What is a Vitamin C Serum Exactly, and What’s in It?

A vitamin C serum is a skin-care product packed with vitamin C. It has the consistency of a liquid or gel, and is applied topically to the skin. You’ll find these serums wherever you normally purchase skin-care products — at department stores, beauty stores, and some drug stores, too. On the packaging, you’ll likely see words touting skin benefits like “firming,” “brightening,” and “collagen boosting.” Tapping into those benefits is the main reason to add a vitamin C serum to your skin-care routine.

“The benefit of vitamin C is it’s an antioxidant, so it helps prevent the forming of free radicals, which go on to break down collagen and elastin,” Saedi says. The result, she says, is glowing, youthful skin.

Who Should Use a Vitamin C Serum on Their Skin?

According to the study in Nutrients, vitamin C can help protect the skin from many problems, including sunburn, photoaging, hyperpigmentation, wrinkles, sagging, dryness, and an uneven skin tone. Anyone dealing with these skin issues may want to consider adding a vitamin C serum to their skincare regimen. But it’s a good idea to get started even if these issues haven’t crept up yet. “While it’s often presented as an anti-aging ingredient, the best time to prevent aging is before it occurs,” Schlessinger says.

Saedi recommends vitamin C serums for people of all ages because virtually everyone is at risk of sun damage, and with vitamin C serums “we are minimizing the amount of sun damage that our skin’s getting from sunlight,” she says.She says it does double duty of both protecting the skin and helping problem areas recover. “It’s preventative in that it’s protecting you from sun damage and signs of aging like wrinkles,” Saedi says. “It also helps promote collagen and boost your natural collagen formation.”

Benefits of a vitamin C serum and when to apply it

Vitamin C is an antioxidant, meaning it halts or holds off environmental and sun damage to cells. And while you can count your morning OJ as a good defense for your bod, the best way to achieve vitamin C’s protection and benefits is to apply it directly onto your skin.

But there’s also a reason why you don’t want to just be placing citrus slices on your cheeks. When you DIY, there’s no control over the quality — and sometimes it’s not even safe. It’s also just not efficient.

That’s because when we eat, drink, or supplement vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, our skin only gets a small fractionTrusted Source of the benefits. However, pressing vitamin C in serum form, after it’s been chemically altered, actually lets our skin absorb more of it in an efficient way.

Vitamin C serum benefits

• reduces wrinkles
• protects collagen and increases production
• aids wound healing
• helps protect against sun damage
• reduces hyperpigmentation
• evens skin tone
• brightens complexion
• acts like armor against pollution and other free radicals