With the summer holidays rapidly approaching, it’s time to start thinking about restocking your travel toiletries in preparation for your globetrotting. Whether you’re planning to camp out on a lounger, or looking to satisfy your wanderlust, learning how to pack toiletries for travel will become a go-to tool in your beauty arsenal. That’s wherever you end up in the world, and however you like to spend your well-earned break. Investing in travel-sized toiletries, and adding a couple of holiday essentials to your wash bag – including quality sun care and protection – will ensure your travels don’t get in the way of your beauty routine.
What to Know About Travel Toiletries
As a general rule, packing your liquids in your hold baggage (the luggage you check in) is the easiest way to avoid dealing with the various restrictions applied to hand luggage. Cosmetics like creams, oils, perfumes, mascaras and lipglosses, and toiletries like shampoo, shower gel, toothpaste and spray deodorants all fall into the ‘liquids’ category, so if you’ve packed any in your hand luggage, they’ll need to hold no more than 100ml of liquid.
Our Top Tips for Packing Toiletries for Travel
Before you even decide what your holiday travel essentials are, you’ll need to work out what you’re packing them in. Condensing your usual beauty routines and bath and body care faves down to a streamlined few steps will be necessary to cut down the weight of your wash bag. We recommend choosing travel-size versions of your beloved beauty essentials to ensure you don’t stray from your usual routine and avoid sacrificing all-important baggage space. Leak-proof cases to carry all your beauty bits in will be your best travel companion, too. We love the Jeffree Star Cosmetics Milky White and Black Skin Care Travel Bag for fitting all of our holiday travel essentials in.
Travel Skincare Faves
To make sure your skin is still getting all it needs to stay hydrated, protected, and healthy on holiday, you’ll need to ensure you’ve got access to all your travel skincare essentials. It’s also worth thinking ahead about whether you know your skin changes seasonally – for instance, it’s quite common to experience dry skin in winter and an oilier complexion in summer. Adapting your summer beauty routine to suit your skin’s changing needs will help to prevent or lessen any skin issues you might otherwise face.
SPF
SPF is essential wherever you are in the world, but do bear in mind that in particularly hot, sunny destinations your skin is more likely to become dehydrated, so you’ll need a high SPF sun protector. The benefits of using an SPF are endless – not only does it protect your skin from harmful UVA/UVB rays, it reduces signs of ageing, shields against hyperpigmentation, and strengthens your skin barrier. We love the By BEAUTY BAY SPF 50 Face Lotion, to soothe and moisturise the skin whilst providing anti-pollution and both UVA/UVB protection, reducing redness and the appearance of wrinkles, every single day.
Moisturiser
Alongside your SPF, you’ll need to take a quality moisturiser with you to keep your skin glowing overseas. The Bubble Skincare Slam Dunk Hydrating Moisturiser Cream is a great everyday cream moisturiser, formulated with aloe leaf juice to protect the skin, vitamin E to fight environmental stressors, avocado oil to reduce redness, blue light protection, and hoya lacunosa flower extract to help promote radiance. It’s a deeply hydrating formula designed to restore all of the essential nutrients into the skin, leaving your face feeling nourished, calm, and protected – even after a day in the sea.
Face Mist
Another great option for travellers looking to instantly soften and soothe skin is the Avène Thermal Spring Water Spray. Enriched with minerals and silica, this much-loved formula ensures optimal mineral balance and a specific microflora that conditions the skin without drying it out – providing it with immediate comfort. It’s an ideal addition to your travel essentials toiletries list – perfect for relieving redness, itching, and tightness, plus it also cools skin in hot weather.
Cleansing Balm
If you’re going to take one cleanser on your holiday, make it the By BEAUTY BAY Chamomile + Oat Lipid Cleansing Balm. A rich formula especially designed to deeply cleanse the skin, melting away SPF and holiday makeup looks, to leave your skin feeling clean and comfortable. Made using 86% naturally derived ingredients, the ceramide-rich oat lipid will help to replenish the skin as it cleanses, with soothing chamomile to calm stressed or inflamed skin.
Toner
Enhance your complexion with the Glow Hub Nourish & Hydrate Toner Essence, which blends hydrating peach extract, refreshing coconut water, hyaluronic acid and aloe vera to plump, soften, and deeply hydrate the skin in preparation for the rest of your skincare routine.
Travel Haircare Faves
Just because we’re on holiday, doesn’t mean our hair should take a back seat. Sunkissed highlights, wavy curls, and tousled updos are all well and good, but you’re unlikely to achieve those classic holiday hair looks without a few haircare essentials.
Shampoo & Conditioner
Begin with the basics and choose a shampoo and conditioner you know will work for the whole holiday.So you can spend less time detangling and more time sipping Aperol Spritzes. The Olaplex Shampoo & Conditioner Travel Duo ensures you’ll have a good hair day, with a formula which works to tackle split ends and frizz by re-linking broken bonds to reveal stronger, healthier hair. This set is an essential for all hair types, leaving it easier to manage, shinier, and healthier with each use – no matter the amount of saltwater you’ve exposed it to.
Hair Treatment
Bumble and Bumble Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil Ultra Rich Hyaluronic Treatment Lotion is another brilliant pick for your holiday wash bag – allowing you to treat your hair on your less active holiday days spent by the pool. A leave-in product for dry hair, this ultra-rich, multi-tasking formula hydrates dry and frizzy hair, delivering nourishment, humidity protection, heat protection. and frizz reduction. Its blend of hyaluronic acid, Kalahari melon seed oil and Bumble and Bumble’s signature 6-oil blend, is designed to be applied directly onto the scalp, on damp or dry hair, for instant ultra-rich hydration.
Hair Care Travel Set
If you’re looking for a quick solution to your holiday packing, invest in the Kerasilk Travel Set – six travel-friendly hair care essentials to smooth, soften, and repair hair, including the Repairing Shampoo, the Repairing Conditioner and the Liquid Cuticle Filler, a cuticle-refining, heat-activated spray. There’s also the Recovery Mask, the Taming Balm and the Repairing Spray to treat your hair to its very own holiday pamper.
Travel Makeup Faves
Whilst many holiday-goers are happy to go makeup-free, plenty of people prefer to take all of their makeup favourites abroad with them. Holislay, anyone? Whether you’re all about the light touch or love a bold holiday look, you’ll require your travel makeup essentials.
Tinted Moisturiser
Try the Makeup Revolution Superdewy Tinted Moisturiser to create a flawless no-makeup makeup base, with minimal effort. A skincare and makeup hybrid, this tinted moisturiser has the perfect balmy texture with just a hint of tint to give you the ultimate natural base and gorgeous sheer coverage, leaving a glossy, dewy finish that looks like your healthiest skin ever.
Mascara
No matter how remote the resort, how secluded the holiday rental or how quiet the pool, many of us simply cannot imagine being parted from our mascara. No amount of sun, sea, and surf could make the beauty obsessive desert her lashes – and the By BEAUTY BAY High-Key Volume Mascara works wonders for those of us dedicated to boosting the volume and length of ours. This ultra-black mascara grips onto each and every lash for an evenly distributed, faux-lash effect. Enriched with conditioning rice bran wax and infused with panthenol and biotinoyl tripeptide-1, this is a formula which actively nourishes your lashes as you bat them.
Brow Gel
Tidying up your brows with the By BEAUTY BAY Brow Fixer Gel has never been easier, thanks to its waterproof gel formula, which simultaneously thickens brow hairs while adhering to the skin for a natural-looking finish and long-lasting hold. Enriched with vitamin E and castor oil, the lightweight, non-sticky formula fills in sparse brows, framing your face beautifully – whether you’re exploring a bustling city or reclining on a deck chair.
Lip Stain
For your more glam holiday evenings, a slick of the e.l.f. Cosmetics Glossy Lip Stain will give you a sheer pop of colour and subtle gloss effect, for a lush long-wearing shine as you enjoy a sangria or two. This is a product which never dries lips out – so you can apply it without worrying about any flaking or dehydrating.
Travel Bodycare Faves
Everyone has their own airport routines and key hand luggage items that they simply won’t be without. With space at a premium, sometimes you have to make tough choices. To help you, we’ve picked out our three non-negotiable travel bodycare essentials…
1) Anti-chafe stick
We’ve all been there – it’s nearing 40 degrees, you’ve worn a cute dress to wander around the city, and the skin between your thighs is on fire. Cue Megababe Thigh Rescue Anti-Friction Stick. Stop chafing for good with this easy-to-apply, balm-like formula, which creates a barrier that sits on top of skin, allowing rubbing thighs to glide smoothly against each other. Enriched with aloe, grapeseed oil and antioxidant-rich vitamin E to provide extra hydration for happy, healthy skin, this stick belongs in your daily holiday routine.
2) Body Care Travel Set
A similarly comforting addition to every holidayer’s beauty bag is the Sol de Janeiro Bum Bum Jet Set. Designed to keep you feeling nourished and smelling delicious, this set contains the iconic Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, the Brazilian 4 Play Shower Cream-Gel and the Brazilian Crush Cheirosa ’62 Hair & Body Fragrance Mist.
3) Perfumes & Scents
Smelling good is non-negotiable – especially when you’re in a hot climate. The Floral Street Arizona Bloom Eau de Parfum is infused with notes of creamy, fresh Balinese coconut, jasmine petals and salted musks, which makes it the perfect holiday scent, keeping you feeling fresh no matter the holiday activity.
Don’t get caught out at airport security – make sure you’ve organised all your travel-size beauty essentials before you leave for your holiday, to ensure a stress-free journey, and beautifully nourished skin and hair, wherever you’re jetting off to. Explore our extensive range of travel toiletries today to ensure you’re not parted from your favourites and explore our plane skincare guide so you can start your trip off as you mean to go on. Bon voyage!
