How to Remove Red Dots on Your Face After Healing Acne

You’ve gotten rid of those stubborn acne pimples, but now, when you look in the mirror, you see these red dots sprinkled on your face. What causes these red dots on your face, and more importantly, how can you get rid of them?

Fastest Ways to Fade Flat Red Marks

Niacinamide: Key to Removing Red Dots

The best solution for removing the red, flat dots that persist after acne heals is a concentrated niacinamide solution. Niacinamide is your best friend when you’re dealing with redness after acne, because it stops the extra blood flow to your facial blood vessels that causes the red spots.

For example, try this cream that reduces redness upon contact:
PCA Skin Dual Action Redness Relief

For daily use, you can layer this serum under your daily moisturizer. It has a high percentage of niacinamide:
Sunday Riley Be Nice 10% Niacinamide Serum

Your goal in adding niacinamide to your skincare routine is to see inflammation go down and reduce those red marks quickly.

UV Protection During Healing Process

As your flat red dots heal, you’ll need to be strict about keeping them protected from UV sun rays. UV exposure can make those marks darker and also make it take longer to heal. So no taking chances, use sunscreen with an SPF of at least 50 every day to protect your skin.

This sunscreen doesn’t only have an SPF of 50, it also has color correction for your redness built in:
Colorescience All Calm Clinical Redness Corrector SPF 50

Botanical Agents: Calming Your Skin

Right after a breakout of acne, your skin is very sensitive, so the more gentle your skincare, the better off you’ll be. You’ll want to wait a day or two after the acne’s gone to apply strong redness reducers like niacinamide. For the fresh red dots, try a botanical calming agent to soothe your skin.

This serum has bisabolol, which is made from chamomile and has the calming properties you want for your reddened marks. It also has brown and red algae as part of the formula.
PCA Skin Anti-Redness Serum

Complete Skincare Routine for Red Dots

Here’s a step-by-step morning and night skincare routine as you work on removing the red dots from your face.

Morning

Before starting your day, do this routine for calmer, protected skin throughout the day.

1. Cleanse your face with a gentle, hydrating cleanser. Don’t scrub.
2. Apply your lightweight serum like the Sunday Riley Be Nice serum.
3. Apply a gentle moisturizer like the Obagi Hydrate moisturizer.
4. Finish off with your SPF protection like the Colorescience All Calm corrector.

Night

Before you go to sleep at night, do this routine for deep skin repair through the night:

1. Cleanse your face gently from the day’s buildup.
2. Apply a more intensive treatment like the PCA Skin Dual Action Redness Relief.
3. Apply moisturizer to seal in your active ingredients and allow your skin to rebuild overnight (Obagi Hydrate).

Good night, sleep tight as your skin repairs itself and wake up to brighter, less red tomorrow.

What Causes the Red Dots on Your Face?

Reading this routine, you might be wondering: But don’t acne pimples leave scars? How can you say that my skin will heal itself?

Good question.

If you’re looking at flat red dots, where the redness seems to be coming from under the skin, there’s good news: it isn’t an acne scar at all. An acne scar would be either pitted, meaning a little hole or depression in your skin, or it would be raised higher than your skin. A totally flat red mark is definitely not a scar.

So what is it? It’s a temporary condition called Post-Inflammatory Erythema. Fancy name aside, it’s what happens when the body tries to fight the acne pimple. Your body sends extra blood flow to the capillaries in your face, with extra white blood cells, so your skin can fight off the acne inflammation.

Even once the acne heals, the blood vessels don’t get the memo right away, and the increased blood flow creates that little red dot that you see on your skin.

Eventually, the blood vessels will realize that the inflammation is gone, and your blood flow will go back to normal. You can speed up that healing process and remove the red dots faster by using the niacinamide products recommended above, which stop the extra blood flow right away.

Helping the Red Dots Heal

While your red dots heal, you want to treat your skin extra gently so you don’t interfere with the healing process.

Be careful not to irritate your healing skin by doing any of these:

• Don’t scrub your skin hard to try to make the red marks go away. The marks are coming from the blood vessels under your skin, so scrubbing won’t help. It can actually hurt your skin by causing more irritation and making your blood vessels stay enlarged for longer.
• Don’t pick or squeeze the red dots even if it feels itchy, because that can also cause irritation and inflammation.
• Don’t add too many active ingredients to your skincare routine. Acne treatments often have strong active ingredients, but once the acne is gone, stop the treatments right away so the spots left behind can heal. Too many active ingredients dries out your skin’s moisture and makes it harder to rebuild. Examples of active ingredients: benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid.

For other types of redness, shop our full redness relief collection here:
Shop the Redness Relief Collection

Disclaimer: The information in this article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.