Your Skin Care Questions Answered: Can You Use A Day Cream At Night?

You might be taking a look around your bathroom shelves and wondering about the best ways to use your products. A question that pops up for many people is, can you use your daytime moisturizer at night?

The short answer is yes, you can.

But, there are reasons why day creams are meant specifically for daytime. They’re most often designed to be lightweight and fast-absorbing. Daily moisturizers help deliver quick hydration and often serve as primers beneath makeup.

Night creams however often do deeper work. Typically night creams have a thicker or heavier consistency to more deeply hydrate skin while you sleep, and focus on cellular repair. Night creams with antioxidants, vitamin E and green tea can protect against the formation of new wrinkles. And a night cream with peptides helps stimulate new cell growth.

Additionally night creams will lack an SPF, since sun protection isn’t needed at night indoors.

While you can use a day cream at night — or vice versa — (say if you’re in a pinch and just ran out of your favorite moisturizer) but there are specific benefits to using the products as intended.