Pore Tightening Products

Your pores allow your skin to breathe, your hair to grow, your sweat to cool your body and your skin's natural oils to moisturize and exfoliate. To do all this, they need to stay open, but sometimes they can open a little too wide. Genetics, sun damage and poor skin care can cause pores to be larger than you'd like, inviting blackheads and making your skin look less healthy. While there is no way to significantly or permanently shrink them, you can tighten them a bit.

Exfoliating Solutions

Enlarged pores can become clogged with skin oils, dead skin cells, dirt, makeup and other substances. Before taking action to shrink those pores, it's important to dislodge these impurities to make sure they're not pushed deeper into the skin. If they form a blackhead, they can even hold the pore open. Cleaning out the pores requires a process called exfoliation, and there are two main types of exfoliating products: physical and chemical. Physical exfoliation products include abrasive scrubbers like loofah sponges, creams that contain abrasive particles like synthetic beads or pumice stone, and microdermabrasion products. Microdermabrasion involves equipment that is used to pelt the skin with small abrasive particles via a stream of air, and while there are home-use products that perform this function, this is more common as a professional skin care service. Chemical exfoliation products use a chemical reaction to dissolve impurities away, and include chemical peel masks.

Vitamin A Creams

According to the skin health website DERMAdoctor, Vitamin A can help the skin perform its natural exfoliating processes. When the appropriate Vitamin A solutions are applied topically, they can help prevent dead skin cells from clinging to the insides of pore walls, and can loosen blackheads, making them easier to exfoliate. Such Vitamin A solutions are available by prescription, but an OTC version called retinol is also available as an active ingredient in non-prescription creams and ointments.

Toners

Toners are liquid skin care solutions that clean, firm and tighten the pores of the skin. Toners typically contain alcohol, which dries the skin and tightens the pores, but can pose an over-drying risk for otherwise dry or normal skin. Toners categorized as bracers tend to have very low alcohol content, while those categorized as tonics are harsher and generally formulated for oily skin. Some of the most powerful toners may be identified as astringents, and these are best used as spot treatments for problematic pores.

Sunscreen

While sunscreen is not an aftercare solution for enlarged pores, wearing sunscreen regularly can help keep pores tight over the long run by helping you avoid sun damage. When ultraviolet rays damage the skin, it becomes thicker, which can discourage dead skin cells from exfoliating properly within the pores. As these dead cells build up, they can force the pore open wider.