What Is My Skin Type? How to Determine Your Skin Accurately

Most online skincare quizzes ask subjective questions like "does your face feel tight after washing?" and assign your entire face a single categorical label: oily, dry, or normal. But human facial anatomy is fundamentally non-uniform.

Sebaceous glands are not evenly distributed. The central T-zone (forehead, nose, and chin) contains between 400 and 900 sebaceous glands per square centimeter. In contrast, the lateral cheeks and under-eye area contain significantly fewer glands and possess a thinner stratum corneum.

When a single-label quiz diagnoses you as "oily," it suggests aggressive stripping cleansers that leave your cheeks dehydrated and irritated. When it diagnoses you as "dry," it prescribes heavy occlusive creams that congest T-zone pores and trigger breakouts.

The most reliable way to assess your skin at home without equipment is the bare-faced observation test. This method isolates your skin’s baseline sebum and hydration production from product interference.

Step 1: Cleanse your face thoroughly with a mild, gentle gel or foaming cleanser to remove surface sebum, makeup, and pollutants. Avoid cleansers containing exfoliating acids or heavy oils.

Step 2: Gently pat dry with a clean cotton towel. Do not apply any toner, essence, serum, moisturizer, or sunscreen. Your skin must remain completely bare.

Step 3: Wait 60 minutes in a room with neutral temperature and moderate humidity. Avoid intense physical exertion, hot beverages, or direct sunlight during this period.

Step 4: Observe your face zone by zone in natural light, feeling each region with clean fingertips.

Oily Skin: After 60 minutes, your forehead, nose, chin, and cheeks all exhibit noticeable shine, slickness, and visible pore dilatation. Your skin rarely feels tight after cleansing.

Dry Skin: Your entire face feels tight, taut, or slightly rough. You may observe micro-flaking on the cheeks or around the eyebrows. Sebum shine is absent across all zones.

Combination Skin: Your central T-zone (forehead, nose, and chin) displays visible shine and oiliness, while your lateral cheeks and under-eye area feel normal, tight, or dry. This is the most common skin profile.

Sensitive Skin: Your skin frequently displays localized erythema (redness), burning sensations, or stinging, especially when exposed to temperature shifts or topical formulations. The moisture barrier is easily compromised.

Visual self-assessment is helpful, but ambient lighting and subjective bias often lead to misclassification. Skinzy replaces guesswork with objective computer vision.

By anchoring 468 landmark points with MediaPipe FaceMesh, the scanner segments five anatomical zones: T-zone, left cheek, right cheek, chin, and under-eye. Each region is independently scored across five traits — oiliness, dryness, acne lesions, pigmentation, and sensitivity.

This produces a quantified profile that tells you exactly how much your T-zone differs from your cheeks, allowing ingredient recommendations tailored to your real facial anatomy.