The Ideal Shower Is This Many Minutes Long, According To Experts

Here’s what your skin, the planet and your wallet wish you knew.

The more stressed some of us get, the more we can find ourselves wanting to double (or triple) down on our self-care routines. Case in point: the “everything shower.” It all started on TikTok, and now the platform is exploding with people demonstrating hours-long shower sessions that include exfoliation, shaving, hair masks, body scrubs, face masks, oils, serums and more. The appeal, in large part, lies with the fact that it’s a way to take control of one small part of your life, when so much else seems out of control.

It’s a little bit washing up, a little bit spa treatment and a whole lot performative wellness ritual — and even more water. Many everything shower proponents describe it as a reset after a hard week and a way to “start over” with a scrupulously groomed body, head to toe. They sing the praises of time spent focused just on themselves, tending to each square inch of flesh and treating themselves with kindness and devotion.

But is it a little too much? Should our skin be under running water for such a long period of time? And what about a long shower’s impact on our increasingly drought-ridden planet? Here’s what science-based experts, not TikTok influencers, have to say about the everything shower trend.

Cleansing our skin is important, but stripping it can be detrimental.

You need to keep your skin clean for all sorts of reasons, said dermatologist Dr. Nada Elbuluk, a professor of clinical dermatology at the University of Southern California. “Cleansing is important for removing dirt, dead skin cells and other contaminants that we may come into contact with throughout the day, such as bacteria, viruses and fungi,” she added.