Basic skincare for a (old) newbie

[lovingnewme]

I'm 45.
Never really bothered with skincare as I'm lazy and never really thought about it too much.
This neglect has caught up with me.
Now the winter days are here and my skin needs it more than ever, I'd love to start a basic skincare routine.
I have dabbled with skin and me at night and I use a La Roche-Posay dog daily (that's one thing I've done for 20 years as I get dark pigmentation)

Please can someone point me to an inexpensive, simple routine which will freshen my grey skin up?

Dog? That should be SPF

I use dermalogica pre cleanse, cleansing foam and active moist as moisturiser. It's pricey but very effective. I'm 40.

Check out The ordinary / the inkey list have some great products.

I just started on a new skincare journey .
Retinol is great.

I've bought an Elemis (ok 3) cleansing balms and yes pricey, but I love them.

I use Dermalogica and Nivea

I'm 43.

I like the Aldi hot cloth cleanser. I use it daily, and as a second step if I've been wearing make up, after Clinique Take The Day Off.

Boots do a line of skincare which is very like The Ordinary - I like the niacinamide from that - it reduces some of the redness I get.

At the moment I'm using Clinique Dramatically Different moisturiser during the day and Boots Pineapple something or other at night (I switch up my night moisturisers a lot).

If you are already using spf daily I would say the next good steps would be properly removing that and any make up and dirt at night
so a really good cleanser (inky list oat balm is good possibly followed by a wash off gel maybe the cereve hydrating)
then retinol (start low strength and cheap mine is L’Oréal revitalift)
then moisturiser (vitamin b c and e by the inky list might work or maybe something more moisturising if you are more dry skinned?)
and for day time a vitamin c (the ordinary do a few options)
and moisturiser if needed under the spf.

My opinion is the retinol is the only thing other than spf that truly works and you just need the other stuff (cleansers/toners/serums/moisturisers) to help the retinol and spf to do the best job they can.