01
You say
“Dull”
In clinic
Dullness
Skin that reads flat in daylight and gives back very little light.
A Field Guide To Your Skin
Skin
Qualitythe words you use, and the words we chart
Fifteen attributes. Four categories. One vocabulary you and your dermatologist can finally share.
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The gap, measured
You described how your skin looked. We were assessing what it was doing.
For decades, skin quality meant something slightly different in every exam room. You said your skin looked tired, dull, or crepey. Your physician was assessing pigment, texture, and laxity. Both descriptions were right. Neither was shared.
In July 2026, an international advisory board of aesthetic dermatologists writing in Dermatologic Surgery agreed on definitions for fifteen skin quality attributes, then asked more than 1,000 patients and 200 clinicians which words each group actually uses. The gap was measurable, and consistent.
None of these are disagreements. They are two vocabularies describing one set of findings. Dr. Hubbell has practiced dermatology in Lafayette for forty years. The vocabulary is new. The medicine underneath it is not. Below, both languages sit side by side.
Browse by category
Fifteen attributes, four categories.
02
You say
Uneven tone
In clinic
Dyschromia
Color that is not uniform across an area.
03
You say
“Redness”
In clinic
Skin redness
A red cast at the surface, which may be persistent or may come and go. In clinic this often gets charted as rosacea.
04
You say
“Sun damage”
“Brown spots”
In clinic
Hyperpigmentation
Concentrated pigment sitting darker than the skin around it.
05
You say
“Uneven texture”
“Bumpy”
In clinic
Roughness
Texture you feel as much as see, coarse under the fingertips.
06
You say
“Visible pores”
In clinic
Pores
Follicular openings that read as visible at conversational distance.
07
You say
“Veiny”
In clinic
Thin skin
Reduced thickness through the skin's layers, which is why the vessels underneath start to show.
08
You say
“Aged”
“Crepey”
In clinic
Crepey skin
Thin skin that has also gathered fine wrinkling. The texture people compare to tissue paper.
09
You say
“Crow’s feet”
In clinic
Fine lines
Shallow lines sitting at the surface.
10
You say
“Wrinkles”
“Deep wrinkles”
In clinic
Coarse lines
Deeper, more set lines.
11
You say
“Dry”
In clinic
Dry skin
Reduced water or lipid content, sometimes alongside a compromised barrier. Charted between clinicians as xerosis.
12
You say
“Oily”
In clinic
Oily skin
A greasy look or feel driven by sebum output.
13
You say
Loss of firmness
In clinic
Firmness
How well skin resists being pushed out of shape.
14
You say
“Saggy”
“Droopy”
In clinic
Laxity
Skin that hangs looser than it once did. This is the attribute where patient and clinician language diverged most sharply in the research.
15
You say
Does not spring back
In clinic
Elasticity
How readily skin returns to shape after it is moved.
Why this belongs in a dermatology practice
A finding is not the same as a complaint.
Read the fifteen attributes together and something becomes obvious: they do not sort cleanly into medical and cosmetic. Redness may be rosacea. Brown spots may be sun damage, or they may be something that warrants a closer look. Thin skin and crepey skin are findings, not complaints.
A medical spa can address part of this list. A board-certified dermatologist can evaluate all of it, and can tell the difference between an attribute worth treating and a lesion worth examining. That difference is why skin quality has always been a dermatologic subject, long before it had an agreed vocabulary.
Meet Dr. HubbellPut a clinical name to what you see.
A consultation begins with a board-certified dermatologist assessing what is actually present, and explaining it in language you can follow.
Schedule a ConsultationAbout the research on this page. The fifteen-attribute skin quality framework referenced above was published as: Humphrey S, Jones D, Yong A, Woolery-Lloyd H, Lampel H, Garcia JK, Collins S, Manson Brown S, Peterson S. Establishing a Vocabulary for Skin Quality: Working Toward Consensus Skin Attribute Definitions From the Patient and Physician Perspective. Dermatologic Surgery. 2026;52(7):678-684. doi:10.1097/DSS.0000000000005063. The category names, plain-language descriptions, and treatment associations on this page are our own summary, written for patients, and are not reproduced from the publication. Quoted patient phrasing reflects wording patients reported in that research; three of the fifteen attributes were not covered by the patient survey, and the plain-language phrasing shown for those is our own and appears without quotation marks. Hubbell Dermatology & Aesthetics is not affiliated with, and this page is not endorsed by, the study authors or the study sponsor. Individual findings and treatment plans are determined at consultation and vary from person to person.