Chemical peel aftercare and recovery

Expect tightness, redness and warmth, similar to mild sunburn. Cleanse gently with lukewarm water and a bland cleanser, use a simple moisturiser, and leave everything else out of your routine.

Stop retinoids, acids, vitamin C and any exfoliant. Do not use anything described as brightening or resurfacing. Do not have a hot shower, a sauna or a workout that makes you sweat heavily.

Flaking or peeling usually begins around day three and can last several days. Whether you peel visibly is not a measure of whether it worked — plenty of effective peels shed very little.

Do not pick, pull or help the skin off. This is the mistake that causes post-inflammatory pigmentation and, occasionally, scarring — and it is by far the most common way a good peel turns into a bad outcome.

Broad-spectrum SPF 50 every day, reapplied, for at least two weeks and ideally as a permanent habit. Freshly resurfaced skin is highly vulnerable to UV, and this matters most if you were treating pigmentation — unprotected sun exposure afterwards can leave you worse off than before.

If you are not willing to be disciplined about SPF, a peel for pigmentation is not a good use of your money and I will tell you that at consultation.

Blistering, severe pain, spreading redness, discharge, or any sign of infection. Also call if darkening appears in the treated area — early intervention on post-inflammatory pigmentation makes a real difference.

How much you visibly peel depends on the depth used, and it is worth knowing which you had, because the recoveries are not comparable.

Flaking skin is loose because the layer beneath it is not yet ready to be exposed. Pulling it away early takes living tissue with it, and that is how a treatment with essentially no scarring risk acquires one.

It is also the hardest instruction to follow, because peeling skin is physically satisfying to remove and it looks untidy for a few days. Keep it moisturised — well-hydrated skin sheds faster and looks less obviously mid-peel — and it will be gone in days rather than weeks.

And why actives have to wait

Retinoids and exfoliating acids applied to skin that is still recovering are not speeding anything up; they are a second injury layered on the first. A week off after a superficial peel, longer after a medium one, and reintroduce one product at a time rather than the whole routine at once.

The complication worth understanding before you book is post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation — a patch that heals darker than the skin around it. It is not a burn and it is not permanent, but it can take several months to fade, which is a long time to live with the opposite of what you paid for.

It is meaningfully more likely in richer skin tones, and that is a reason for a considered plan rather than a reason to avoid peels. Priming the skin beforehand, choosing a gentler depth, and being genuinely strict about sun exposure afterwards all reduce it. A practitioner who does not raise this before treating deeper skin is not assessing the risk that matters most.