Must We Turn Down the Heat?
It's freezing in Plettenberg Bay right now. Weirdly, wonderfully, relentlessly cold. We need the rain desperately, but everyone keeps saying it's not landing in the catchment areas. This all leaves me cold, confused and disheartened
My one wish was a long, hot shower with lots of AYA Nourishing Oil, smothering and nourishing my skin. The kind that fogs up the mirror and fixes everything, at least temporarily. And then the storm knocked out power.
So here I sit, cold and unwashed, possibly a little smelly, doing my best impression of a grateful person - because honestly, a freezing morning and a powerless geyser are still pretty small problems in the bigger picture. I know this. I'm working on feeling it.
In between catastrophising about the cold, I remembered something I'd seen on Instagram: a well-known skincare expert warning that hot water on the face can cause broken capillaries, redness, and dehydration. Lukewarm only, she said. And whatever you do, don't wash your face in the shower; the temperature your body is comfortable with is too hot for your face. I wondered about this in light of my current challenges, so I went down the rabbit hole. And the irony that I'm about to make a case against hot water while desperately wanting a scalding shower is not lost on me at all.
Hot Showers and Your Face - A Complicated Relationship
Here's the thing nobody tells you when they hand down the "wash your face twice a day" advice: they don't specify the temperature, and the temperature turns out to be the whole point.
Hot running water feels wonderful. It also strips our acid mantle, which our skin spent all night carefully rebuilding. This is the thin, slightly acidic film that sits on the surface of your skin, part sebum, part sweat, entirely essential. It is your skin's first line of defence: against bacteria, against environmental damage, against moisture loss. And when it is repeatedly disrupted, your skin's microbiome, the delicate community of bacteria that keeps skin balanced, takes the hit too. This isn't just a theory; the science backs it up: hot water disrupts the skin's natural processes efficiently.
Beneath the acid mantle sits the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of skin, built from layers of dead skin cells packed together with lipids, the fats that make the whole structure waterproof and protective. This is the lipid barrier. Hot water removes surface oils and then penetrates into that lipid layer, pulling the fats apart and disrupting the structure our skin uses to retain moisture. The result is transepidermal water loss, our skin losing water to the air faster than it can replace it. In winter, when the air is already dry, this compounds quickly.
But it's actually more than just the heat. There's also pressure, duration, and a calibration problem: we set our shower temperature based on how it feels on our bodies - our backs, our shoulders, our arms. But we never consulted our face. When was the last time you went face-first into a hot, steaming shower? I always start with my toes. The facial skin is thinner, more vascular, and considerably more reactive than the skin on our bodies. What feels perfectly comfortable on your shoulders is genuinely too hot for your face.
This gets even trickier when someone has rosacea or visible broken capillaries. Hot water causes vasodilation, and the blood vessels near the skin's surface expand rapidly. Over time, repeated hot showers cause the capillaries to lose their ability to contract again. And so the redness that follows isn't just temporary flushing; it becomes structural. For anyone managing rosacea or sensitive skin, a gentle, fragrance-free, natural sensitive skin balm used after cleansing is a far kinder choice than anything applied to heat-stressed skin.
Here is the thing: our skin doesn't need steaming hot water to get clean. AYA Cleansing Balm melts away everything the day leaves behind: sunscreen, makeup, pollution, and sebum. Massage it in, remove with a lukewarm, damp cloth, done. Your acid mantle stays intact. Your lipid barrier thanks you. And your skin gets to start the day with its defences still up.
Face Steaming - The Complicated Middle Ground
As a teenager with troubled skin, I spent many hours dragged off to the beautician, subjected to hot face steaming. For me, an experience I found deeply unpleasant and slightly suffocating. When I went down the rabbit hole on hot water and your face, I was so hoping facial steaming would be kicked to the kerb. What I found instead was that face steaming sits in an entirely different category; it's not the villain I was hoping it would be. Surprisingly, that's actually the interesting part.
Unlike hot running water, steam doesn't hit your face with pressure or friction. It's ambient heat, it surrounds rather than strikes. And that distinction matters more than it might seem. Steaming has been used across cultures for centuries, from the hammams of North Africa and the Middle East to traditional Korean beauty rituals to the good old-fashioned bowl-over-the-head-with-a-towel that our grandmothers swore by. There is clearly something to it, or it wouldn't have survived this long.
What steaming actually does is cause mild, temporary vasodilation, the same expansion of blood vessels that makes hot running water problematic, but in a more controlled, gentler way. The capillaries near the skin's surface open slightly, circulation increases, and the stratum corneum softens temporarily. This is why steaming has traditionally been used as a prep step before extractions or masks; an open, softened barrier absorbs what follows far more effectively.
So far so good. But there is always a catch. Steaming is not universally beneficial. For anyone with rosacea, visible broken capillaries, or highly reactive, sensitive skin, any heat-induced vasodilation is a risk; the same structural redness problem mentioned above applies. Duration and distance matter enormously, too. Brief exposure at a safe distance is very different from hovering over a boiling pot for twenty minutes, which, speaking from dramatic teenage experience, I can confirm, helps nobody.
The real value of steaming isn't only the steam itself, it's what you do for your skin in the two minutes immediately afterwards. Primed, softened skin is the most receptive skin. This is exactly when a few drops of AYA Nourishing Oil or the SOS Serum come into their own magic. Natural anti-inflammatory ingredients, skin barrier protection, and fermented papaya work with skin that is genuinely ready to receive them. Steam creates a small window. I'll leave it to you to decide if it's worth it.
Saunas - Surprisingly, the Most Defensible of the Three
And here it is, my reality: menopause. While in my teens, I wasn't a fan of steaming, in my fifties, my dislike of heat has taken a whole new level. The burning inferno of menopause can do this. So my idea of a living hell is a sauna, the heat is relentlessly intense, the environment is extreme, and if hot showers are problematic, surely sitting in a wooden box at 80 degrees is catastrophic for your skin? As it turns out, no. And the reason why genuinely fascinates me, to the point I might even consider trying one.
The key difference is contact. Hot running water physically strikes the face, strips oils through friction and pressure, and dissolves the acid mantle on impact. A sauna does none of this. The heat is dry and ambient; it surrounds you rather than assaults you. And crucially, there is no water contact stripping the lipid barrier. What happens instead is something your skin is actually designed for: you sweat.
Sweating is one of the skin's oldest and most intelligent self-cleansing mechanisms. As core temperature rises, sebum production increases slightly, pores open, and the body begins to flush impurities from within. This is the skin doing exactly what it was built to do. The practice of using heat this way spans every major ancient culture: Finnish saunas, Roman thermae, Japanese mushi-buro steam rooms, and Indigenous sweat lodges. Thousands of years of cross-cultural agreement are just truly inspiring.
The vasodilation that happens in a sauna is also more gradual and more controlled than the sudden heat shock of a hot shower. Circulation increases, lymphatic drainage is stimulated, and skin that has been gently warmed from within is primed and receptive in a way that heat-stressed skin simply isn't. So this is, in fact, the ideal moment for enzymatic skin cell renewal, when natural anti-inflammatory ingredients and fermented papaya enzymes can work with skin that is open, clean, and genuinely ready.
And then there is the cold. And I wrote about it in The Boiled Egg and The Beauty Secret, but the real magic happens in the contrast between heat and cold. The sauna opens everything up. The cold closes it down. Repeat. That vascular pump, open, close, open, close, is one of the most effective things you can do for circulation, lymphatic function, and skin tone. The sauna is essentially just the first half of the equation.
The only caveats I read about are the same as with steaming rosacea: visible broken capillaries and highly reactive skin should be approached with caution and keep sessions short. Duration always matters. But for most people, a sauna used sensibly is not a threat to their skin. It might even be one of the better things you do for it. I'm still working up the courage to find out.
The Real Question: What Goes On Afterwards
This is where the rabbit hole comes to a successful exit, with some great insights for me. Because the temperature itself is only half the story - what you put on your skin immediately afterwards is the other half, and it matters most.
Primed, open skin is your most receptive skin. It is also, if you're not careful, your most vulnerable. This is the moment when a petroleum-based product can do the most damage, sitting on the surface, occluding rather than nourishing, blocking the very absorption you've just created the conditions for. As I've written about at length, and with considerable heat, petroleum has no place here.
What open, primed skin actually wants are bioavailable, food-grade, petroleum-free ingredients that it recognises and can use, a natural healing balm, a skin barrier repair oil, a fermented papaya serum that gets to work while the door is open. AYA Nourishing Oil, the SOS Serum, and AYA Balm were all formulated with exactly this in mind. Ingredients our skin knows what to do with.
Is Hot Water Actually Bad for Your Face?
As usual, it's all about nuance. It’s not just about heat; it's how long, what format, and, most importantly, what we put on our skin afterwards. Full frontal face hot showers may not be a good option, whereas face steaming is not a complete no, and sauna now looks quite exciting.
I started writing this cold, unwashed, possibly slightly smelly and without electricity. I'm ending it with a lukewarm cloth, a few drops of oil, and a deep and healthy respect and "appreciation for my geyser.