How often should you exfoliate your legs? Shaving changes the answer

Twice a week is right for most people, and your legs can take a little more than the rest of you.

But if you shave them, how often matters far less than when. Getting the order right will do more for your legs than adding another day.

Why legs can take more than the rest of you

The skin on your shins is around three times thicker than the skin on your face, and it is much less reactive. Your knees, shins and ankles put up with a great deal — they are the toughest skin you have.

That is why our label says two to three times a week for your body, and why legs are the part that can sit comfortably at the top of that range. Your chest, your inner arms and the backs of your knees cannot. That skin is thinner, and it will let you know.

So: twice a week on your legs, with light pressure. Do that for a fortnight, look at your skin properly, and only then decide whether to add a third.

If you do not shave your legs, that is honestly all you need. Everything below is about razors. For the rest of your body, I have written separately about how often you should exfoliate and why most people overdo it. And if you are not yet sure what a body scrub actually does, start there and come back.

Exfoliate before you shave, not after

This is the thing I wish somebody had explained to me years ago.

Your razor is already exfoliating. Every stroke lifts dead surface skin away along with the hair — that is simply part of what a blade does. So when you scrub immediately after shaving, you are exfoliating skin that has just been exfoliated, with a blade, a few minutes earlier. That is why your legs sting and come up red and bumpy afterwards, and the scrub usually gets the blame.

Turn the order round and the two things work together instead of against each other. Scrub first, and you clear away the dead skin and loose flakes before the razor arrives. The hairs stand up a little straighter, so the blade glides rather than dragging, and you find yourself going over the same patch of skin fewer times.

That last part is the bit that matters. Going over the same patch again and again is what actually causes razor burn. Anything that reduces the number of strokes reduces the irritation.

If you have already shaved today, leave the scrub alone. Wait until tomorrow, or the day after if your legs felt tender.

While we are on the subject of razors

A few things that will do more for your legs than any scrub will, mine included. These come from the American Academy of Dermatology's guidance on preventing razor bumps:

• Shave in the same direction your hair grows, rather than against it
• Replace a disposable razor every five to seven shaves, and keep it somewhere dry in between
• Shave at the end of your shower, or hold a warm damp flannel against your skin first, so the hairs soften
• Use a moisturising shaving cream rather than soap or shower gel

If you change one single thing after reading this, change your blade more often.

Strawberry legs, and what a scrub can honestly do about them

Those small dark dots across your legs, the ones that show up most clearly just after you have shaved — that is what people mean by strawberry legs. It is probably the real reason you are reading this.

It is not one single condition, which is exactly why one single fix does not work for everybody. The Cleveland Clinic lists five separate causes:

• Shaving with a blunt blade, or without any cream
• Folliculitis, which is a hair follicle that has become inflamed or infected
• Clogged pores, where dead skin and oil block the opening
• Dry skin, which makes shaving more irritating than it needs to be
• Keratosis pilaris, where a protein called keratin builds up and plugs the follicle

Exfoliating genuinely helps the clogged-pore version. Clearing the dead skin away means pores are less likely to block in the first place, and new hairs find it easier to grow through.

It does very little for keratosis pilaris, and it does nothing at all for an infection.

So if you have been scrubbing faithfully for a month and your legs look exactly the same, please do not scrub harder. You are not doing it wrong. You are treating a cause that scrubbing cannot reach, and more pressure will only damage the skin you are trying to improve. If there is any pain, swelling or itching, that is a conversation for a pharmacist or your doctor rather than anything that comes in a jar.

Shins in winter

Shins dry out faster than almost anywhere else on the body. There is very little underneath that skin to cushion it, and it takes the full force of central heating all season.

Dry, flaking shins look exactly like something you ought to be able to scrub away. Please resist. Scrubbing thins the skin barrier, and a thinner barrier holds on to less water — so you end up drier the following week than you were the week before, and reaching for the scrub again.

Through winter I would drop your legs to once a week. Keep your showers warm rather than hot and under ten minutes, and put something on while your skin is still slightly damp, because that is when it will actually take it in.

If you use fake tan

Exfoliate the day before, not on the same day.

Freshly scrubbed skin grabs the tan unevenly, and it shows up worst on knees and ankles where the skin is thickest. Give it twenty-four hours and everything will have settled down.

Leave your legs alone if they have

• Razor burn or a shaving rash that has not calmed down yet
• Any cut, nick or broken skin
• Sunburn
• Redness or irritation from anything else

How I actually do mine

Twice a week, and I start with my legs, because they can take the most.

On dry skin, before I turn the water on. People find this part strange, because it is the opposite of what most scrubs tell you to do. But wet skin dilutes the oils and sends most of them down the drain before they have touched you. On dry skin they go on neat.

Light pressure, small circles, about thirty seconds a leg. A little more attention on knees and ankles, much less on thighs.

Then I shave, if I am shaving. Then I rinse warm and pat dry rather than rubbing.

And if once a week turns out to be plenty for you, stop at once a week. Nobody is handing out prizes for doing it more often.

Holly