This Is The Best Time Of Day To Shower, According To Kim K.’s Aesthetician

What’s the first thing you do in the morning? After hitting snooze and scrolling through Instagram in bed, I’m willing to bet you start your day with a shower. But — and I say this lovingly — you’re doing it wrong. If you're wondering whether you should shower in the morning or at night, let Joanna Czech, celebrity aesthetician to Kim Kardashian and Anna Wintour, convince you to be a night owl.

In the industry, “don’t bring the street to your sheets” is a well-known Czech-ism. The Poland-born aesthetician touts the way of life to her clients, to her Instagram followers — really, to anyone who will listen. “This is the way I grew up,” Czech tells The Zoe Report of her shower-at-night philosophy. “When I moved to the United States, it was a huge cultural difference of preparing the body and face in the morning versus the evening.” Getting clean before bed goes beyond cultural preference, though; apparently, it’s also the healthier option.

“The air that surrounds us is full of dirt, smog, dust, and other free radicals,” she once wrote on her site. “All of those particles stick to our clothes and skin throughout the day, and transfer on to the surfaces we sit on and touch. When we don’t bathe or rinse off before we get in to bed, we are literally bringing the dirt and grime from the streets on to our sheets.” First of all: Gross. Second of all: Even if you’re the rare person who washes their sheets every other day (and who has the time?), you’re still cuddling up with quite a bit of gunk on a weekly basis. Luckily, the solve for this, uh, unsavory issue is easy: “I just take a shower every night,” Czech tells TZR. “It's that simple.”

“It’s not just about the sheets,” the aesthetician stresses. “It is about the skin on the body and face and getting it prepped and cleaned before sleep.” She notes that the skin is about 60 percent more absorbent at night — this is because your body temperature rises while you sleep, dilating blood vessels and boosting absorption. In theory, then, rinsing off and applying all of your body scrubs, serums, lotions, and creams pre-bed is more effective than applying them in the morning. The same goes for facial care. Czech says that no matter how tired you are, nighttime is not the time to skimp on your skincare routine; the moisturizer you slather on in the AM will be that much more potent in the PM. (Conversely, since the skin is more likely to soak up products while you sleep, it’s also possible it could re-absorb the microscopic grime on your sheets.)

“The majority of my celebrity clients who I have taken care of already take showers or baths at night,” Czech says. “Many of them are European, which may be the reason.” If you’re not already a client of Czech’s or a chic European, your mission is clear: Wash your sheets every single day... or just wash your bod at night.