The best products for cracked winter skin

Cracked is a different problem from dry

Almost everything written about winter skin is about dryness, and dryness is a feeling. Cracking is a structural failure: the skin has split, usually somewhere thick that also flexes - a knuckle, a fingertip, the side of a heel - and the barrier is physically open.

That distinction decides what you can put on it. A fingertip that has split catches on fabric, hurts when you wash your hands and takes a fortnight to close. Three categories of ingredient that are perfectly reasonable on dry skin are painful on an open one:

1. Acids. Lactic, salicylic and glycolic creams are the right answer for thickened heels and bumpy skin. On a split they sting badly enough that most people abandon the product.
2. Volatile alcohols. Alcohol denat. high on an ingredient list is what makes a lotion feel light and absorb fast. It is also the reason the named skip below is the wrong bottle for this.
3. Fragrance. An intact barrier keeps most fragrance out of the live tissue underneath. A crack does not.

The five, and what each one publishes

The pick while it is still open

O'Keeffe's Working Hands. Glycerin second and allantoin seventh on a published thirteen-item list, with no fragrance and no acid anywhere in it. That last part is the whole reason it leads: it is the only cream here you can put straight onto a knuckle that has already split without it being an unpleasant experience.

Allantoin is the quietly useful ingredient - it loosens and softens hardened dead skin without an acid doing the work, which is exactly what the rim of a crack needs. The 96 g jar is the largest container in this comparison, and the formula is concentrated and non-greasy enough that people actually reapply it, which is the property that decides whether any of this works.

Three honest limits. O'Keeffe's publishes no concentration for anything, which is a real weakness against the two creams below that do. It contains diazolidinyl urea and iodopropynyl butylcarbamate, two formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, both published. And it is a jar, so fingers go into the product.

The strongest thing you can buy, once the skin has closed

Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Hand Cream publishes glycerin at 40 per cent in a seven-ingredient fragrance-free formula. For context, nothing else in this ledger publishes a humectant concentration remotely like it, and the figure is printed rather than implied - which is why a pea-sized amount does what a fingertip of an ordinary lotion does not.

Seven ingredients also means there is very little in it for a reactive hand to object to. The trade-offs are real and all three follow from the concentration: it is tacky on application and takes a minute to sink in, it needs sealing in dry indoor air for the reason above, and 56 ml is a small tube. The small tube is the point - concentration is why it lasts months anyway.

For hands that work rather than hands that type

Eucerin Advanced Repair Hand Cream publishes 5 per cent urea alongside ceramide NP, sodium lactate, sodium PCA, glycine and alanine - an actual natural moisturizing factor blend, named rather than gestured at. Urea is the only common ingredient that both hydrates and softens hardened keratin, which is why it belongs on hands with callus and thickening rather than simple dryness.

Who should skip it, and when: anyone with an open crack, today. Urea stings on split skin, and that is precisely the moment hands need the most help - which is the whole reason the no-acid, no-urea cream is ranked above it here rather than below. Come back to this one when the surface has closed. It also contains dimethicone, so it leaves a slight film, and 78 g does not go far on hands washed ten times a day.

Lips and heels are separate problems

Lips. Aquaphor Lip Repair is published as both preservative-free and fragrance-free - a combination almost nothing in that category manages - with octyldodecanol and castor seed oil doing the occlusion. There is no active ingredient in it at all, which is correct: a split lip needs a barrier, not a treatment. It has no flavor, and that is a specification rather than an omission, because flavor encourages licking.

Two caveats: no SPF, so it is the night product rather than the daytime one, and the published ingredient list on the brand page is partial rather than complete. Being preservative-free also means it should not be shared or contaminated.

Heels. O'Keeffe's Healthy Feet is the same argument as the hand cream in a foot formula: glycerin second, allantoin fifth, thirteen items published, no fragrance and no acid. Heel skin is the thickest on the body, so the long-run answer is usually an acid with a published percentage - but not while it is open. Use this one to get the surface closed, then switch. It is thick and slightly tacky, so it wants socks over it rather than bare feet on a floor.

The order and the timing

1. Hands: after every wash, not once a day. Each wash removes the layer. A concentrated cream in a pocket-sized tube beats a thin one in a big bottle for exactly this reason.
2. Humectant, then occlusive, in heated rooms. The 40 per cent glycerin cream wants something over it. In practice that means the Neutrogena first and a thicker barrier cream last thing at night.
3. Heels and lips at bedtime. It is the only stretch of the day when nothing rubs it off. Socks on the heels.
4. Gloves outside, before the hands hurt rather than after. No cream competes with cold wind on wet hands, and nothing on this page is as effective as not getting there.
5. Switch to the acid product only once nothing is open. The foot page and the body exfoliant page both rank on published percentages, and both are the second step rather than the first.

What not to use

• A light, fast-absorbing lotion with alcohol denat. on the list. Named as the skip above. The feel you are paying for is the ingredient causing the sting.
• An acid cream, while anything is split. Right product, wrong week.
• A flavored or scented lip balm on a cracked lip. Flavor encourages licking and licking is why it is not healing.
• A face moisturizer on heels. Facial formulas are built light for skin a fraction of the thickness - the dry skin guide covers the face, which is a genuinely different problem with different products.