Festivals, camping and lazy weekends. All times when it’s perfectly acceptable to skip getting up close and personal with a bar of soap. The rest of the time? Well, we’ve all heard the phrase ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’. Yet right now, the ritual of our daily morning shower is being challenged by the rise of a new movement – that of ‘cleansing reduction’.

According to a study* around 80% of British women no longer shower every day, with proponents arguing that washing less has a whole host of benefits, not least softer, less agitated skin. And rather than being a dirty little secret, cleansing reduction fans are shouting about it, with A-listers such as Julia Roberts and Naya Rivera reportedly cutting down daily bathing. Vivienne Westwood says she’s reduced her washing to just once a week. Her husband, Andreas Kronthaler, to once a month.

A small admission here – I am (inadvertently) one of them, having showered every other day for as long as I can remember. Although less a considered strategy and more a symptom of a hard-to-break snooze habit, until recently, this innocuous admission was met – almost exclusively – by faint disgust, akin to admitting to fancying Jeremy Clarkson or something. Yet even I’d agree that there’s nothing so invigorating as rinsing the day away with lashings of minty bubbles, or the sensation of squeaky clean skin, renewed by a blast of steam and hot water. So, I was fascinated to explore whether this new trend had any truth behind it that would legitimise my lazy ways…

One of the main arguments for cleansing reduction is how the skin reacts to over scrupulous cleanliness. For many people, washing just once a day has become the bare minimum – a morning shower to wake you up, another after that lunch-time spinning session, and perhaps a third before bed after a grimy commute. According to a study by the University of California, though, excess washing (defined as more than once a day) can be bad for your skin and health.

“The skin has a natural protective barrier called the acid mantle – and washing excessively changes how effective it is,” says Dr Nick Lowe, consultant dermatologist and professor of dermatology at UCLA in Los Angeles. This film covers our entire body, and is made up of a mixture of sweat, oils and dead skin cells. And, as the name might suggest, it has a slightly aidic pH. The acidity helps to neutralise contaminations, and the scale-like structure of the mantle waterproofs the skin – holding the cells tightly together so that it’s harder for viruses to penetrate and moisture to escape.

A new movement in cleansing reduction wants us to wash less