Skin Care Tips: How to Extract a Blackhead Properly

Annet King, Dermatologist at the International Dermal Institute:

Hi, I'm Annet King from the International Dermal Institute and I'm going to take you through how to perform at home extractions. We're going to get started on actually extracting blackheads on the skin.

Cleaning the skin to begin with is absolutely essential because you need to be able to have sort of a clean canvas to work on. If your skin isn't clean, the risk of sort of secondary injections or breakouts afterwards, is much much higher. So work on a clean skin to begin with. Remove that cleanser. You can simply wash it away or use sponges to remove that cleanser, but I really strongly advise you to do that.

The next step, which would be really advisable, is to exfoliate the skin. I'm using a really gentle soft skin care exfoliant to be able to do that. And you might want to use a scrub or hydroxyl acid type of product on that area. Basically what this is going to do is help you lift up dead cells and impactions in the area -- basically all of that surface dead debris, therefore, helping you to extract those comedones or those blackheads much more easily.

I'm going to work this into the skin and work it over the chin and into the area where I tend to have little bumps and breakouts. So you can work the exfoliate in quite gently using your fingertips with light pressure and work it over the area just for a few minutes to help to open up the skin and the follicles, which you probably know as pores, and help to prepare the area before you go in and do some extractions.

Now this is a great time to actually use steam. If you have the ability to use a facial steamer at home or a little steaming apparatus or even if you're taking sort of a hot shower, you can take a wash cloth and hold it over the area to soften the skin and open up the skin to a degree that you're preparing it before going in to remove those blackhead extractions. So just a gentle exfoliation before coming in and removing that product and prepping the area before you start extractions. You need to make sure that you're also working in an area that has really good lighting and that you're working in front of a magnifying mirror, because that will help you really see what you're doing.

What's also very important is that you cover your fingertips before you do your extractions. Now in a professional environment we use gloves for that but what you can simply do is use tissues wrapped around your fingers. So take a tissue, fold it in half, place it over your index finger and take that tissue and roll it in so you're kind of making a finger mitt. Then do the same on your other finger. So folding it in half, folding over, twisting in that tissue and making a tight little finger mitt. So you're able then to protect your fingertips that you're not marking your skin. The worst possible way of doing extractions is digging your nails into your skin.