Why does my skin get so dry when the heating goes on?

The heating clicks on for the first time since April and, within about a week, your shins look like a dried-up riverbed. Sound familiar? If you’ve been typing “skin dry when heating on” into your phone with one hand while scratching your forearm with the other, the short answer is that your radiators are drying the air, and the air is drying you. It’s physics.

After a few hours of working from home with the radiators on full blast, I notice the skin on my face feels dry and almost paper-thin, despite my morning ritual of slathering on serum and Tatcha Dewy Skin Cream.

Skin dry when heating on: what’s actually happening

Cold air can’t hold much water. Warm air can hold far more, which is the point Hywel Williams, professor of dermato-epidemiology at the University of Nottingham (opens in new tab), makes when he explains why summer skin tends to be better hydrated.

So, picture an ordinary October morning: 5°C outside and a damp-feeling 80% relative humidity. Pull that air indoors, heat it to 20°C, and the same small amount of water is now rattling around in air that could carry nearly three times as much. Do the sums and the relative humidity drops to roughly 30%. Nothing has been taken out of the air, it’s just been stretched thin.

Your skin notices. Its outer layer is a wall of dead cells held together with fats, and it stays supple by hanging on to water. Sit it in dry air for most of the day and that water evaporates faster, which is why skin feels tight a good while before it looks flaky.

Dr Justine Kluk of the British Association of Dermatologists (opens in new tab) has put it bluntly: “Both the winter weather and central heating strip skin of moisture, and woolly winter fabrics can cause irritation.” She calls winter a “perfect storm” for dry, irritated skin. Williams adds that skin produces less oil in the colder months anyway. So that’s less of your own oil and much drier air, both arriving in the same fortnight.

Why central heating dry skin gets worse in the shower

Here’s the unfair part. The colder it gets, the longer and hotter the shower, and a long hot soak is one of the quickest ways to undo your skin’s defences. Dr Bav Shergill, a consultant dermatologist (opens in new tab) and trustee of the British Skin Foundation, doesn’t soften it: “Avoid the temptation to have a long hot bath, as this can strip away much needed natural oil from the skin.” He’s just as firm about what happens afterwards. “Drying your skin vigorously with a towel can damage it, so pat dry and don’t rub.”

A winter dry skin routine that costs under £20

This is the whole routine. It’s four steps and one tub.

• Turn the shower down from scalding to warm and get out sooner than you’d like.

• Swap anything foamy or heavily scented for a plain, gentle wash. The NHS page notes that emollients can double as a soap substitute.

• Pat yourself dry and leave your skin a little damp.

• Get moisturiser on straight away. Shergill’s instruction is to apply it “straight after a bath or shower while the skin is still slightly damp”. That last step does most of the work. Moisturiser on damp skin traps water that’s already there, and five minutes of wandering about looking for your socks is long enough to lose it.

Which moisturiser? Well, it’s cheaper than you think. The British Association of Dermatologists’ quote on the NHS website is: “just because a cream is more expensive doesn’t mean that it is better than cheaper ones.”

A 454g tub of CeraVe Moisturising Cream £17.50 (opens in new tab) has ceramides, glycerin and hyaluronic acid in it.

E45 Cream in the 350g tub £12.99 (opens in new tab) is the old-school alternative. Both are big tubs.

For cracked knuckles and heels, a greasier ointment at bedtime is the usual pharmacy advice. (opens in new tab)

For my own dry skin in winter, I like using a richer, unscented body moisturiser straight after a shower while my skin is still damp. I find Aveeno Skin Relief Moisturising Lotion (opens in new tab) (£7.99 for 200ml) soothing, and it’s a good option if your skin feels particularly dry once the heating goes on.

One safety note that never makes it onto the packaging in big enough letters. There is a warning that (opens in new tab)fire risk applies to all emollients, so if you’re slathering it on nightly, keep your pyjamas and bedding well away from candles and open fires.

And the thermostat? Shergill’s advice is simply not to “turn the thermostat up to maximum”. A room at 19°C is kinder to your face than one at 24°C. It’s kinder to your gas bill too.

Is a humidifier for skin worth it in the UK?

Possibly, but it is worth purchasing a hygrometer first. A hygrometer is a small gadget (opens in new tab) that tells you the relative humidity in a room, and it costs a fraction of what a humidifier does.

The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers puts the comfortable range for homes at 40% to 60%. If your bedroom reads in the low 30s every evening once the radiators are on, a humidifier has a real job to do. If it reads 55%, it doesn’t, and you’ve just saved yourself the money.

That second scenario is more common here than the adverts suggest. The classic British housing complaint is damp, not dryness. Chris Michael, managing director of the dehumidifier company Meaco, told Ideal Home (opens in new tab) that “mould thrives when humidity exceeds 60%”, and councils spend a lot of effort telling people to get moisture out of their homes.

Watford Borough Council’s leaflet tells residents not to dry clothes on radiators (opens in new tab), while that NHS self-care page suggests draping a damp towel over a warm one to help your skin (opens in new tab). Both are right. It depends entirely on which problem your house has, and only the hygrometer can tell you. If the numbers say you need one, the type matters. Ultrasonic models are the ones you’ll see most, but in hard water areas they can spray minerals into the room that settle as fine white dust.

Evaporative models such as the Philips 2000 Series £69.99 (opens in new tab) keep most of those minerals in the wick. Whichever you choose, empty and refill it instead of topping up yesterday’s water, and stop if the windows start streaming.

My verdict: a humidifier is a nice extra for a properly dry bedroom, and no substitute for the tub of cream.

When it’s more than dry skin

Ordinary heating-season dryness is tight and flaky, and it usually settles once you’re moisturising properly. Some skin doesn’t play along. The NHS recommends seeing a GP if you have widespread dry, cracked or itchy skin that lasts more than two weeks, and a pharmacist can help you choose an emollient before it gets that far.

Kluk also points out that conditions like psoriasis can be harder to manage in winter, so a flare-up in October isn’t you doing something wrong.

One last thing, and it’s about timing. Most of us start the routine once our legs already look like a dropped pastry, which is weeks too late. The useful day to start is the day you hear the boiler fire up. The clocks go back on 25 October. I suggest putting the tub by the shower before then.

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