Get your skin ready for fall & winter

With summer popping up in our rear-view, it’s time to face the fall transition — quite literally. After the past few months of beach days, weeks when we tend to get a little lax with our skincare regimens, and vacations around the pool, it’s time to get our faces back on track. The way to do it:  — key grooming behaviors like regular exfoliation, making sure we’re properly hydrated after all that sun, and on a more cosmetic level, adjusting our skin tone accordingly.

Make like a tree and exfoliate

It isn’t just forests that need to shed their excess and dying outer layers; we do too. Our skin naturally does so constantly, but fall is a great time to gently help it along, since starting in a month or so we’ll be inside a lot more. Exfoliating is crucial for radiant and healthy skin, and scrubs are one of the easiest ways to get a good effect. Using one like

— just spread an even layer over clean, dry skin, leave on for 10 minutes, then massage into skin and rinse—is a great way to slowly resurface skin gently over the next couple of months.

Making the hydration switch

Since fall and winter weather in New England is often drier than summer, mid-late September is the best time to make changes that will keep your skin from drying out in the upcoming months.

Skin hydration comes from the inside as well as the outside, so start refocusing on making sure you drink up. We’ve all heard the advice to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day, but The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has determined that the right daily fluid intake is about 15.5 cups per day for men and 11.5 cups for women. Meanwhile, making sure to get enough healthy fats to your diet (like avocado and salmon) can add moisture to your skin easily, naturally, and deliciously. Likewise, a humidifier like the Levoit VeSync Classic 300S Ultrasonic Smart Humidifier ($79.99 on target.com) can do wonders for re-hydrating your face and bod.

It’s also smart to swap out your lighter summer moisturizer for a heavier one this time of year. For one deeply rich in rejuvenating Omega 3 and 6 oils and fatty acids — the same great stuff that’s in those avocados and salmon — that plump skin while you sleep, there’s Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery Omega Rich Botanical Night Cream ($45 on kiehls.com). And for masks that rejuvenate, I like the ease of Neutrogena’s Hydro Boost and Hydrating Hydrogel Mask ($26.99 for 10 on amazon.com) — just pop it on after a shower (rather than before, so the shower opens your pores and they will be better able to absorb the hyaluronic acid in the mask).

Keeping the glow going

Can you reasonably prolong a tan, and look natural? The answer is yes, and in more ways than one. For starters, don’t forget that you can still slip out to your favorite chaise on weekends on sunny weekend days. But don’t neglect the SPF —those rays can still do their damage any time of year, and they’re still quite strong now.

If you were never one for real-deal sun exposure this season in the first place — or are just done with all of it at after the summer — then turn to a brilliant glowing product. For people with dry skin, I recommend a cream or gel, whereas people with oily skin do best with a powder. No matter what you use, make sure you blend (about three times more than you might think you need to, since badly blended bronzer is the #1 telltale sign that you’re sporting a fake tan), and then be sure to check your makeup in natural light to make sure your look is as smooth as your transition from summer to fall will (no doubt) be.