If you’re interested in skincare, you have to acknowledge the power of a TikTok trend. Let’s be honest, TikTok is a mixed bag of good, bad, and terrible advice, but if you want to keep up-to-date on what’s happening in skincare you will see it first on social media.
The latest trend is called “skin flooding,” and it is all about hydration, hydration, hydration.
Let’s explore.
What is Skin Flooding?
Skin flooding describes a process of layering multiple moisturising products onto your skin to really lock in hydration. It involves using ingredients like niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, thick creamy moisturisers, facial mists.
There are no concrete rules, but generally you start with clean, damp skin, and then layer serums and products one at a time, from thinnest to thickest, with a sprtiz of facial mist between each application.
What are the Benefits?
Damp skin can be much better at absorbing moisturisers, so there is a purpose behind keeping your skin damp throughout this process.
Is this going to hurt you if you are really struggling with dehyrdated or dry skin? No, absolutely not.
Is this strictly necessarily?
Like most skincare trends: no, absolutely not.
Let's start with a phrase you've said a hundred times without thinking about it: "mad as a hatter."
It isn't just a bit of whimsy from Alice in Wonderland. For centuries, hat-makers used mercury to turn animal fur into felt — and breathing its fumes, day after day, in poorly-ventilated workshops slowly poisoned them. The result was a syndrome doctors called erethism: tremors (the "hatter's shakes"), crippling anxiety and irritability, memory loss, personality change. An entire trade was, quite literally, being driven mad by a heavy metal. Mercury is a spectacular poison — it wrecks the kidneys and the nervous system — and we have known this for a very, very long time.
Which makes what I'm about to tell you all the more depressing. Because mercury didn't just disappear when the hat factories shut down. Today, it's in skin-lightening creams — and it's still poisoning people, right now, in 2026.