retinol buffer to help minimize the potential for irritation.
Regardless of the order in which you choose to apply your skin care products, always make sure to end with a quality, supportive moisturizer. Moisturizing is one of the best things that you can do for your skin — both for its health and wellness as well as its appearance. Plus, moisturizer works to seal in your products so that they can make even more of a difference for your skin.
If you’re heading out the door, don’t forget to apply sunscreen. Chronic sun exposure is one of the leading triggers of age-related skin concerns. Plus, sunscreen helps to decrease your risk of developing certain cancers in the future.
What else can help your skin look its best?
A quality skin care routine made up of the right ingredients in the correct order can be an absolute game-changer for your skin, but using one in combination with the appropriate cosmetic treatments can make even more of a difference.
If you’re unfamiliar with cosmetic treatments, start with a skin care consult with one of our advanced practice providers. We can walk you through not only what skin care products would be best to help you reach your goals, but also suggest cosmetic treatments to support those goals.
A few of the cosmetic treatments we offer at Skin Pharm include:
- BBL photofacials
- Botox + Dysport injections
- Chemical peels
- Filler
- Kybella injections
- Microneedling (with or without PRP)
Each of these (as well as our other cosmetic treatments) can help treat many of the most common concerns people have about their skin — fine lines and wrinkles, areas of hyperpigmentation (dark spots), a loss of firmness and volume or a change in the skin’s tone or texture.
In summary...
Creating an effective skin care routine takes knowledge of the products and ingredients you use. Knowing if you can combine niacinamide and vitamin C, for example, can take your skin from dull to glowing with consistent application.
If you have questions about how to create your perfect skin care routine, or if you’d like more information about how cosmetic treatments can improve your skin health even further, Skin Pharm is here for you.
This article was medically reviewed by Madeline Stoffer, MSN, NP-BC, a board-certified nurse practitioner with six years of experience in cosmetic dermatology.
Sources:
Topical Vitamin C and the Skin: Mechanisms of Action and Clinical Applications | PMC
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