Glowy Skin Starts With a Strong Skin Barrier.
Everything you need to know about your skin barrier, what is a skin slugging, why it works, and why what you slug with matters more than you think.
- Lapland Cosmetics
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- Reading Time 8 minutes
You’ve heard people talk about the skin barrier, maybe on a product label, or in a skincare video. But what actually is it, and why does it matter so much? Healthy skin isn’t always about adding more. It’s about protecting what your skin is already doing. And at the centre of that is one simple but powerful system: the skin barrier.
What Is a Skin Barrier Anyway?
Your skin is your body’s largest organ, and its outermost layer, the stratum corneum a.k.a skin barrier, is a remarkably complex structure doing an enormous amount of work every day. It keeps moisture inside your skin and keeps irritants, bacteria, and environmental stressors out. When this system is working well, your skin feels comfortable, stays hydrated, and has that naturally healthy glow. When it isn’t, your skin lets you know.
How Do You Know If Your Barrier Is Struggling?
A damaged skin barrier doesn’t always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes the signs are subtle, things you might write off as just having sensitive or dry skin, without realising the barrier is the common thread.
Skin that feels dry - always
You moisturise, it helps briefly, then you're back to step one. The problem isn't that you're not adding moisture, it's that your skin can't hold onto it.
Redness and irritation
A weakened barrier lets irritants in more easily. Products that used to be fine start stinging. Skin reacts to things it shouldn't.
Tightness after cleansing
That tight, squeaky-clean feeling is not a sign your skin is clean. It's a sign your barrier has been stripped of its natural oils. The right cleanser actually protects the barrier while it cleanses, which is exactly what our Arctic Forest Cleansing Balm is made to do.
Flaking and dullness
When the barrier can't retain water, the outer skin cells dry out and shed unevenly. What you see as dullness is often dehydration at the surface level.
Sound familiar? For many people especially in northern climates where cold, dry air is a daily reality barrier disruption is simply the default state of their skin. It’s not a skin type. It’s a condition that can be improved.
The One Thing Always Happening: Water Loss
Whether your barrier is healthy or not, your skin is constantly losing water. This is called transepidermal water loss – TEWL and it happens passively, all day, every day. You don’t feel it. It’s simply water vapour diffusing from inside your body, through your skin, and into the air around you.
When your barrier is healthy and intact, this water loss is minimal and manageable. Your body replaces what’s lost at a similar rate. But when the barrier is compromised those gaps in the mortar water escapes much faster than your body can replace it. Your skin starts operating like a leaky bucket. This is exactly where slugging comes in. And this is why the ingredient you use to slug is far more important than most people realise.
What Is Slugging? How It Actually Works?
Slugging is simple: you apply a rich, thick product as the very last step of your evening skincare routine, creating a physical seal over everything underneath. The seal dramatically slows water loss overnight, giving your skin hours to retain moisture, absorb the products beneath, and repair itself without constantly losing the water it needs to do that work.
Think of it as putting a lid on your skincare. Everything you applied serums, moisturiser, actives stays where it’s supposed to instead of evaporating into the air overnight. The Korean beauty community has been doing this for decades, usually with one product: Vaseline. And it works. The problem which most people don’t realise is not the technique. It’s the ingredient.
Vaseline vs. Reindeer Tallow: Both Seal, But That's Where the Similarity Ends
Petroleum jelly is completely inert. It sits on top of your skin, creates a physical seal, and that’s essentially the entirety of what it does. It contains no fatty acids, no vitamins, nothing your skin can truly use or recognise. Once you wash it away, the skin largely returns to where it started. The barrier may have been temporarily protected from moisture loss, but the skin itself was not given any meaningful structural support to recover or reinforce its own barrier function.
Reindeer tallow works differently. It is rich in the same fatty acids that form the mortar of your own skin barrier: palmitic acid, stearic acid, and oleic acid. These are not foreign substances. They are the very building blocks your skin barrier is made from. Instead of simply sitting on top of the skin, reindeer tallow gives the barrier materials it can actually work with.
We put it to the test
We wanted to know: does reindeer tallow actually protect the skin barrier when it's under real stress. So we had it independently tested.
Scientists applied reindeer tallow to one area of skin, left another area untreated, then deliberately irritated both with SLS patch for 24 hours. Afterwards, they measured how much water each area was losing through the skin.
With reindeer tallow
Barrier held
Independent clinical study · J.S. Hamilton Poland · 11 subjects · January 2026 · Ethical committee approved
Every single person in the study showed the same result. Not most of them. All of them.
Glowy skin isn't a mystery. It's a barrier that's doing its job.
And now you know exactly how to help it.
You don’t need to overcomplicate your routine. Cleanse, apply your serums, moisturise, then as the very last step, warm a small amount of the Face & Body Balm between your fingertips and press it gently across your face. That’s slugging. And with reindeer tallow, it’s also barrier care.
Face & Body Balms
Reindeer tallow occlusive balm with Arctic botanical extracts. Rich enough to seal, smart enough to repair.
View Product →References & Further Reading
In addition to existing scientific literature, Lapland Cosmetics has commissioned independent laboratory studies to better understand the skin-related properties of reindeer tallow. These include a clinical study on skin-barrier protection under irritation, as well as laboratory analysis of its fatty acid composition. Technical documentation is available for professional review upon request and NDA.
Skin Barrier & Stratum Corneum
Elias PM. Stratum Corneum Defensive Functions: An Integrated View
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16098026/
Proksch E, Brandner JM, Jensen JM. The Skin: An Indispensable Barrier
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19043850/
Madison KC. Barrier Function of the Skin: “La Raison d’Être” of the Epidermis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12880413/
Lipids, Moisturization & Barrier Support
Lodén M. Role of Topical Emollients and Moisturizers in the Treatment of Dry Skin Barrier Disorders
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14572299/
Wertz PW. Lipids and Barrier Function of the Skin
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10884933/
Jungersted JM, Agner T. Lipids and Skin Barrier Function — A Clinical Perspective
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18416754/
Transepidermal Water Loss (TEWL)
What is transepidermal water loss?
https://www.isdin.com/us/blog/all/what-is-transepidermal-water-loss/
Transepidermal water loss (TEWL): Environment and pollution — A systematic review
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9168018/
Skin Barrier Function in Psoriasis and Atopic Dermatitis: Transepidermal Water Loss and Temperature as Useful Tools to Assess Disease Severity
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33477944/
Skin Irritation & Cleansing
Ananthapadmanabhan KP, Moore DJ, Subramanyan K, Misra M, Meyer F. Cleansing Without Compromise: The Impact of Cleansers on the Skin Barrier and the Technology of Mild Cleansing
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14728695/