‘Skin Care Is My Self-Care’: How a Beauty Blogger Manages Eczema

When Dana Sellers, 39, was in high school, she discovered a love of all things beauty and skin care. “I was the teenager who had a lot of products,” she says. It was a passion that would eventually propel Sellers to launch her popular blog, Beauty in Color, in 2018.

But Sellers’s interest in skin care stems from another reason, too: As a teenager, she was diagnosed with atopic dermatitis, or eczema, which would flare up in the creases of her arms and legs with scaly, itchy patches of skin. After her diagnosis, she learned the hard way that she couldn’t apply just anything to her skin.

“When I was a teenager, I loved Bath & Body Works,” she says, recalling the time when she purchased a scented body gel and lotion from the store. “I mean, who doesn’t? They smell amazing.”

As soon as she used these products, though, she immediately noticed they had irritated her skin. The following day, she developed a flare that was “the worst experience” of her life. The pain was so bad, she says, that she scratched her skin until it bled.

“I learned that fragrance is something that I cannot use,” she says.

A Skin-Care Routine for Both Eczema and Anti-Aging

Over the years, Sellers has learned which products can help her skin stay hydrated — something that is important for people with eczema, since their skin doesn’t retain enough moisture — and which can trigger a flare. She’s even found that certain products marketed for people who have eczema can cause more harm than good.

“Some of the topical creams that help soothe irritation … [can] actually cause dryness later on,” she says. “I really like to find products that not only help prevent the irritation, but that you can also use consistently so you don’t have as many eczema flare-ups.”

Managing eczema, she’s found, is more than keeping your skin blemish free — or covering up the patches of inflammation with makeup. In fact, Sellers has learned that it’s not always worth it to hide her eczema under layers of concealer, partly because makeup can contain irritating ingredients that trigger itchiness later on.

For Sellers, the itch of eczema is one of the hardest symptoms to deal with. “I can feel like I have creepy crawlers on my body,” she says. “It’s come to the point, especially in New York City, where I thought I might’ve had bedbugs.”

Plus, to Sellers, beauty goes beyond foundation and bronzer. “I’m someone who doesn’t really like to wear makeup,” she says. “I like to really go out natural.”

On her blog, Sellers focuses primarily on skin care, including which products can keep your skin looking and feeling healthy. She credits her skin-care routine with keeping her complexion looking the same today as it did a decade ago.

When it comes to anti-aging products, Sellers is a fan of retinols, but she prefers to use them in an oil form, since this is often less irritating than retinols in creams, serums, and gels. She also knows to avoid using multiple anti-aging ingredients at once and to always hydrate her skin.

Today, Sellers follows a pared-down version of a customizable regimen known as the 10-step Korean skin-care routine. “I personally don’t feel like I need 10 steps,” she says.

In the morning, Sellers uses a gentle cleanser on her skin, followed by a vitamin C serum. She keeps her skin hydrated by applying hyaluronic acid and moisturizer and protects it from the sun with sunscreen. In the evening, she often double-cleanses, first with an oil cleanser and then with a nondrying cleanser. Then she layers on hydrating products, such as hyaluronic acid, ceramides, moisturizer, and sometimes face oil.

It’s a routine that is as soothing as it is revitalizing, and that, says Sellers, is the point. She no longer uses products to hide her eczema if they’re going to trigger more irritation or skin issues in the future. When someone asks her about an inflamed patch of skin, she simply tells them that she has eczema, and it’s just something she has to deal with.

“When I was younger … I was more concerned about what my skin looked like and how it was going to be perceived by my friends,” she says. “Now, it’s about just making sure I feel good.”

Blogging About Beauty With Eczema

For Sellers, skin care is a form of self-care. “It’s a way for me to calm down and rejuvenate myself,” she says. This type of thinking — along with the urging of her family and friends, who noticed that Sellers “could not stop talking” about beauty products — was the main reason Sellers started her blog, Beauty in Color.

Writing about beauty and skin-care products is something she’s passionate about and would have loved to read when she was younger. “When I was in high school, most of the blogs and content creation were focused more on makeup than skin care,” she says.

Sellers also wanted to talk about skin care and eczema from her perspective as a Black woman.

“Beauty is colorful,” she says. “I think it’s nice to hear information from someone who you can relate to ... to see a Black woman who has eczema and deals with skin care and beauty.”

In people with lighter-skin, eczema typically appears as red or pink patches on the skin. But in people with darker-skin — who’ve been underrepresented in educational resources for dermatologists, according to an article published in November 2022 in The Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology — eczema can look purple or gray.

On her blog, Sellers also shares how she prevents breakouts and eczema flares, which she learned through trial and error with her own skin, along with lots of research. “There’s so much information and misinformation out there,” she says. “It’s really nice to be able to help people who have issues and don’t really know how to manage it.”

Sellers also has weekly #WineDownWednesday conversations on Instagram with dermatologists, beauty bloggers, and other experts to discuss everything from skin-care routine tips and product recommendations to managing triggers such as stress or certain foods. (Dairy, for example, is one of Sellers’s biggest eczema triggers.)

“It’s really about some of the little tweaks that you can make in your lifestyle to manage eczema,” she says.

All images provided by Dana Sellers. This video interview took place in September 2021.