Everyone loves an active ingredient that’s proven to work on the skin. And some people love actives so much, they pile on as many as they can fit on their face. But is mixing them risky? Do they ever cancel each other out? Javon Ford, our favorite cosmetic chemist, distills fact from fiction, guiding us in how to use active ingredients without peril. For more of his beauty wisdom, check out his Instagram reels and TikToks @javonford16.
If you want to apply different products with different active ingredients and not have them counteract each other, be sure to allow each product to soak in. The general advice is to wait 15 minutes between products, but let’s be real—nobody’s waiting 15 minutes. Let’s say five. With sunscreen, some experts say wait 15 minutes after applying before going out in the sun, but you don’t have to.
People are confused about which active ingredients they can use together. Some data once said that mixing vitamin C and niacinamide could be irritating and cause flushing. But modern formulas don’t have that problem. A lot of products today are cocktails of different actives that are stabilized. Some of them have different pHs, but you can still use them together. After 30 minutes your skin is always going to self-regulate back to a pH of 4.55 or 5.5 regardless of what you put on it.
The key is: Don’t overdo the actives. If the ingredient is potentially irritating, regardless of how compatible the actives are, you can burn off your skin barrier, and that can take months to repair. For example, using retinoids, retinol, retinal, adapalene, or tretinoin in the same routine as a chemical peel—like lactic or salicylic acid—can cause trouble. Everybody’s skin is different, but if your face is a little irritated and flushed after using a product, you may want to pull back. If you keep applying an irritating ingredient, it can damage your barrier. Even if you use retinoids on their own but too frequently, your barrier can become compromised, and that takes a while to repair.
Regarding ingredients that cancel each other out: vitamin C and copper peptides don’t play well together. That’s because copper peptides work by oxidation while vitamin C is an antioxidant, which negates their benefits. Whether or not that actually matters on a practical level, I don’t know. But if you mix them together in a beaker, they’re going to cancel each other out.
One good resource is the Ordinary. It has a useful guide on which actives blend well together.
Javon Ford is a Los Angeles–based cosmetic chemist
