Hard Water, Soft water and skincare

When I first arrived in the US, I found that I couldn’t wash my face clean. It felt like I always had some greasy film on my face, even though I tried out the cleanser I brought back at home and it worked fine. Also, I could never rinse the body wash off in the shower and I always felt very oily.

So I did some research, and I found out that Singapore’s water is soft while most of USA’s is very hard. My husband’s aunt also happened to have that measuring thingy to measure the mineral content. The water from the water filter, which we drink from, is 8 ppm (very, very soft.) The water in Singapore is around 40-60 ppm, which is still soft. The water from the tap is like, 240 ppm, super incredibly hard. Holy sheet.

This residue that was left on my face caused me to break out a little bit on the first few days 😦 It was extremely annoying, plus I also have a dry patch around my mouth because apparently my moisturizer is not hardcore enough. I have seriously not had so much skin issues for a long, long time.

To combat this problem, I’ve taken to doing a final rinse with the soft drinking water, which rinses off this residue and makes my skin finally feel like itself again. You can also use bottled water, which has a similar hardness of around 10. If it feels like too much of an indulgence, use normal water to wash the cleanser off first and only do a final rinse with drinking water.

I’ve learnt some good life knowledge about hard and soft water, and also how to take better care of my skin! Can’t wait to go back to where water is nice and soft 😦