“Purging” gets borrowed a lot in skincare conversation and it’s usually used in the wrong context. It’s a real, documented thing that happens with specific ingredients (mainly retinoids and acids) and it doesn’t mean what most people switching to a gentler routine assume it means.
If your skin’s broken out since switching to natural skincare, it’s worth understanding the real meaning of purging. The chances are, you’re not experiencing it. Something else is going on and the good news? It’s usually pretty straightforward to fix.
What purging is
Purging happens because certain ingredients speed up how fast skin cells turn over at the follicle. That accelerated turnover pushes blockages that were already forming beneath the surface (known as microcomedones), up and visible faster than they’d otherwise appear. It’s a real, clinically documented pattern with retinoids and some acids specifically. The Pharmaceutical Journal, published by the Royal College of Pharmacy, notes that these ingredients work by normalising the follicular hyperkeratinisation that creates the blockage in the first place. This is why they’re recommended to be introduced gradually rather than all at once.
Using a new shampoo bar, cleanser or moisturiser doesn’t impact this mechanism, so if you’ve swapped one and broken out a week later, it isn’t purging in any meaningful sense. That’s not bad news. It just means the cause is something else.
So what’s going on instead
There are a few possibilities that are likely the cause of your skin breakout.
- The formula’s richer than your skin’s used to. Not all oils and butters behave the same way on skin prone to congestion. The classic comedogenic scale (developed from 1970s rabbit-ear testing and still widely referenced), rates some very common natural ingredients. These include coconut oil and cocoa butter, which are common skincare ingredients. But, they have a higher risk for clogging pores than something like jojoba. Jojoba is chemically closer to the skin’s natural sebum than most plant oils. A 2025 clinical review explains that, while the scale doesn’t map perfectly onto human skin and the original testing methodology has real limitations, it’s still a reasonable starting point. Richness on its own isn’t the issue but richness on skin that’s already prone to congestion sometimes is.
- You’re switching to a leave-on product too soon. This is why I recommend starting with rinse-off products when you switch, as I’ve written about separately. A rich formula sitting on skin for hours is a different proposition to one that’s rinsed off in a minute. Contact time changes the equation more than richness alone does.
- You’ve changed more than one thing at once. If several products changed in the same week, you can’t tell which one, if any, is responsible. This is the problem slow switching is designed to solve.
- Something was already forming before you switched anything. Follicular blockages don’t appear overnight; they build gradually beneath the surface over time. So, a breakout that shows up shortly after a routine change can easily have started well before the change did. The timing is likely coincidence rather than cause.
- It’s completely unrelated. Hormones, stress, a new pillowcase, diet. Skin doesn’t pause its other business because you changed your cleanser.
Why this matters for how I formulate
For every product I formulate, the first question always has to be “What’s it for?”. This not only determines the ingredient selection but it also eliminates ingredients that won’t be suitable for the product in development. It’s part of why I don’t recommend our lotion bars for facial use. They’re formulated to be rich enough to support skin that needs deep moisturisation, which means they’re not the right concentration or ingredient profile for facial skin that is more prone to congestion. You’re better off using a nourishing facial oil that your facial skin can absorb. If you haven’t tried a facial oil yet, my simple facial oil recipe card is built around jojoba, squalane and rosehip, plus a choice of sweet almond or fractionated coconut oil. Fractionated coconut oil isn’t the same ingredient as the coconut oil I’ve mentioned above. The fractionation process strips out the parts of coconut oil responsible for its high comedogenic rating, so what’s left behaves very differently on congestion-prone skin.
That jojoba is a good example of why the source of an oil matters more than the fact that it’s an oil. It’s technically a liquid wax rather than a triglyceride oil, structurally closer to human sebum than something like coconut oil, which is one reason it tends to sit more comfortably on congestion-prone skin. Position in a formula matters too: an ingredient near the top of an INCI list is doing considerably more than the same ingredient in trace amounts further down.
When to stop and reassess
If a product’s making things worse rather than settling, or if you’re seeing redness, itching or a reaction that showed up fast rather than gradually, that’s not purging and it’s not “your skin adjusting.” I’ve written about telling the difference properly here. Stop using it rather than pushing through.
If it’s a few extra bumps in your usual trouble spots and nothing beyond that, give it the two weeks I’d suggest for any new product before deciding anything.
So, does switching cause breakouts?
Not through purging, which is the explanation people usually reach for. When it does happen, it’s almost always something specific and identifiable: richness, timing, or a coincidence that had nothing to do with the switch at all, rather than a mysterious process you’re supposed to wait out. If you’re thinking about switching, the switching guide will give you some insight into where to start.
