Kelly Driscoll reviews the full K-beauty routine stack, from cleansers and toners through serums, essences, mists, and masks, with a consistent focus on how each product performs on combo-dry, dehydrated, and sensitive skin. Her takes are grounded in her own skin type and shaped by a years-long commitment to understanding what K-beauty routines actually do for real skin.
Why Is She A Guru?
An independent creator with years of dedicated K-beauty product reviewing across the complete routine, building a track record specific to sensitive and dehydrated skin types.
427Products
345 yay89% approval rate
42 nayDoesn't pull punches
38 hot takesWhere she breaks from the pack
Kelly Driscoll's top picks.
The products Kelly Driscoll has crowned best in their category, and brings up again and again.
This is the Peach and Lily Rescue Party Barrier Restore Serum. It does have a creamy texture to it, but as you see it actually applies a little bit more fluid and light to the skin. It's not a stiff type of texture. It's more like a fluidy cream that you put in your coffee rather than a thick butter cream. I've really been loving this, especially for this kind of pre-spring time, because of the ectoin. I'm getting really obsessed with this ingredient. It's a very potent antioxidant and also a very potent skin hydrator, and I think that's what sets this barrier serum apart from some of my other favorite creamier, richer types of products. That makes it suitable for kind of layering lighter moisture in the beginning of this skincare routine. The ectoin really just creates this hydration shell. It's amazing for dehydrated skin. It's amazing for really keeping long-lasting hydration on the skin, which I struggle with, especially at night time when I'm sleeping. I'm so prone to dehydration.
I used this multi-acid milk peel from Prequel last night. It's an AHA peel, it's like 15% AHA, it's actually quite potent. I did it last night and I feel like my skin looks a little brighter. It feels a little bit smoother. And that's what I'm talking about with an outer glow up, you know, [...] just a little [...] sort of way to [...] feel a little bit more confident in my skin without having to go for something really crazy, really expensive, really over the top.
I've been jamming hardcore on the iUNIK Beta Glucan 3X Barrier Cream. I've emptied two jars of it and I ordered a third immediately. Now I'm using this at night and the Tower 28 Daily Barrier Recovery Cream in the morning, and that's been working really well for me.
This stuff, the Green Tea Ceramide Milk Barrier Essence from Innisfree, I've emptied nearly three bottles of it. I'm a big fan of that product and I have been now for quite a while.
This one is the La Roche-Posay Toleriane Purifying Foaming Cleanser. This is a foaming cleanser but it's a little less moisturizing than the other one. I would say this one is more for balanced folks, slightly drier skin types, this one's more for oily skin types. [...] It says for normal to oily skin. [...] I don't have oily skin and I do find this the tiniest tiniest bit drying. Not really like terribly stripping or anything, just tiniest. Because I already know I love the other one from the brand, I don't usually grab for this one. [...] This one is good for body. It's so good for the body. I actually do use this on my face sometimes in the shower too. [...] But comparison-wise, the other one is my preference. [...] Not my most favorite for my face. I do love this in the shower, though. And I will often use this face and body, especially in warmer weather when I do have some more oil popping in my T-zone.
This is your SOS pick if you went a little too hard with your actives, got a lot of sun, or are just very stressed and your skin is feeling tight, dehydrated, uncomfortable, red, and inflamed. It replenishes hydration and relieves that tight feeling. The hero ingredient is an 11% hydration complex using electrolytes: zinc, magnesium, and sodium PCA, which help skin hold onto water at a cellular level, completed with snow mushroom extract, beta glucan, and five different weights of hyaluronic acid. The texture is like a gel cream that feels cooling and refreshing and thins out as you spread it, sinking deep into the skin, with a velvety smoothness on top that isn't greasy or oily. I started using this serum this summer and was impressed immediately; I could not believe how soothing this felt on contact. The electrolyte complex, the magnesium and zinc, has an anti-inflammatory soothing benefit, and I've used other Cocokind products with the electrolyte mix and they take down redness and inflammation nicely. It provides long-lasting hydration and takes down irritation quickly, spreads thinner and lighter than it appears, and dries down not sticky and not tacky.
The Ordinary Multi-Peptide and Copper Peptide 1% Serum is currently retailing at $32, and it's an affordable copper peptide alternative, but it's not a one-for-one switch for Biossance. The Ordinary is not very elegant, it's actually quite sticky and it smells like a wet penny, whereas Biossance is so much more elegant in texture, more hydrating and plumping, and doesn't smell like a wet penny either. If you enjoy the Biossance product and you switch to the Ordinary, you're not going to be happy.
I was excited about this one because there are some really great active ingredients in here, including caffeine, niacinamide, kojic acid and matrixyl, ingredients I would look for for that gentle well-aging support for an under eye area. I don't like this product, I really struck out with this for a few reasons. While I do on the whole enjoy their formulas, uniformly this brand has some of the worst packaging I have ever encountered. This is an Eye Cream that has one of those ceramic applicators, there's a lightness to this, it's not as thick as the Clarins Eye Cream, there's more of a hydrating, looser kind of texture to it. There's something about this applicator, when I use it especially, it pushes this product into my eyes instantly, making them burn and sting, it feels so uncomfortable. I do think the applicator pushes it into my eye, and when I don't get it into my eyes it actually feels very irritating for my eye skin. I highly suspect it's the kojic acid, which is a really good brightening ingredient but it's also an ingredient that has historically stimulated my skin, effective but stimulating. I've used it in face products too and I know it's just too much for my skin, so it's probably just not a match for me personally, but I do find it irritating. This is definitely not a morning and nighttime Eye Cream, plus traveling into my eyes and burning and stinging more often than not, this is no good for me personally.
I used to like the Laneige Cica Sleeping Pack back around 2019, and then I changed my tune about that product and I was like, 'Never again.' What went down back in the day was I did like it. It felt really good and soothing for a while, and then it felt kind of irritating and itchy and burning and stinging on my skin because why did Laneige do this? They added in two essential oils into this mask that was meant for sensitive skin, raw vulnerable skin, healing up the skin, and then they put in these essential oils. That's just not a good mix for me and my sensitive skin. So, I was at Sephora a couple months ago, and I saw this container with a beautiful aqua color. I was looking at the Laneige Cica Sleeping Mask. I don't remember the Cica Sleeping Mask looking like this. I'm like, 'Did they reformulate this? This is different. And I don't see essential oils, and I don't see artificial fragrance, and I don't see fragrant compounds, and I don't see drying forms of alcohol.' Laneige is notorious for using any and all of the ingredients that I just said. So, I was like, 'Wow, I can actually put this on my face. This is exciting.' And then I opened up the demo and I was like, 'That is not the same texture, either. This is legitimately a new product.'
When I reviewed the smaller size bottle, I told you I'm not really seeing anything. It's probably doing some small things, but my skin is pretty optimized in a good spot that I'm just not really noticing anything mindblowing with this. [...] It had a nice refreshing gel texture. It felt really refreshing and hydrating and light on my skin, but it just didn't really feel like it did anything. It might be working behind the scenes. It might be supporting good stuff in my skin. I'm not seeing anything in the mirror with this one. And I emptied the whole bottle. This is a 30ml bottle. I think the trial size I had was 15. So I think I've used enough of this by this point to know that it's just not really for me.
Every review.
All 427 products Kelly Driscoll has reviewed, grouped by product type. Click a product to see the full guru consensus.
"The Beauty of Joseon Glow Serum is secretly an amazing serum for acne prone skin. This contains 2% of niacinamide which is great for brightening but it's also great for strengthening your skin barrier, one of the first defenses against the acne bacteria. This also contains propolis, which is an amazing very gentle antibacterial and anti-inflammation ingredient that really helps to soothe acne prone skin, take down the swelling and the redness and the look of the pimples. This also contains a very gentle form of BHA which is betaine salicylate, which is actually a cousin to salicylic acid but it's about two times gentler than salicylic acid. That's what makes this a gentle solution that you can use every single day to help take down your congestion and breakouts because betaine salicylate, just like salicylic acid, can exfoliate deep within your pore lining to release the clogs and the congestion deep within your pores. This has a thick gel texture that actually is moisturizing. It's another reason why it's one of my favorites for fall because it's a very nourishing, protective gel texture. It's not overwhelming like a cream type of product would be, but it does offer a little bit more moisturization to the skin."
"The Inky List Ectoin Hydro Barrier Serum has 2% of Ectoin which creates a hydration network deep within your skin cells and creates a long-lasting hydration that will stick with your skin well after you wash your face, which can be so incredibly beneficial when we're coming up against the dry environment outside and inside. Ectoin is one of your best friends for rehydrating your skin, but it's also a great protective antioxidant. I really love this serum because of the texture in addition to the hero ingredient ectoin. It is a medium gel texture that sinks into your skin really nicely, but it has a plumping quality to it with that medium gel. It's a little bit bouncy. So it not only gives you that deep down replenishing feeling as it absorbs into your skin, but it also gives you that plump bouncy feel to your skin, which I absolutely adore, especially when you're going through dehydration. Your skin can actually feel a little bit thinner and just not as plump and as smooth as it was before. So I love this quality to the serum to just really plump up and make your skin a little bit more bouncy and a little bit more smooth looking while providing that deep down long-lasting hydration."
"The Tier Tier Matcha Dual Serum has 5% niacinamide which will brighten up your skin and fortify and strengthen your skin barrier, and it also has a tiniest touch of PHA, gluconolactone, which is a very gentle form of exfoliation to address any flakiness or minor textural issues without irritation. Plus the matcha content is great for bringing down redness and helping to bring out that healthy glow back to your skin. This has a gorgeous dual face texture where you get to mix the hydrating portion and the moisturizing portion together before you apply it. It's still really lightweight, watery, and quickly absorbed in the skin, but that touch of moisture really brings in that radiance to your skin without overwhelming your pores. I would actually recommend this serum for all skin types because it is so light, but just that kiss of moisture can bring in the balance that you might be seeking in the cooler months."
"I'm going to use the Drunk Elephant Marula Oil. I'm going to be really restrained using about two to three drops. And I'm just going to gently press that into the drier areas of my combination skin, which for me is the U zone, my chin, and my cheeks. I will focus on those areas first, and if I have any little bit left, I might apply it to my T-zone, or I might even skip that completely because I still have quite a bit of oil in the T-zone, but in the fall, I start to go really dry in my U zone. This helps balance everything out."
"The Ordinary Multi-Peptide and Copper Peptide 1% Serum is currently retailing at $32, and it's an affordable copper peptide alternative, but it's not a one-for-one switch for Biossance. The Ordinary is not very elegant, it's actually quite sticky and it smells like a wet penny, whereas Biossance is so much more elegant in texture, more hydrating and plumping, and doesn't smell like a wet penny either. If you enjoy the Biossance product and you switch to the Ordinary, you're not going to be happy."
"Remedy Copper Peptide Complex Firming Serum costs $30 for 30 ml. It has copper tripeptide 1, acetyl hexapeptide 8, that classic Botox peptide, and palmitoyl tripeptide 5, plus ectoin and polyglutamic acid that make this hydrating, plumping gel-like texture, which I think is the key to unlocking an affordable dupe for Biossance. I tested it by putting Biossance on one side of my face and Remedy on the other for my morning routine, and I could not tell the difference. My skin stayed hydrated and felt plump to the touch on both sides every time I ran the test. I am so confident in recommending Remedy as a more affordable option to Biossance."
"The Biossance Squalane and Copper Peptide Rapid Plumping Serum costs $69 for 50 ml. It has copper tripeptide 1 for wound healing, collagen support and skin regeneration, tetrapeptide 30 for brightness and even tone, and a Botox-like peptide for temporary firming, plus ectoin and polyglutamic acid with squalane to hydrate and support the skin barrier. I've emptied quite a few bottles of this over four, maybe even five years now and really, really enjoyed it, not just for the plumping, hydrating gel-like texture but for the meaningful lift, firmness and plumpness it gives my skin along with the preventative anti-aging benefit from the copper peptide. That $69 price tag doesn't always feel so good on the skincare budget though."
"This isn't a stranger to my channel, I've been using it a lot this summer. [...] What really surprised me about this product is how soothing it actually is. I figured this would just be a nice hydrating serum, [...] but there genuinely is something about the electrolyte mix in this product, they're using an 11% electrolyte mix that really suits my skin and calms down irritation, inflammation, and cranky sensitive skin. [...] I was surprised at how well this worked [...] because I felt like, where's the centella, where's the mugwort, where's the hardcore calming anti-inflammatory ingredients, but the electrolyte mix is just enough to soothe that itchiness, irritation, and inflammation in my skin. [...] I also really like this gel texture, it's plumping, hydrating, and [...] just a tiny bit balancing, so it's perfect for my combo skin."
"I think it's just a really great, simple, straightforward type of serum for sensitive skin. It has an incredibly minimal ingredients list [...] focused on the star ingredient, beta glucan, which is an amazing humectant ingredient often derived from mushrooms that's incredibly hydrating, [...] healing, and soothing. [...] The product itself has not changed since 2019, only the packaging and how the [...] ingredients are listed. It's [...] very hydrating, soothing, and anti-inflammatory, with a texture almost like a lighter version of snail mucin, so it's a great vegan alternative for people who don't want to use snail mucin. It's not an immediate relief type of product, it's more of a long term product you use morning and night, and your skin holds onto hydration a lot longer. I still continue to use this product and I do recommend it a lot, particularly for dehydration, irritation associated with dehydrated skin, barrier issues, and any type of sensitivity."
"This is the great lightweight option, with a beautiful refreshing gel texture that sinks into the skin beautifully without stickiness or tackiness and does not feel heavy or greasy, great if you have a lot of oil on your skin and cannot stand cream textures. It contains ceramide AP, AS, EOP, NP, and NS plus cholesterol and fatty acid content, along with soybean seed extract, a great protective antioxidant, and niacinamide, a barrier supportive ingredient. Gel textured ceramide cholesterol fatty acid products are rare, and this one has a really great skin reparative quality, very soothing and calming, and very anti-inflammatory, reducing inflammation in the skin and feeling good overall. Not everybody can stand really creamy, thicker, richer textures, so if you're seeking an alternative to that, this is a great one to consider."
"This one also has some history for her personally, she first started testing it in 2019, and it really did help heal the irritation and damage to her skin from essential oil sensitivity. It has ceramide, cholesterol, fatty acid content, and what's different is it uses 10% tamanu oil, rich in omega 9 fatty acid, very nourishing and restorative for the skin barrier and a great anti-inflammatory ingredient, though some folks with acne prone skin have bad reactions to this oil. It has a creamy, nourishing texture, a bit more moisturizing and a tiny bit thicker than Stradia Lipid Gold. It's designed to be layered underneath an additional moisturizer rather than replace one. It is very nourishing and particularly good if dryness is one of your symptoms. One heads up: it is not a fragrance product, but it has a smell naturally coming from the tamanu oil that is strong and lingers, like a salty yeasty pretzel dipped in celery, and some folks can really be turned off by that."
"Rose hip oil is mixed into Stratia Lipid Gold as a lighter option for summer. It has a really good fatty acid profile particularly high in linoleic acid."
"Another great budget Centella serum that I really like is from Purito, the Wonder Relief Centella Serum, unscented. This comes in $16 to $18 for 60 ml of product. This has a gorgeous plumping gel consistency to it. So it's actually a little bit thicker than other options, so if you want a little bit more plumping, hydration factor to it with your Centella content, this one delivers. What I like about this product is they're using Centella extract plus the four biologically active compounds of Centella. Those biologically active compounds really do produce more of Centella's soothing benefits, anti-inflammatory benefits, collagen stimulating benefits. It's just going to produce more bigger, better, faster Centella results on your skin. This also contains some well-aging collagen stimulating peptides. You know, position this formula to be a little bit better for well-aging concerns rather than just like acne prone or soothing concerns. So, little bit more souped up Centella serum here with a more plumping hydrating texture. I still would recommend this for all skin types."
"Idebenone is actually an antioxidant ingredient that can create this really gorgeous healthy glow to your skin. So if your skin is looking unhealthy, uneven, if it's looking dull and lifeless, this is a great serum for that because it's going to give you that really gorgeous little glow up to your complexion. It has a really thin, runny, slightly watery consistency, but as it absorbs, you're just going to feel just a tiny kiss of moisture. It's not quite like an oil. There is a little bit of emollency here. That is the idebenone. It is the antioxidant, especially when you use an ingredient like that at high quantities. It can have a little bit of a like oil in water type of feel. That being said though, it is still thin. It's not a greasy serum. It's not like an overwhelming heavy type of serum. So I would still recommend this for a majority of skin types. Just know that you're going to feel just a little bit of that kiss of emollient right at the end as you spread that onto your skin."
"It's really kind of almost like two layers. Deep hydration within the skin and then that skin softening moisture, that kiss just on top of the skin. And it's not really that heavy. While it's not as lightweight as a very truly watery serum or even a gellike consistency, this is on the medium light side as far as how it sits on the skin. Has an amazing absorbency as well. I fell in love with this over this past fall and winter season where my combination skin can go incredibly dry and dehydrated. Where I live in the upper Midwest, it starts to get very cold, the wind is very harsh, gets snowy and icy, and the dry air inside from all the heating wears down on my skin. My skin barrier felt weak and dehydration was going up. I honestly didn't even use it like a booster. I just subbed it in for my serum product. It was just one easy product that really showed the difference, that really gave me that long lasting hydration and relief from the dehydration. It really helped my skincare to last longer and to stand up to the elements and get my skin through this season."
"I hate that it was so good. I emptied it. It was that good. It is growth factors. So it's peptides, right? This is very gentle. It's fragrance-free and it really is just focused on really those supportive ingredients."
"Overall, I really like this device because it really does combine a lot of the different features that you would find on separate devices into one, which actually makes it a pretty good deal. You can really experiment with these different modes and the different intensities of them to figure out what is your favorite, what you like to do, and what's going to give you the best results for your certain skincare goals. And those goals change all the time, right? Sometimes we're working on skin elasticity and other times we are working on texture, and so I like that all the modes are in one device and I really enjoy using mine. I always feel like I'm getting a little bit of a facial like experience when I use it."
"I love their Peach and Lily Copper Peptide Pro Firming Serum because this is a really good example of a well-formulated peptide serum. They are using 2% of copper peptide which helps to stimulate collagen. It's a really great peptide for addressing the signs of aging on the skin. But it doesn't just stop at the copper peptide. They have also used 12 other different peptides that support collagen stimulation, skin elasticity, firmness, as well as tone and texture, and really just multiple signs of aging on the skin. This is one of those few peptide serums that I say actually works because peptides sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're tricky to formulate, sometimes the formulation is off in certain products. But this one, I think, is really well-rounded. They're coming at it from multiple different angles. It's not just about blasting your skin with a lot of copper peptide, but also these other supportive peptides that address other signs of aging on the skin. When you're using this one consistently, and I've emptied like three or four bottles of this now at this point, it really does improve the overall quality of your skin. It will definitely help as a preventative peptide serum. I think it will show some firming benefits for folks who need a little bit more help in that department. Skin elasticity, definitely."
"This has 5% of panthenol as well as matrycide for hydrating the skin, strengthening the skin barrier, but also soothing any irritation. I've been using this product actually for a while, and I do like what's inside of the bottle. It's a little bit hydrating, but very soothing, very comforting. Helps to take down some redness. I really don't like the mist because it is, as you heard and saw, it's just a traditional kind of pump. It's a very uneven spray. But you know what? I really like what's inside of here. And it's just a really nice way to get started with the routine for some deep soothing from the matrycide, which is the biologically active compound of Centella. And so it really helps with the anti-inflammatory, taking down the redness, the itchiness, the irritation."
"I really like this brand and the Dive-In line I really like because they do combine a lot of different hydrating humectant ingredients with some ceramide content. And that's what I feel like a lot of hydrating products are missing. They're just blasting your skin with water, with glycerin, with panthenol. Nothing wrong with those ingredients, but oftentimes when we are craving a lot of hydration in our skin, it's because our skin barrier is maybe a little bit weak. And so you can throw a lot of hydrating products at your skin and it will feel good for a while, but it doesn't break the cycle of dehydration. What breaks it? Strengthening the skin barrier. What strengthens the skin barrier? Well, ceramides make up 50% of your skin barrier. And so I've always had a lot of respect for how Torriden has formulated their Dive-In line. They've been formulated in lightweight, quickly absorbed textures that are great for oily skin, combo skin, balanced skin. They're lighter and they're very refreshing. Like this is something I would personally reach for with my combo dehydrated skin in warmer weather, especially because it's not overwhelming and yet deep down hydration that lasts for a long time, and that helps to strengthen the skin barrier."
"My least recommended from Glow Recipe is the plum plump line. It is mostly a hyaluronic acid focused line and it really is about bringing hydration into the skin. I like hyaluronic acid, but it's not my most favorite hydrating ingredient generally. I find it a little bit boring. It can be done in an interesting way, but these products have never really lit me up in any exciting way. I have nothing against them, but what I need a hydrating formulation to do for my skin is multi-layered and I just don't really get it from these particular products. They're not bad, but they just don't really light me personally up. I kind of find them sort of boring. The packaging, coloring, marketing are gorgeous, but the products themselves, meh."
"The calming serum is a great combination of green tea and panthenol. Green tea is great for soothing inflammation on the skin, the calming aspect of this particular product. It also brings a healthy dose of antioxidants into the skin. And then they're using panthenol which not only hydrates the skin, it helps to address dehydration symptoms on the skin but it's also barrier strengthening. Panthenol helps to support the lipid layer aka your skin barrier, and that's what helps to hold hydration in place and keep hydration on your skin in a long lasting way. So it's a really hydrating serum, but it's also a soothing serum as well. This is great if your skin is lacking hydration, if you're dealing with dehydration, or you're looking for a gentle serum, something to just support general skin health, your general skin barrier, some antioxidant care, some anti-inflammatory care, some general soothing without really harsh actives. This would be a good one."
"I recently got irritation from a barrier serum from Cocokind. I've talked about this quite a bit. I think it's actually a nice product, but it does contain some chemical exfoliation. Using a product like that two times a day actually weakened my skin barrier. That's just my skin, and that's something I know about my skin. But even someone like me who reads ingredient lists carefully, I still missed this ingredient, I got a little lazy in my reading at the store. It's really easy to miss these types of ingredients if you're not on top of things. I don't think people should be expected to be ingredient list decoders. It should not have to be something you need to do in order to get a product that doesn't irritate your already damaged or weak skin."
"I did empty the Allies of Skin Copper Tripeptide and Ectoin Advanced Repair Serum, which I did share in my Epic Empties video, and I told you like I didn't want to like it, but I did. And I hated that I liked it because it's so expensive and that while it was gifted to me by the brand, this isn't really something that I care to afford. It's just like it's a little too rich for my budget. I have been kind of seeking for something that gives me that sort of same thrill, that peptide kick that I've been looking for."
"This retails about $82 for 30 ml of product. And this is, I have to admit, one of the hardest ones to find a dupe for. The ingredients list is patented, so you really can't dupe it. But I also feel like there is a real unique combination of benefits in this product that make it difficult to dupe. The key ingredient here is the grape vine sap, which helps to brighten up the skin and can help to address dark marks. The veno in the name refers to this ingredient, which is a tyrosinase inhibitor. This is how it helps to address hyperpigmentation. Not only does it address existing hyperpigmentation but it actually stops other hyperpigmentation from forming on the skin or helps to significantly decrease it. This is a brightening ingredient that is within the same ranks as ingredients like hydroquinone, kojic acid, arbutin, azelaic acid, and tranexamic acid."
"This is the Numbuzin No.3 Vitamin Concentrated Serum, and it's very similar to the toner and it is great for some serious brightening and really targeting hyperpigmentation on the skin. The ingredients here are pretty similar. We do have the niacinamide content as well as the glutathione and we have multiple forms of vitamin C. They've added an additional form of vitamin C in this one as well as arbutin. And they round out the serum with tranexamic acid as well as panthenol. And so that actually creates a really targeted, really potent brightening serum. Particularly good for stubborn hyperpigmentation because all of these brightening actives work at the hyperpigmentation at different pathways and different levels. If you have stubborn hyperpigmentation, melasma, or dark marks left after acne, sun damage, you do need multiple forms of actives. Just one at a really high percentage is likely not going to show you the types of results that you're seeking. You definitely want something a little bit more multi-layered, a little bit more sophisticated. And that's what I really admire about this serum. I think that it does it really well and really smartly."
"I also like NIOD Modulating Glucosides Serum. This texture splits the difference between the denseness and richness of other products. This is an interesting one because it uses plant-based ceramides as well as some other lipids which will help your skin barrier. But this one is particularly one of my favorites when my skin is feeling incredibly irritated, which is another symptom that your skin barrier needs some strengthening and it can often accompany dehydration."
"I was surprised by the hydration that it does bring to the skin. And I think what really struck me about it was the long lasting hydration. That's something that I really key in on because I do often suffer with dehydration. If you have higher hydration needs, your skin demands a lot of hydration because it's going through dehydration, transepidermal water loss, and losing hydration throughout the day. Something that feels really hydrating for folks with not dehydrated skin doesn't work past 12 p.m. for dehydrated folks. So you need something that lasts longer in the skin, that works harder for you. I have those high hydration needs and I'm very clued into hydration that lasts till the end of the day. And I felt like this lasted till the end of the day."
"One of my favorites, Pycnogenol 5%. Really, really lovely one. Also very soothing and great for bringing down that inflammatory response in the skin."
"My favorite is NIOD Survival 0. This is a potent blend of many antioxidants that really work to protect your skin at multiple levels. With the antioxidant blend, with the amino acid blend, it's all about protecting the skin and helping to reduce inflammation in the skin and that inflammatory response that causes the damage."
"I do enjoy this cream, I've actually had my eye on it for a while. This is the one that I've had my eye on for a while and I did not feel that it disappointed me, although I do feel it was actually lighter than my mind was thinking it was going to be. For combination skin, you're not too dry and you're not too oily, if you have that kind of really classic combo skin I think you're really going to enjoy this. I really do feel like it brings all the elements that combo skin needs right that little bit of hydration that dives a little bit deeper into the skin. You can really feel that as you're applying it. It's not like big plumping, like heavy gel like hydration, but you can just feel it kind of getting deeper, especially if you have a little dehydration in that combo skin it's going to feel very soothing to the skin and quite cooling as well. But because there is more of that creamier element to this it is going to create more of that skin softening moisturizing effect at the top as well as occlusivity, and that's really what you need to fight dehydration. This just isn't a super duper heavy rich oily type of cream."
"I really recommend this for those who are looking for something that has moisture but doesn't weigh down the skin. It doesn't have a heavy occlusive, slugged-down kind of feel to it. I find this very, very breathable, very light, but very skin conditioning. The hyaluronic acid really brings a lot of hydration to the skin, really smooths your skin, plumps it up. If you're suffering with dehydration lines, a really hydrating routine before a cream like this is definitely going to help, and working on that barrier is also important. This is that type of cream that can bring some of that bounce, some of that plumpness, some of that smoothness back to your skin. When you bring more of that hydration into the deeper layers of your skin, those fine lines start to smooth out because your skin is holding on to more hydration. It has a beautiful finish, it's not wet, greasy, or overly shiny. It really settles into the skin nicely and it's not super duper occlusive, so I think oily skin types, balanced skin types, combination skin would do well with this."
"This formula is very much suited for folks who have too much oil on their skin but need deeply hydrating skincare that performs in hot weather and that's not thick and overwhelming and weighing their skin down. This is going to help to control the oil. It's going to help with the inflammation. There's also some astringent extracts in here that can be beneficial for oily and acne-prone skin. It's got a really impressive texture. Oftentimes those light gel textures don't offer a lot of hydration, but I'm impressed by how thin it is and how hydrating it is. But if you don't have oil to spare, this is not the serum for you."
"I was using this last spring all over my eye area. My lids get so red and they get so puffy and this has a few key ingredients in here that actually help to depuff and deinflame the eye area. But there's also soothing ingredients in here as well that help to take down that raw itchy feeling with the skin. Arnica helps to reduce the swelling. The centella really helps to reduce the inflammation and the centella in here helps to calm the look of redness down. This also has some niacinamide which can be helpful for the skin barrier. And then they also have used ash bark extract which is another depuffing active ingredient. It's just a very thin gel texture and it does come packaged with this stainless steel roller ball application. So that plus this cooling gel and soothing depuffing gel texture and then that cool rolling sensation as you just kind of glide this over the area, it feels so amazing when that skin is so raw and so red and so irritated."
"I have loved this in spring's past, but that oil has been discontinued. This helps keep my skin barrier strong, and this is what helps keep it healthy, strong, and hydrated."
"All the hyped up reviews make it out to be, I don't find it to be like deep deep deep hydrating or like really plumping to the skin. I think it's just some nice surface level hydration that you feel, and when I say hydration I mean watery feeling right. But the rice and the honey do round that out, bring a lot of balance to the skin, hug that light hydration in, soften the skin. It's sticky. This was something I was like really, I couldn't believe how sticky this was. It reminds me a lot of a snail essence because when you get the texture between your fingers you kind of pull them apart you get that like mozzarella cheese effect, that string effect. You do get some of that here. It absorbs in the skin, I feel like the absorbency rate is good, but it's almost like it leaves a residue on top that starts to get really really tacky and sticky, like your fingers start to stick to your skin as you're patting it in and as it's absorbed, and it takes a minute for that feeling to go away. It actually really kind of creates that film on top of your skin. I did find that quite unpleasant and kind of surprising because definitely not a sensory experience that I personally enjoy in my serums."
"I really like this one. This is actually the first bottle that I've had this product, but I actually have a few more in my backstock. This one is really great for exactly what it says: dark spots and hyperpigmentation. If you do suffer with dark marks after acne or an inflammatory event on your skin, this is really the type of formula you want to look at. There is centella in here, which is a great anti-inflammatory ingredient, so it helps to lessen that inflammation, which helps to lessen the severity of the dark marks. We've got tranexamic acid in here, which helps to target that pigmentation on the skin. There's also a little bit of vitamin C in here, there's some niacinamide, another great way to attack the hyperpigmentation. You can use this full face for brightening, but you can also just use it as a spot treatment for dark spots too, but I find that it works really, really well."
"After about two or three weeks, my skin feels firmer. I can feel it in my skin cells, [...] but also to the touch my skin feels plumper, but not just from a hydrated feel but from an actual firmer lifted kind of feel. I was really surprised at how fast it worked. [...] It is such a beautiful barrier restoring serum. It does have ceramides in it as well as cholesterol and fatty acids, and what's really interesting is they're using ectoin, which is a great hydrating ingredient. It's particularly good for dehydrated skin because it really does offer long lasting hydration for the skin, and that was kind of the edge to this product that made it different than some of my other favorite barrier serums. The ectoin here really gives that balance. You can see it in the texture, it's that creamy type of texture but you can see there's like a gel hydrating quality to it. This actually applies to the skin a little bit thinner, it's not a heavy rich cream, and so that deep hydration helps to lighten everything up but we still get that really good heavy hitting barrier with ceramides and cholesterol and fatty acids. I thought it was a really great blend."
"This is the Paula's Choice Pro-Collagen Multi-Peptide Booster. I actually never used this, it's the first time that I'm using it. Kind of like a mediumish gel texture, it's not too heavy, it's not really moisturizing, but I can definitely feel that there's a tiny bit of plumpness to this and it feels pretty good."
"This is another one that all of us here in this room we get it, we know about this one, right? The people outside of this room they don't know about this one. R&W kind of flies under the radar. They do not have a huge marketing budget, they have not gone viral on TikTok, but they do offer some really solid products, and my favorite for many years has been the Ceramide Plus Serum. It really just comes down to everything that's going on here in the ingredients list in a good way. It is great for barrier care and well aging. They are featuring five different types of ceramides, cholesterol, and fatty acids. There's niacinamide content in here. They're also using a whole host of peptides that for the most part are focusing in on collagen stimulation, targeting fine lines and wrinkles, firming the skin. Please be aware that this is not a peptide-first type of serum. This is sprinkling some peptides into the formula here, so if you're really looking to focus on peptides there are other products that do that better. There is also some avocado oil and some squalane oil in here, and so that actually comes together in the texture of this. It's more of a medium weight type of serum. It does have a gel cream-like texture, so there's actually a plumping hydration to this that feels refreshing. Your skin is going to feel bouncy just from the hydration that it brings, but there's also a moisturization element and a little tiny kiss of that oil nourishment. It's not greasy, but there's just a little bit more moisture here that just locks everything in place."
"There is some evidence to suggest that it may help with skin elasticity and may help to reduce irritation within the skin. The DNA polymer itself should help with collagen stimulation and the fibroblast boosting. I'm still a bit on the fence about this. I do really talk mostly about fragrance-free skincare on my channel, and so I do want to be very clear here: not only is this being sourced from rose extract, but they have also added in some artificial fragrance as well. So this is a fragrance product. If you're sensitive to artificial fragrance, you may not want to use this. If you're sensitive to essential oils, you want to be careful here, because the rose extract itself, although it's not the volatile essential oil, it is going to carry some of that in the extract, it's just going to be very diluted. And if you have sensitivities to fragrant plant extracts, rose is considered one of them. So again, some reservations here. They're also rounding out the PDRN with a selection of peptides that help with aging. We've got acetyl hexapeptide 8, that's a Botox-like peptide. We have copper tripeptide 1, may help to stimulate collagen. We have matrixyl 3000, which helps with collagen."
"I am going to use The Ordinary B Oil and I've been kind of doing closer to two pumps lately and then I'm going to do about three drops of the oil right on the back of my hand mix it up. It just makes it a richer layer but it absorbs in a lighter layer on my skin. This feels lovely."
"Azelaic acid has anti-inflammatory benefits and it's an ingredient that's used to help with rosacea prone skin, but it also has a brightening effect for hyperpigmentation too, so it's really hitting a lot of the things we're talking about in one ingredient."
"I love this one. Glow Recipe is hit or miss for me quite honestly, but this is one that actually really won me over. It is a fragrance-free formula which is somewhat rare for Glow Recipe, but I really like the ingredients in here. There's five different forms of vitamin C, they're using a lot of vitamin C derivatives in here, so this is like a really easy, chill formula. You don't have to keep it in the fridge, you don't have to worry about it oxidizing, you don't have to worry as much about the potential irritation of pure vitamin C. Also using some guava in here and they're using tranexamic acid, and it's great for brightening dark spots, which is exactly what this serum promises. I do feel like this serum delivers. I think that this is a really beautiful brightening serum. I think especially if you are acne prone, you're going to like this serum quite a bit. Really really good, really great at reducing redness as well. Glow Recipe always delivers on that experience. Even though there's no scent to this, I do love the color, the texture, the bottle. I think it's just really fun, I think it's really playful, and sometimes that's a really important element with skincare. It's not just about what it does, but sometimes it's about the experience."
"I do like the Glow Recipe Avocado Ceramide Recovery Serum and I have used it quite a bit, but while it's technically fragrance-free, when you look at the ingredients you don't see the word fragrance but there are actually a lot of plant extracts in here that do contribute to scent, and so I do hesitate to recommend this for everybody. I do hesitate to recommend this for sensitive folks and I do hesitate to recommend this as a barrier repair serum because I don't think that those ingredients work really well on vulnerable or damaged skin or very sensitive skin. I have personally used this just to keep my barrier in a good spot and to bring a lot more moisture into my skincare routine, a lot more nourishment. It's a very creamy nourishing moisturizing avocado oil-based serum and it feels very very good in the cold winter months if you want something just to keep your barrier strong, you're not super duper sensitive, your skin's in a good spot and you don't react to the types of ingredients. I really like it, I think it's a beautiful texture."
"The Q10 Serum is really nice because it's an antioxidant based serum, so this is great to build into your morning routine. Q10 is really great because not only does it help protect your skin from environmental stressors, those free radicals, it also helps to protect your skin from the stress of the sun and pollution. It does have some well aging benefits, it may be able to help prevent and help with the look of existing fine lines and wrinkles on the skin. It can help with the tone of the skin, can help brighten it up."
"The Ordinary Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% serum retails for $6 for 30ml of product. [...] I think it's fine. I don't think it has a very elegant texture. I think it's kind of sticky, and I think some people run into issues just trying to layer this with other skincare products just because it is a very inelegant type of texture, but it legit straight up costs $6. [...] The 10% niacinamide is [...] really great for tone and texture, something that can really help with the pores as well and definitely something that can help with excessive oil production, so if you're a very oily person you might like something like this. It's not one that I super duper recommend a lot in the whole world of niacinamide serums, but if you can only shop at Sephora or don't have access to more international types of brands, I think this is a really great place to start. If you are younger and just trying to build a skincare routine, this is a very effective place to start."
"The key benefit here is aging, this helps with wrinkle prevention as well as improvement. This contains 2% of coenzyme Q10 and this is a great antioxidant to add into an anti-aging routine so we get the protection from the sun from free radicals from environmental stressors. This is actually an antioxidant that's naturally found in human cells and it is thought to have a major role in energy production in the skin and so that actually in turn kind of helps lead to the skin building back lost collagen and elastin. It doesn't directly stimulate collagen but it stimulates the processes that stimulate the collagen and elastin and all the beneficial proteins that keep our skin firm and smooth and that's what helps to either prevent the fine lines and wrinkles or as we're building back that collagen elastin and all those proteins to help improve the look of fine lines and wrinkles. That's really one of the standout benefits of adding coenzyme Q10 into your routines is that it helps to visibly improve the depth and the look of fine lines and wrinkles."
"Resveratrol is really well known as an antioxidant that helps to stabilize pure vitamin C, another antioxidant ascorbic acid. The additional benefit of ferulic acid is that it helps to protect the skin against photo damage, against damage from the Sun. These two key antioxidants together in these high quantities right, 3% of both Resveratrol and ferulic acid, really do have that protective ability against the damages of UV rays. The Ordinary creates these really potent high percentage antioxidant serums without any water. They do believe that water does destabilize the antioxidant action of the ingredient, and so they actually choose not to use any water. [...] It does create quite an oil-like texture but it does have a lightweight feel with an oil-like slip to it. It has really good absorbancy, almost feels a bit like a dry oil on the skin. It absorbs really fast. There's really not like a big greasy layer on top. It's not going to leave you super duper shiny. There's just a little bit of shine but it's not like a heavy grease layer on top of your skin and it feels fairly lightweight with good absorbency."
"I think this is a good Korean option if you can't access The Ordinary but you're interested in that type of product, just delivering peptides in a really simple formula, great for sensitive skin. This would be the worthy alternative that you should give a try, especially if K Beauty is more accessible to you where you live. That's exactly what this serum is doing, but I do think that they're doing it at a quality level, I think they're doing it at a smart level. I've really been enjoying it and [...] I've been really impressed with it so far."
"This is going to be a turnoff for oily skin, it may not be my very first recommendation if you need really light skincare that doesn't offer any moisture, but I do think oily types still enjoy this serum. It's not going to be like you're using it in the first week and your hyperpigmentation looks better, [...] it's slow working. [...] When I'm thinking about all the brightening serums out there, [...] high percentages of niacinamide, tranexamic acid, arbutin, vitamin C, this wouldn't be my number one, right up there with the big guns. [...] But if you have very sensitive skin and you can't use arbutin or vitamin C or high percentages of niacinamide or tranexamic acid but you still need to work on discoloration and hyperpigmentation, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this. The brightening is there, it just takes long for it to show itself. It's the type of serum where you're like, I don't know if this is working, you stop using it and you're like, oh, [...] my skin's starting to look dull again, the hyperpigmentation is really not fading at the rate it was before. Yeah, this serum definitely was working for me, I just didn't quite realize it at the time."
"I noticed when I was using this that it seemed like I just wasn't struggling with that as much, and not every review that I read on this product mentioned that, but a lot of people said that it really did seem to help with texture and with pores. [...] With fermented ingredients you can often see a refinement with your skin, especially when you're using high quality ones or a good quantity of them."
"It's just a really nice way to end off your skincare routine without overwhelming your skin. This doesn't have a shiny appearance on the skin, it's not dewy. I think it has really nice absorbency, it's not sticky or tacky. It's just a really nice, pleasant, light to medium gel cream. I do think that this is going to be great. Oily skin will like this, combination skin, balanced skin types. If you're suffering with dehydration, I would be aware of the fact that this really doesn't have any occlusivity, just a little bit of moisture kind of hugs everything in, but we're not getting that really seal it in hydration. Sometimes I find that dehydrated skin types really need that, they really need that extra protection to hug the hydration and keep it in place to fight transepidermal water loss. I don't feel that this cream has that quality, but it does deliver a lot of hydration in a really nice, silky but very lightweight, breathable, refreshing gel cream texture."
"This is interesting because they're claiming brightening in the name but the ingredients list here actually has some more compelling firming ingredients as well as brightening ingredients. I actually have not purchased or used this product because it does contain an ingredient that my skin is sensitive to, so I just didn't even want to go there with my skincare budget, but I do want to give you a brief overview of the ingredients because it may be an option for you. They're using three forms of stabilized vitamin C, which are ingredients that help stimulate collagen, they definitely brighten up the skin, they do act as protective antioxidants, but they sidestep some of the oxidation that can happen with pure vitamin C as well as some of the skin irritation. I'm seeing this type of formulation a lot in K Beauty releases. They're using the stabilized forms and relying more heavily on those with higher amounts and then they're just sprinkling in a dash of pure vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, and that's exactly what we're seeing here. They're also using some potent antioxidants that actually help vitamin C work better for the skin like ferulic acid and vitamin E. They've thrown in niacinamide, which can help with brightening and firming the skin as well. However, they have included bergamot oil, which is an essential oil, and that's the ingredient that made me say not for me, because those ingredients don't do well with my personal sensitive skin."
"This is more of a first generation kind of vibe, a hyaluronic acid product, and it's just very sticky. I do think that both of these brands have done a very good job with it. I wouldn't say that they're like super luxurious or like the most amazing textural experiences I've ever had in skincare, but I was actually very pleasantly surprised. They broke some of those biases that I have about thick feeling, nonabsorbing, sticky hyaluronic acid. I think both of these actually come out ahead of some of the competitors that have similar formulas. One of my bigger concerns comes with the hydrating or non-hydrating factor of these types of formulations where hyaluronic acid is the star ingredient and one of the few ingredients in the formula, because hyaluronic acid, it always comes back to the size of that molecule. It's very, very big and it doesn't penetrate too deeply into the skin, so it's going to sit pretty close to the surface. Even when we chop up that molecule, chopping it up still creates a large type of molecule. It's smaller than the original, but it's still pretty big and they do dive into the skin at different levels, but they're not really getting super deep, diving incredibly deep."
"I did actually use them on my chest and on my back because I do break out there and I just get hyperpigmentation if there's inflammation. I was really pleasantly surprised with the amount of hydration that these deliver to this skin. I really liked the combination of the exfoliants and the brighteners. I really feel like this helped to keep the breakouts and the congestion down just by the LHA and pH alone, but then all of those brightening ingredients really did help to address some hyperpigmentation that I had from some previous congestion that other products hadn't really targeted right. I was getting a lot of exfoliation but I wasn't getting the brightening, so I love the combination here. I'm always looking for multiple benefits, and if you're stuck in that cycle of breakouts and hyperpigmentation and dull looking skin, I think it's really important to streamline your routine. I personally think the formulation and the delivery mechanism of this particular product I don't think makes it well suited for treating sun damage. If you can only get one product and you really want to work on sun damage, freckles, melasma, things like that, this is not it."
"This serum was so so helpful. My skin was feeling quite dry and it immediately just mended up the peeling skin. I was very very impressed with this. I really do recommend this product for damaged moisture barriers, really vulnerable weak skin, skin that has been through it and needs repair. To me this isn't really a barrier maintenance product, you absolutely could use it that way, but it really is something that you reach for when your skin is in the worst state. This really helped it get back to where it needed to be. This product is a little rich for me. It does have a creamy texture, it's not like a loose runny gel cream texture, it's a true cream type of texture. With all those lipids in the formula that really helped to repair the skin, it can be a little bit overwhelming for certain skin types. For me I am a little bit congestion prone."
"The panthenol is in here and that's always like that balance that keeps things from feeling too heavy and too overly creamy. This has a moisture element but with the panthenol we still get that watery really refreshing element to it as well. This spreads really beautifully across the skin, it's got very good absorbency. You feel more richness to this, a little bit more lipid content, a little bit more moisturizing, a bit more medium weight on the skin, but really good absorbency with that panthenol touch. You can feel that deep replenishment and it really does absorb deep into the skin. You're not going to get a shiny or greasiness on top. There's a little bit of a scent to this. There's no artificial fragrance or essential oils, but there's a few plant extracts in here that are offering up a little bit of a scent. It's a slightly powdery very floral kind of smell, it's not heavy. You got to get in there to really smell it, so you might smell it a little bit on application but it goes away in like 15 seconds or less."
"This would be a great product to consider because ectoin is the only star ingredient here. Bellflower has taken 3% of ectoin, added in some humectant, some other texture enhancers, and that's it, there's nothing else going on here. Great if you want to isolate the benefits of ectoin, maybe you're looking for an antioxidant to boost your sunscreen in the morning, this would be a great way to do that. But also great for those who are looking for really minimal ingredients in their skincare products. If you're trying to avoid hyaluronic acid or you're trying to avoid niacinamide, this is a great product because it really sidesteps a lot of those potential common irritants. The texture is a hydrating gel, a little bit runny, it feels very hydrating on the skin. It's one of those hydrating textures that feels like it really dives in deep and kind of floods the skin with hydration, feels really good. There's just a touch of tack on the top, nothing that wouldn't be solved by putting your moisturizer or sunscreen on top of this."
"The way that I experienced tranexamic acid first and foremost was with Paula's Choice discoloration serum. This stuff is really great. There's some other brightening ingredients in here that really kind of boost up the overall formulation. This is the type of ingredient where I've learned you know more recently ah I can get to level two, I can get to level three with tranexamic acid."
"One of our community favorites that I have not gotten around to trying yet, but I really am going to mention it because it comes up every time I talk about azelaic acid: it is the Peach Slices Redness Relief Azelaic Acid Serum."
"COSRX is calling this a serum booster, and the key word there is booster. It helps lift up the rest of your routine, but on its own, if it was your only active product, meaning the peptides in it, I think you might be disappointed with it. I personally was when I tested this out. I didn't feel that I got a ton of benefits from it on its own. I think it works well as a booster, but it's important to know this isn't a highly concentrated serum, this is an essence. COSRX is using some more interesting peptides, and I think the mix delivers a more unique set of benefits. [...] There are some collagen stimulating peptides in here, though it's not a heavy focus of the six peptide mix they're using. They're also looking to address signs of sensitivity and irritation on the skin, redness and inflammation, which can be particularly helpful if you have a sensitive skin type, if you're struggling with your moisture barrier, but it can also be helpful if you struggle with inflammatory acne as well. There's also a brightening peptide in here that can help with the overall complexion and clarity of the skin, the evenness of it."
"You can use this morning and night. It is not harsh or stripping on the skin, but it really does help to encourage the pimples and the breakouts to calm down, to slowly flatten out, and to help over time boost your anti-acne routines. [...] They're not using the pure form of vitamin C, L-ascorbic acid. They're actually using a derivative known as 3-O ethyl ascorbic acid. This derivative is great because it gives you a lot of the same benefits as vitamin C, which is brightening and antioxidant care and a little bit of that well-aging and collagen stimulation. [...] If you're particularly sensitive skin, if vitamin C pure ascorbic acid has not worked for you in the past or you're just looking for a gentler type of product, this would be the way to go with the derivatives because it has to take an additional step to convert on the skin, and that conversion process is what makes it a little bit more gentle and a little bit more tolerable for sensitive skin."
"The Multi-Peptide + Hyaluronic Acid Serum has quite a few different peptides in it, but they're using the famous peptide duo known as Matrixyl 3000. It's a great collagen-stimulating duo that addresses multiple signs of aging on the skin and can be a great alternative or addition to copper peptide. Matrixyl 3000 does help to stimulate collagen, and what's interesting about the cell communication process is that palmitoyl tripeptide 1 actually tricks your body into thinking that collagen was lost or that there was a collagen breakdown, and that's how it signals to your body to make more of your own collagen, which can really help to address fine lines and wrinkles. Matrixyl 3000 is well known for helping with prevention but also treating the look of fine lines and wrinkles, the depth and appearance of them. It can really help soften them over time."
"The silicones really do their job because as you spread this onto your skin it feels really good, it feels like hydrating, it feels moisturizing and silky too. It's a really beautiful elegant type of gel. It absorbs into the skin really quickly and it doesn't feel wet [...] as it's absorbing. [...] It creates this really nice layer that feels silky and skin conditioning and smooth at the top but not sticky, not greasy, not heavy. For offering a good amount of moisture and comfort to the skin, it actually doesn't carry a lot of weight to it. [...] The silicones are responsible for this really breathable texture while also offering a little hug to the skin, which I really like. [...] It's just this slightest whisper of occlusivity, a little bit of hugging everything that you put on before into your skin. If you like to use a hydrating toner or an essence, this just helps to gently hug that hydration just a little deeper into the skin. It helps your skin resist dehydration just a little bit more. It's not petrolatum, it's not thick, it's not a barrier, it's not going to stop anything else from absorbing into your skin that you put on top of it."
"The bikil is doing the work in this formula. While I hate the marketing claims and the naming and everything that they're doing to sell you this product, the actual ingredients list is really really solid. The ingredients that they're using actually make for a really nice moisturizing serum that also brings anti-aging benefits to the skin. [...] It's almost like a lotion-like texture, really interesting. It's not stiff, it's not thick, it's not even particularly rich and buttery, but it does have this comforting moisture to it. It doesn't have an oil-like feel. [...] It just has that really moisturizing emollient but not super duper rich feel, and it spreads across the skin like a very thin lotion while being really light on the skin. It still goes into every little dried crevice on your face."
"It's a collagen stimulating peptide that signals to our body to create collagen but it also is a carrier peptide for copper and it helps deliver the copper deeper into the skin where it can create more meaningful results. I really like the combination here, there's some other peptides in the mix. This is a very expensive serum that is up in the like the $90 range. It's very expensive, it works. This is one of the very few expensive products where I would say if it fits your budget go for it. I don't think that you will regret it. It will show you results. It made my skin feel so firm so fast, amazing."
"I really love Stratia Rewind. I've been talking about it for years because it is one of the few products that has firmed my skin like visibly and to the touch. When I first started using the serum, which contains 5% niacinamide, I was using it for the collagen stimulating and for the brightening and that's all I really wanted to see on my skin. So I was really surprised when my skin started to feel very similar to plumped, thicker, more smooth, more lifted, more bouncy. I was very very surprised I wasn't expecting that. There's another ingredient that's been combined with niacinamide that really helps take this serum to the next level and that's 2.5% of DMAE. This is an ingredient that can help firm the skin and can do so quite quickly. It definitely helps to aid in that smooth firm bouncy feel. And so these two ingredients together is like a match made in heaven. I could not believe how good it made my skin feel."
"It's similar to the Misha, where it's not oily, it's not greasy, but it just has that little hug that really helps to seal the serum in, while it still feels really comfortable and breathable on the skin. It's really easy to layer with other products, an effortless product to use in your routine, you don't have to think about it too much. It will brighten your skin, it will work on hyperpigmentation, but it will still be gentle, and it'll bring the life back into your skin."
"It's fun and the popularity is in the fun of this product, but I have to say I'm not that impressed with it. It's not bad, I think it can absolutely be useful, I can see it working, it's not a bad product, but I wasn't super duper impressed with it. [...] Beyond the fun and the packaging and the marketing, which is a big component, I was a little bit confused why it was so popular."
"The Laneige Glowy Makeup Serum has a really similar concept to dewdrops and it's even pink. [...] This delivers the makeup priming abilities in a serum format that I felt were slightly lacking with dewdrops. It has a really nice gel texture to it. [...] There are some sparkly, glittery-looking elements, these are light reflecting particles, it does not look glittery on the skin, it does not look juvenile. It's an upscale, grown-up kind of light reflecting particle. It's a thin gel with a very mild plumping, hydrating type of feel at the top of your skin. If you're looking for a hydrating serum gel primer, I do find this more hydrating than dewdrops. It really does have a skin enhancing effect to it. [...] I think Laneige delivers on that because it does have that like, oh my skin just looks a little bit better, it just looks a little bit brighter."
"There's a couple forms of oil in here, we have squalane as well as that green tea seed oil, and I think that's really contributing to the rich feeling that this has. I've used the product before and it was fine, but it really wasn't a wow for me. There was nothing about the product that really showed benefits on my skin that made me think I need to go out and repurchase this. It really didn't do much for me, but it's a solid product. I do find this to be a very fairly priced product especially when we're talking about something that's available at Sephora. Thirty dollars for 80 milliliters of product, I mean most serums are 30 ml or 50 ml, so I think that this is priced exactly right."
"I find the price of this incredibly fair, thirty dollars for 80 milliliters of product. Most serums are 30 ml or 50 ml, so I think that this is priced exactly right. This entire line has really been formulated to bring a high concentration of quality green tea into your skin, and it's been formulated with oily folks in mind because they have formulated the products within this line to help control sebum on the skin. Green tea also has all those great anti-aging benefits too, so it's also a great line even if you're not oily or have acne-prone skin. This is one of the products in the line that I do think could work for any skin type. It's got such a pleasing texture to it."
"I'm using the Clarins Double Serum Eye. I've been using this for about two months and it's been really great for helping to brighten up my under eye area and gently depuff it. I've been going through a little bit of a difficult period of time lately that can really show up underneath my eyes, but this has been keeping things looking really rejuvenated and refreshed in a way that I deeply appreciate at this point in time. It has a dual texture. It's like a gel serum texture mixed in with a lightweight milky component that creates all the moisturization my under eye area prone to dryness needs with some of that plumping gel-like texture but still lightweight and not sticky for the morning or makeup application. There is some artificial fragrance. I mostly talk about products without fragrance, so I did want to point that out for those who are fragrance sensitive."
"It's iconic, and it's one of the best serums to help with the first signs of aging. The texture is a two in one water and oil based formula that dispenses together, thin, breathable and lightweight but with just enough richness that it doesn't disappear immediately, and I'd feel comfortable recommending it for any skin type. It also contains fragrance, just like the eye serum, and it hasn't caused any irritation for my skin. It has organic giant provencal reed extract, selected from over 800 plant extracts for its antioxidant properties, and organic turmeric extract, so it addresses both epi aging and chronological aging at the same time. It's not an aggressive active competing with retinoids or AHAs, it's more of a supportive player I use in my morning routine. I've used Double Serum before in the past, but this is really the first time I've tested it consistently and dedicatedly, and I've been genuinely impressed, truly. Even though it's thin and lightweight, it really locks in hydration, and after about two weeks my skin looked so much smoother, firmer and tighter, even around my pores, which I wasn't expecting. This product has really helped me look like I'm thriving when I'm honestly barely surviving right now."
"The Geek & Gorgeous Power Peptides is a serum I've been using for about two years now with multiple bottles empty, and it's the peptide serum that really shows me the best results. It's a Goldilocks for me, they use a really good mix of peptides in clinical amounts, which is hard to find, and it shows benefits very quickly, especially for firming my skin, I can feel it and see it. It's still very affordable at around twenty dollars, which is why I call it Goldilocks, because other peptide products that work this well are usually so expensive. I also enjoy the texture, some peptide products don't have a good texture or scent."
"She also genuinely enjoys a blended facial oil like Stratia Fortify, which has been specifically formulated to include all the fatty acids beneficial for the skin barrier. You can apply it in a thin layer under your moisturizer, mix a couple drops into your moisturizer, or, her personal favorite, mix a couple of drops straight into her Stratia Liquid Gold."
"Both this and Avene Cicalfate contain 4-t-butylcyclohexanol, which intercepts the irritation signal at the nerve level and stops stinging and burning on contact, making it exceptional for burning, itching, stinging skin. The Ordinary has a creamy emulsion texture with a hydrating element that sinks in deeper along with a moisturizing, slightly rich but not very greasy creaminess on top, making it a balancing serum great for those with a tiny bit of dryness or combination skin. Its pink color comes from vitamin B12, and it's a far more complex formulation containing niacinamide, centella, ceramide, vitamin B12, bisabolol, and the antioxidant EGCG, meant to address tightness, redness, inflammation, stinging and burning, while also rebuilding a weak or damaged skin barrier. The Ordinary is great for redness, tightness, and strengthening the skin barrier in a creamy formula that moisturizes dry areas, and it's also going to be your budget pick coming in at $17."
"When I reviewed the smaller size bottle, I told you I'm not really seeing anything. It's probably doing some small things, but my skin is pretty optimized in a good spot that I'm just not really noticing anything mindblowing with this. [...] It had a nice refreshing gel texture. It felt really refreshing and hydrating and light on my skin, but it just didn't really feel like it did anything. It might be working behind the scenes. It might be supporting good stuff in my skin. I'm not seeing anything in the mirror with this one. And I emptied the whole bottle. This is a 30ml bottle. I think the trial size I had was 15. So I think I've used enough of this by this point to know that it's just not really for me."
"It's like $80. I can't see the justification for why it costs so much money. I used it, I emptied it, I liked it. I just don't understand the price. And I have a hard time wholeheartedly recommending it because of that. It's kind of a half and half mixture there on claims. It's nice, but it's probably not necessary, especially at that price and especially in this economy."
"I've really been finding myself doing a lot more is actually just applying this to my T-zone because I'm finding that it's actually helping a lot more with the oil that I'm getting there. I'm just not getting that kind of oil production in my U zone. This area is still dry and dehydrated. I do think that it is a good pore refining serum. I think it's a good niacinamide serum."
"If your skin barrier has gone off the deep end, it is jammed, it is broken, it is in need of a lot of help, this is one of the products that I would recommend. This is a very high quality, very concentrated and very smartly formulated barrier repairing product. We have five different types of ceramides, we do have cholesterol, we have a ton of fatty acids, and that's actually where the name Omega is coming from. It's referring to not only that there are fatty acids in here but the type of fatty acids: Omega fatty acids, omega-3, 6, and 9 fatty acids. Fatty acids make up 25% of the skin barrier, and Omega fatty acids 3, 6, and 9 can be very beneficial for barrier healing, especially Omega 6 fatty acids which have a pretty good direct link to your skin."
"I really like this one because it's so gentle because they're not using that pure form of vitamin C ascorbic acid. This is a derivative or a stabilized form of vitamin C. It's not going to oxidize, you don't have to keep it in the fridge. [...] It actually is a really nice brightening serum. Personally, I think it brightens the skin really nicely, not only if you have dull and uneven complexion, but I think it can be a helper product for brightening hyperpigmentation too. I think just overall it will rejuvenate that complexion for you, and then of course we've got some antioxidant protection in here as well. [...] The derivatives and the stabilized versions of vitamin C can be sidekicks, they can be supportive ingredients in your skincare routine to your other collagen stimulating ingredients. But for sure where this one particularly shines is for brightening."
"This has such a pleasing texture. In the summer I definitely get oily skin but I am still combination and I do still need some moisture to help balance out my skin, and so this creamy emulsion type texture is really one of my favorites because it's that little kiss of moisture that I really love. There's a hydrating effect like a little burst of hydration with this and a little bit of plumping that I really like. It just doesn't overwhelm the oily areas I've been getting. It helps plump it, it helps hydrate it, it addresses both areas in a lighter type of format, and so this is definitely really great for combination skin. We've got so many antioxidants in here which really helps to protect your skin. I've been really focusing in on them this summer to really help protect my skin but also that brightening benefit. I've been really into that as well, just been working on some hyperpigmentation after some breakouts and this has definitely been helping. I love that it's all in one, you know, multiple benefits in one product."
"I have never put this in the refrigerator and you can tell my bottle's pretty beaten up I've had this for a really long time and it has not oxidized on me it has not lost potency at all"
"My moisturizer is Tower 28 SOS Barrier Recovery Cream. This is a great ceramide-based moisturizer that helps to gently support my skin barrier with a velvety neutral finish that is gently occlusive, but it's not heavy or oppressive for my skin, especially because I am anticipating today being a little bit warm. It just really hits the spot right now."
"I've been jamming hardcore on the iUNIK Beta Glucan 3X Barrier Cream. I've emptied two jars of it and I ordered a third immediately. Now I'm using this at night and the Tower 28 Daily Barrier Recovery Cream in the morning, and that's been working really well for me."
"The Dr. Jart+ Advanced LC Ceramidin Barrier Cream is a good moisturizer, it actually has some really meaningful ceramide content along with cholesterol and fatty acid, which is great for barrier strengthening and repair. I have a lot of respect for this cream and I recommend it, it's very good, but the texture is not for me personally. It's not occlusive, it's more lotiony and sinks into the skin nicely, but I need occlusivity to fight my dehydration, otherwise my skin feels tight and dry, and if it goes on too long my skin gets irritated. It just doesn't have that, it's not made for my particular skin condition, so unfortunately it's not for me, though I still use it on my neck, chest, and hands."
"I've been loving this cream since 2019 and I just bought this off iHerb earlier in the summer and I was like, oh yeah, I forgot how good this cream is. I call it a Goldilocks moisturizer because it just suits very specific needs beautifully, especially if you have combo dehydrated skin, because it's a medium cream in weight and texture, not really dense and heavy but it does have some heft to it. It sinks into the skin really beautifully and does a lot of the moisturization deeper within the skin, not sitting on a greasy layer on top. There's good occlusivity here that fights transepidermal water loss, and it has panthenol, B5, for hydration, but it's also barrier supportive with low-key ceramides, cholesterol, and fatty acids. Let's put some love back onto this moisturizer, it is so darn good."
"Both Avene Cicalfate and The Ordinary Soothing and Barrier Repair Serum contain 4-t-butylcyclohexanol, an ingredient that intercepts the irritation signal at the nerve level and stops stinging and burning on contact immediately upon application, making both exceptional for burning, itching, and stinging skin. The Avene has a lightweight hydrating gel texture with panthenol and Avene thermal water, making it refreshing, lightweight, and cooling, great for dehydrated feeling skin and for oily skin that doesn't like heavier textures. It's very light, refreshing, and non-sticky, and any skin type would appreciate it. It's a good option for highly reactive skin that reacts to ingredients like fragrance or plant extracts, because the ingredients list [...] is minimal, just the humectant content and the 4-t-butylcyclohexanol. [...] Avene is the best for highly reactive skin looking for minimal formulas in a lightweight hydrating gel texture."
"This is another like OG light ceramide product that I've been recommending for so many years on my channel, and I know so many of my oily friends out there love this moisturizer. It has ceramides. It has cholesterol. It has fatty acids. It also has some centella content in here which brings a lot of calming and soothing to the skin. Reduces inflammation, redness, irritation. It can actually be very healing for acne prone skin as well without stripping the skin or exfoliating it or making it feel even more irritated than it already is. Centella doesn't do that. It's actually lightly hydrating but really soothing and calming for the skin while promoting healing at the same time. This has this great cooling gel texture. This feels so refreshing, so hydrating, a little bit plumping. It's not like that really thin gel that just sits on top. It actually dives in deep with some nice plumpness and hydration deep down. So, if you're feeling that dehydration under that thick layer of oil, this is going to feel amazing. If your skin tends to overheat in the summertime and goes a little bit red and it just feels amazing."
"Illiyoon Ato Ceramide Concentrate Cream is one of my favorites and it roughly costs the same price as CeraVe. This is another great option for healing your skin barrier because it's got the ceramide cholesterol fatty acid content that we look for in our moisturizers. Plus, it has an occlusive factor to it. It also contains some soothing madecassoside, which is a biologically active compound found in centella. So, this one has a little bit of a soothing edge to it that calms down the irritation and the itchiness. It's a slightly lighter texture than CeraVe as well, so it may not feel as heavy on oilier or more balanced skin types."
"For about $28, you can get Prequel Half & Half Peptides & Ceramides Fluid Moisturizer. This has a really similar texture to Haruharu, although it does feel a little bit lighter on the skin."
"There's just not enough moisture here, not a lot of richness, not a lot of occlusivity either, so it's really not appropriate for people struggling with dryness. But I think especially if you're looking for an all-in-one type of cream, and when I say all-in-one, yes, I mean the hydration and moisture, but I also mean that 5% niacinamide. That triple whammy of benefits. You want your moisturizer to do the most, you want it to brighten up your skin, and you can get a lot of benefit from one product right here just with that niacinamide. Or if you have multiple needs from your moisturizer, maybe something lighter for the day and something more moisturizing at night, you might be able to get all of those needs in one jar. Might save you some money."
"This comes in at about $15 to $18 for 60ml of moisturizer. This is a great line to look at for some affordable picks for really sensitive skin because they're extremely minimal types of formulas. Really formulated for irritated, sensitive skin in mind. And this moisturizer is a really good kind of medium option. If you do have oily skin that's really ailing with sensitivities, this would be a very healing cream for you. Combo skin that is maybe not leaning one way or the other, it would be good for you. Or leaning a little bit more on the oily side, it would be good for you. Balanced skin types. If you are very dry, this isn't going to feel like enough for you. This is on the lighter side. It is very healing and soothing, but is still pretty light."
"I picked this up on a whim a while ago, maybe at least two months ago at this point, and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not, but I actually ended up really really loving this and it's been a part of pretty much all of my makeup routine since I bought it. It's a flexible product. This is a pearlescent shimmery gel type of product. It can be used like a liquid highlighter. You can also use this as a full face primer to give a little bit more of that dewiness to your base makeup. You can wear it on its own or you can mix it into your base makeup product. So anything anywhere you want shimmer, right? You want a little bit of that glowiness, this will give it to you. It's a sophisticated almost more pearlescent type of shimmer than a glittery chunky glittery type of texture. Think about this like golden hour sort of shimmer and pearlescence. I've really been enjoying this as a mix particularly. For light makeup days, I will put a little bit of concealer on the back of my hand, one pump of this, mix it together, and now I have this sort of customized skin tint that gives me a little bit more even coverage."
"You could use it as a calming cream and then top it off with a heavier moisturizer. [...] It really is formulated for calming the skin. That's what really made me fall in love with this cream when I first started to use it last year. I was really surprised at how soothing it felt right on contact, but it just does it in such a nice lightweight cream texture. Very soothing on application, very gentle on the skin with a nice kiss of moisture. I really love the texture of this. I think it's very soothing and healing. I think it has a lot of flexibility for different skin types and different uses. [...] I will say more people need to talk about this cream, especially if you have some sensitive skin or irritated skin because it is something that just kind of flies under the radar, but it's actually such a good moisturizer."
"Because of this packaging and how it's being delivered to the skin, I think it actually pulls the product back from being effective in any way that you might want to use it. It's really not my favorite. If you're very oily and acne-prone, you might like how light this feels on your skin, but then you don't really need a cream mist. You just need a hydrating mist. I'm not a fan of this one. Dr. Althea is a very, very popular brand, and a lot of folks are tuned into what they're doing with new releases. And this for me just doesn't hit."
"This cream has some fatty acid content and Centella, which is a great anti-inflammatory ingredient, very soothing, particularly good for red and inflamed skin or irritated skin. And then there's some panthenol in here for hydration. This cream is very light with a good kiss of moisture to it, a lot of hydration. I do enjoy this cream and I really recommend it. That said, while it has all those good barrier supportive ingredients and that nice hydrating panthenol, texture-wise and protective feeling-wise for my skin, it's just not enough. It's much thinner, lighter, with very little [occlusivity]. I find so many barrier creams that will truly heal your skin and soothe not only your symptoms of dehydration but also help to heal your skin barrier tend to be a lot more dense and heavy and very occlusive, which might feel suffocating for more oily skin types. This one is lighter, which is why I like it and recommend it, just why I don't use it myself."
"I am one of those old school K beauty enthusiasts who would put the COSRX all-in-one snail cream around and use it as a budget friendly eye cream. And I actually really like the results of that. [...] For me what I love about this is the snail. It's definitely got like a snail-like texture with like blended into a cream which I really enjoy. It's got this very medium gel cream like texture. It is quite stiff but it does glide on the skin really beautifully and it is quite plumping like you would expect a snail product to be. And I actually find that really helpful because I do have some very very superficial fine lines that are getting deeper."
"I was having some issues with my barrier earlier in January. It did address those. I got my skin back on track. Using this product, it kind of helped to keep that progress going. It kept my skin progress up. So, I was really impressed with performance, with the feel, with the texture. I really enjoy using it. I just found that I had less dehydration in my skin overall. It's maybe 5% less hydrating overall than [Paula's Choice], but it's also a fraction of the cost."
"It's so wet on the surface. If you are concerned about oiliness, probably not going to be for you. If you are concerned about moisturization and really occlusive types of creams to protect your skin through a failing skin barrier, I wouldn't recommend this one. I do think this is a good formula and it will help your skin barrier, but it's a much lighter expression of a barrier cream. I would recommend this for oily folks, combo skin that's leaning more on the oily side, or balanced skin types that like something lighter, dewier, not super heavy, not really oil-based."
"I absolutely love this especially for hand care. Hand care becomes increasingly important to me in the winter time because this season causes my hands to feel really dry, dehydrated, sometimes even itchy, irritated, and I get rough skin around my nail beds and hang nails. What's different about this than the original moisturizing lotion is the intensive version includes 5% urea. This is such an amazing ingredient that gives this moisturizing lotion the edge that I personally need for hand care in the winter because the 5% urea is an amazing humectant for the skin and a natural moisturizing factor."
"Everything about this cream is light. It's fluffy. But it does pack some really nice silky moisture into it as well. But $72 is a lot of money. Not super impressive in the ingredients. Not bad, [...] but not super impressive. Especially if you're well-versed in K beauty and J beauty products, you can get these ingredients at a fraction of the cost. And the texture is lovely, but it's not the only moisturizer out there that can serve you this type of experience."
"I find this texture from Versed so similar to Tatcha for a fraction of the price. We've got that light, fluffy quality, almost marshmallowy like feel to it. It's not quite as luxurious, not quite as elegant, but it's so darn similar. You do get that nice feeling of hydration from this moisturizer and then that really beautiful skin conditioning, skin softening. I love touching my skin. It feels so soft and nourished and conditioned on top, but it's not weighed down. It's not greasy. It doesn't feel sealed off. The [occlusivity] level here is pretty similar to Tatcha, and honestly, both of these are very lightly occlusive. If you have ever felt like your moisturizer was too heavy or sealing your skin off, this isn't even in the realm of that in my opinion. But it's just that kiss that helps to fight the dehydration. It helps your moisturizer work well for you throughout the day."
"Let's talk about the Ilune ceramide ado concentrate cream. Another goodie throwback from the 2019 era. I started using this in 2019 and I want to say it's been reformulated once, twice, three times now since then. This is one of the things that really irks me about the modern era of K beauty is so many reformulations of products that are working perfectly well. [...] Sometimes these reformulations, you don't really detect any type of difference in texture performance or ingredients really. Some things get shuffled around, but it really just doesn't affect the product overall. [...] I started using it in 2019. I want to say in 2021 there was a reformulation. I could really not detect any type of difference whatsoever. Then they reformulated it again. I want to say 2023 was it? And it significantly changed."
"I almost exclusively talk about it in the context of summer and it's definitely one of my favorite recommendations for combination skin. I always say it should be called the cream in gel moisturizer, not just gel and cream because the cream is legit inside of the gel. This is one of the most entertaining really charming skincare products out there. I really like this concept and it's not just for looks. It actually does serve quite an interesting purpose. The gel portion is one of those more fullbodied gels. It's not that light. There's definitely more of a fullness here. It really fills your skin. Really hydrating, but it also just goes in your skin and really plumps it up and really fills every little crevice with hydration, with almost like a balancing kind of feel to the gel. Very, very bouncy. It feels juicy and good. And then we have the cream portion here. It's like a creamy lotion type of texture. It's not like a really heavy, dense, hard to spread type of cream. It's much more fluffy, almost like air has been whipped into it. Incredibly silky, very, very creamy, very elegant. What I really like about it is the customization factor. There is definitely a function to this product. You can use the gel portion in your oily areas."
"This definitely does have a creamy element to it, but it's definitely much looser, more gel-like, maybe even a bit runny. And it definitely bursts into hydration as you spread this on your skin. It feels incredibly hydrating. This is diving in a little bit deeper and I think it can help to soothe some symptoms of dehydration. But it's very, very light. Sinks in deep. And then right at the top of your skin, you're going to feel a skin softening effect. Your skin's going to feel very smooth. And there's just a kiss of really light moisture. Just that little bit of creaminess in the texture just very gently hugs everything in without weighing your skin down. So you get hydrated, slightly plump, and very soft skin at the surface, but your skin is still very much able to breathe. It doesn't feel suffocated or weighed down. It feels really great, especially if you have a humid climate. And I don't find this to be sticky or tacky at the surface. This sinks in very fast. You can move in with your sunscreen right away. The ingredients like the green tea and the niacinamide and even the zinc PCA have a soothing, calming, anti-inflammatory effect and can help to reduce redness on the skin. The really simple formula here makes it a great choice."
"This is a drink of water type of moisturizer. It feels cooling, refreshing, and if you do have a little bit of dehydration, it will feel like it sinks in deeper to kind of that source of your dehydration. The texture has just a little bit of bounce and body and plumpness to this, and that definitely helps to give some bounce and body and plumpness to your skin. It will plump it up and make it feel really nice and juicy, especially if you layer other hydrating products underneath it. You're getting that skin conditioning quality, that softness, that moisturization, and just a little bit more of a feeling of hugging it in. It's not full-on occlusivity, but there's just a little bit more tucking in your skin care, just a little bit more preventing the dehydration. I recommend this for balanced skin types, combination skin types, and those that are suffering with dehydrated skin. It's definitely one of my favorite recommendations for combination skin."
"The Purito Dermide Relief Barrier Moisturizer is a fantastic ceramide cholesterol fatty acid moisturizer with a medium texture. It's not too heavy but just enough for combo skin that suffers with some dryness, folks that are going through some barrier issues and need a more protective moisturizer that's not too greasy, that's not too occlusive, that still allows your skin to breathe. I think it's criminally underrated as a moisturizer in K Beauty, but I think it can hold its weight and punch above its class quite honestly with the best of them like Illiyoon and the Aveeno Eczema Therapy Cream. Those products get all the hype in the world and deservedly so, but this particular one is criminally underrated. I'm making it official: it's one of my favorite moisturizers of 2024."
"This is an interesting texture because it is very buttery, it's very rich, but it's not thick. It's like if you whipped butter, you know, kind of gets fluffy. That's how this feels. And as you spread this onto your skin, it straight up melts into your skin. It's very luxurious. [...] You really feel the oil content here. You feel that nourishing skin softening oil melting into your skin in this airy, fluffy, buttery texture. Very, very moisturizing. If you have dry, flaky skin, this will really soothe that very nicely. And because of the barrier strengthening lipids in here, it can be quite soothing to the skin as well. It does not feel occlusive though, so [...] this is why I feel like this cream may not be the best for those who have dehydration. [...] A little bit of occlusivity in a moisturizer actually helps to resist the dehydration process and helps to resist hydration deep within your skin escaping through the top layers. [...] But if your skin is very dry, if it's very flaky, if it needs softening, if it needs a lot of richness and moisture, this is definitely the one."
"Hero Cosmetics Rescue Balm Plus Red Correct, now I love this stuff. They have two versions from Hero: the Rescue Balm and then the Plus Red Correct. They are a post-blemish cream, basically meant to help heal and mend up your skin after a pimple has occurred, and it works, it absolutely works. I do get pimples that pop, I rub a little bit of this on it and that peely, broken skin just starts to smooth over and heal up a lot faster. They're relying on some skin healing peptides to help make all of that happen. What I really like about the Red Correct is that it has some green tint to it. Green cancels out the red on the skin, so when you have something with a little bit of green tint and you have redness on your skin, you don't see the green tint but you actually neutralize some of that redness. It doesn't look as red and angry and as obvious. I particularly like this one for pimples that haven't figured out what they want to do yet and you want to cover some of that inflammation and redness. But honestly, sometimes I just use this as a very subtle makeup product. I always have natural redness around my nose, I'll put a little bit there and all of a sudden my complexion looks a lot more even."
"The 10% Urea Moisturizer, I really like. They came out with this a couple of years ago and I fell in love with it immediately. As a moisturizer, I think it will really suit folks who are a little bit on the oily side, they want something a little bit lighter. This is not the heavy rich creams I've been talking about all video long. So if you have oily skin or combination skin that leans oily, I think you'll like this. If you have more of a balanced or a normal skin type, I think you'll like this as well. It is a really fantastic kind of gel-based moisturizer, feels very hydrating because urea is a natural moisturizing factor for your skin, so it really helps to hydrate your skin. It's also barrier supportive. It's just good for the health of your skin. But urea has a secondary benefit. If you do suffer with eczema or if you have really rough patches on your skin, it can really help to soften and loosen those over time. It also helps with irritation and itchiness on the skin as well."
"Lancôme Cream Skin was reformulated last year and I do actually like this version. I do think that in the grand scheme of shopping at Sephora and the skincare that's available at Sephora it is a fairly unique product for that market. I really love how it combines hydration and moisture. It's a very watery formula. It's deceiving because once you get it onto your skin you feel the hydration, you feel the wateriness like you expected, but then there's this really interesting effect that it goes into every little dry area that you have on your face or dehydrated area and fills it with a nice amount of moisture. It's not super duper rich. The original was much more moisturizing and I feel like that was a loss, but I do think having a lighter amount of moisture can be beneficial too."
"This is a really interesting moisturizer from Biossance and this is the one that really clicked with me and my skin type and one that I really enjoy using. This is a cream that is really all about repairing, restoring and strengthening your skin while you sleep. You can use this moisturizer during the day absolutely, part of this is just marketing, it's not solely a nighttime cream. The reason why they put overnight in the name is it's about restoring the skin, strengthening the skin, repairing the skin. They're doing that by strengthening your skin barrier but they're also using Ectoin which is an amazing antioxidant. Where it really shines and where it's really unique and how Biossance is harnessing the power of Ectoin is its ability to help your skin not only to help hydrate the skin, like it almost floods your skin with hydration, it really does go into every little crevice and fill every little cell with juicy hydration."
"It definitely felt nice on application just didn't hold up throughout the day for me. It's a middling moisturizer in my opinion at best. I don't think there's anything in here that's bad, I just don't understand the price and I don't understand why it got hyped up, especially for the young crowd."
"You get that unique scent with Laneige, you get a nice beautiful um cream kind of like hydrating gel cream texture here, it feels really nice, it feels really plumping on the skin. It's just not particularly unique, and so if you're crunched for a dollar, yeah, it's not going to be my recommendation."
"There is a good amount of moisture to this but it actually doesn't feel greasy or overly emollient. There's just a little bit more of that skin softening, a little bit more of that silkiness, a little bit of that like my skin feels moisturized kind of feel along with that deep drink of hydration. This one actually has a little bit more occlusivity, so I think if you do suffer with dehydration this might be the smarter choice not just because of the barrier protecting ingredients, but also because that little kiss of occlusion helps to tuck all your skincare in, hug in all the hydration, keep it in place, and act as a little bit of a barrier on your skin to prevent the dehydration."
"I've also been really into the Mary&May Idebenone Blackberry Intense Cream recently, and I love that antioxidant content in the morning and idebenone is a great antioxidant. It really does balance out for me personally the rich moisture and the hydration element, but it's just a little bit thinner and not as weighty on the skin, so something that I will choose for a morning but still spring nights I still need a nice good moisturizing protective nourishing cream."
"This is not my favorite product from the [Torriden] family of lines. I'm not super impressed with this. I was excited about it because it was a product I wasn't super familiar with from [Torriden], but I was a little let down. It's just a nice lotiony type cream. It's not quite enough for my skin. It's a nice pleasant cream, but it didn't really blow me away like the other lines from [Torriden] have. I looked at the ingredients a little side-eyed because maybe they could have thrown in a few more compelling firming ingredients."
"It really does soothe any areas that feel a little bit dry and I think this is definitely going to be best for combination skin that leans a little bit more dry"
"This is one of my favorite gel cream moisturizers to recommend because it is just so hydrating and really refreshing for the skin. It uses 5% of Glycerin, which is a very good hydrator for the skin. What's interesting about glycerin is that it creates a reservoir of moisture or hydration or water right in the skin. Glycerin doesn't just feel watery and hydrating when you put it on, as you consistently use glycerin, it actually builds up the hydration in your skin. So if you were to stop using glycerin in your routine, you would actually still maintain higher levels of hydration in your skin than you would have before you started using it. It really contributes to meaningful deep lasting hydration in the skin. They have combined the 5% of Glycerin with 1% of Ectoin, which has that similar hydration shell effect where it really gets in there and surrounds every single skin cell with hydration."
"I think it's a really nice light type of cream. It has an airy lotion-like feel to it, it's not a heavy dense buttery type of cream, it's very breathable. It actually has a good amount of hydration to it and a really nice light breathable moisture with very very little occlusivity, just a hint. So if you're looking for more of those lighter, airier types of moisturizers, really breathable, that don't really seal your skin off, this could be a really excellent choice. I think oily skin types will like this, and combination leaning a little bit more towards the oily side, this is going to be the right moisturizer for you."
"You absolutely could use this cream for cuts, maybe some accidents with the razor if you're shaving right on your face or anywhere really, bug bites. I think it can be particularly helpful for anywhere that you need skin healing. The peptides in this formula and the overall formulation really do support that. I particularly use this one [...] whenever there's that area on my face where the skin is raw, it's open, it's vulnerable. I am putting this on the area and it really does work. It really speeds up the healing like two times faster. If I [...] just did normal skincare, I think that it's a lot slower to mend up on its own. Using this cream, it closes it up so much faster. But it doesn't just promote the healing by closing the wound; it really does promote the healthy healing of that wound, that smooth skin. I think it helps to cut down on the hyperpigmentation if you suffer from that."
"I'm a really big fan especially of the moisturizers Hydration Station and Happy Barrier. I recommend them a lot because they're like no nonsense, they get the job done, they have great ingredients and they feel really nice."
"I love the Cetaphil Moisturizing Lotion. It's really affordable and comes with a pump, so this is the one I really like to keep right next to my sink for right after washing my hands. It is very silky and nourishing but it's not overly greasy. It doesn't make my hands feel too slippery. It absorbs in really fast and easily, and I think it's just a really great straightforward everyday type of lotion."
"This feels amazing on my skin, it's right up my alley. I don't really see fragrance, I don't really smell anything, so this is looking like it is a fragrance free option. [...] Especially if you like a little bit more nourishment and moisture at night time, especially in cold temperatures, this could be a really great option."
"The texture is that silky kind of cream with a nice richness to it. [...] If you want a creamy moisturizer that bursts into hydration on your skin, I honestly think the Bubble Slam Dunk is more hydrating than Laneige. [...] This is a very, very surprisingly hydrating and very refreshing on the skin while still maintaining a richness and a creaminess and a moisturizing, comforting feel on the skin, with a little bit of occlusivity to hug everything in. But this is still a medium to lightweight type of cream. It's a really special kind of experience with this moisturizer, and it's a little bit more affordable if you are on a budget."
"The Pyunkang Yul Nutrition Cream Blue Label retails about twelve dollars and this is an especially good deal in my opinion because this moisturizer is like twice the size of other moisturizers. Most moisturizers are about 50 milliliter of product, the Pyunkang Yul Nutrition Cream Blue Label is 100 milliliter of product, so you're getting like twice the amount for a really low price. [...] This moisturizer lasts quite a long time and I really like this because it's a ceramide based moisturizer and I love me some good ceramides in my moisturizer because that's what helps me keep my barrier strong and fade-off dehydration. [...] It's a medium weight type of moisturizer. I really would recommend this for combination skin and up. It may be a little bit nourishing for oily skin unless you like something maybe a little bit more at night time like a nighttime cream you might actually consider it because it's actually not super duper heavy, like I said, medium weight."
"Next up, Stratia Liquid Gold. One pump mixed with a couple drops of the Drunk Elephant Marula Oil. I've built some version of this barrier care step into my nighttime routine since 2018. Not only does this combination keep my skin barrier strong, gets me through any irritation that I might be experiencing, helps my combination skin, whether the seasonal transitions, but it also is great for keeping my skin strong when using more aggressive ingredients like the retinol. So Stratia Liquid Gold provides those essential ceramides, cholesterol, fatty acid content that keeps your barrier strong and the fatty acid profile of the additional marula oil helps to add to that barrier strengthening. And this is a step that makes me using retinoids consistently sustainable. I don't wait for my barrier to show signs of weakness or feeling compromised. I work on having a consistently strong barrier so that I can consistently use my actives so that I can get compounding results for my well-aging goals."
"I also really like La Roche Posay Cicaplast Balm. This contains 1% of [dimethicone], a great occlusive ingredient. This is also blended in with some great soothing ingredients. If your dehydration is creating a little bit of irritation, sensitivity, or redness on your skin, you can put a thin layer of this on top of your moisturizer to create the ultimate sleeping pack for dehydrated skin. Or you can even mix a tiny amount into your moisturizer for the daytime for added protection."
"One of my classic favorites for this is the CeraVe Moisturizing Cream. This is a occlusive cream that locks in all the hydration with a velvety finish, but it is not oily, greasy, heavy, or going to clog your pores."
"What I really like about this one is just how refreshing it feels. I do have combination skin that leans oily in the summertime, and I do like to use this one in the summer. I started using this last summer and I was like, I love capsule creams. It feels so refreshing, so good in the heat and the humidity. My skin can breathe. I love the plumpness factor of these types of moisturizers, but I love that I can still get a kiss of moisture because my skin, even being combo, even being on the oily side, still responds to a good amount of moisture. The capsules are really just plops of lotion, very easy to scoop out with your little spatula and mix into your moisturizer. There is some skin entertainment value involved here, a little bit of beauty to these that I really appreciate, but I do think that they're incredibly functional as well and really great options for the summertime. VT being a little bit lighter, definitely a choice for oily skin, definitely a choice for balanced skin. If your combo skin gets real oily, you might like the lighter feel of this one."
"If you need some barrier strengthening, this is the Haruharu Wonder Black Rice 5 Ceramide Barrier Moisturizing Cream. This is the moisturizer in the same line as the essence that we just used, and the point of view here is very similar. They are using the ceramides, cholesterol, and fatty acids for barrier repair. And this line in particular, I really do respect it for its abilities to really strengthen up and repair the skin barrier. They have a very traditional thick kind of a cream texture here, and there are some capsules in this cream that do contain the ceramides. And so this is a way to deliver the ceramides a little bit more efficiently into your skin, keeping the ceramides very efficacious and potent for your skin for skin barrier repair. This is a medium to thicker cream texture. It's incredibly emollient. There is a richness factor to this. It definitely is incredibly moisturizing, skin softening, and there is a good amount of occlusion in here. Occlusion is that quality that really helps to hold all your skin care in place, hold all the hydration into your skin, and help to protect your skin from the outside environment, dry air, wind, harsh temperatures, all of that stuff. And that can be incredibly helpful if you are going through some barrier issues."
"It's just as protective and moisturizing. It just doesn't feel as thick on the face. I usually use this mostly as a body moisturizer. It's actually a great head-to-toe moisturizer. It sinks into the skin so beautifully. It's not streaky. It's not heavy. It's not greasy. And it leaves my skin incredibly soft. Right out of the shower, this just absorbs on my skin beautifully. I've been talking about this for many years as well. I love this one. I like the size, too. It's about 550ish milliliters, so it's really great. Cetaphil is probably going to stay my main body moisturizer just due to value, bigger size, and slightly lower price."
"I love this when my skin is at its driest. It's like a very concentrated period of time towards the end of December and like up till middle January depending on how the weather holds out, where this moisturizer is the goat, the greatest of all time for my extremely dry skin. I'm also a retinoid user, and this really works for that. But as soon as we move slightly out of that very narrow period and my combo skin balances out even just a little bit more, this becomes too heavy for me. For the most part it's actually a little bit too rich for my skin most of the year, most of the winter season even. If you are a little bit drier than me, this would be the pick for you for sure. Ingredients here we have very nourishing dense shea butter, which brings a lot of emollency and skin softening to the formula. We also have some niacinamide that helps with the skin barrier. They are using some ceramide NP. There is some oil content in here that provides not only moisture but some good omega-9 fatty acid content. Fatty acids are good for your skin barrier."
"This is my recommendation for folks with a combination skin type that might lean a little bit more dry and definitely combo folks that are struggling with some dehydration. This is also good for balanced skin types that experience a little bit more dryness as the season changes and gets a little bit cooler or the air inside gets a little bit drier. We have a focus on ceramide content as well as centella content. We do have ceramide content in here that has been married with a couple different forms of centella. We do have centella extract here right at the top of the ingredients list, but then we also have a fermented version of centella extract. When you ferment centella, it really kind of opens up a lot of the vitamins, minerals, the probiotics, all of that that's so good for the health of your skin. It helps with your skin microbiome, which is actually something that is a defensive mechanism within your skin that actually works in tandem with your skin barrier. And it just also can help to really enhance the benefits of centella. So the soothing, the anti-inflammation, the anti-redness benefits of centella just kind of gets amplified when you ferment it."
"I love the 5% of the stabilized vitamin C I'm getting that brightness that I crave. But I'm also getting some of that collagen stimulation the antioxidant protection. Vitamin C is a strong antioxidant that gives us a little bit of extra protection from damage from the sun. I usually use this morning and night time but since I have a lot of choices I usually reserve this one for the morning when I know it's working super hard for my skin to give you that additional protection in addition to sunscreen. In addition to sunscreen in the morning I'm just getting a little bit of extra damage protection, damage control around that delicate eye area. It's very gentle."
"This is a gel cream, and there is such a plumping hydrating factor to this essence. The honey in here does give it this kiss of moisturization, but this plumpness is so amazing."
"I have to talk about Dynasty Cream because this is the product that made me fall in love with Beauty of Joseon so many years ago. I really fell in love with this cream because it was the absolute answer for me when I was struggling with my dehydrated skin. I just could not get the right moisturizer, either things were too light, these really watery gel-like creams that felt really good on application but did not really hold hydration into my skin long term, and then I would find these creams that were actually just too dense and too heavy and too rich and would clog my pores. I really did need to find something that was a little bit of both. I needed the hydration and lightness of a gel but I needed the longevity of a cream, and I really feel like this is the cream that did it for me. It was that magical unicorn that brought all of those qualities together."
"This is the KAINE Vegan Collagen Youth Cream and OMG I'm obsessed with the texture because it's buttery and moisturizing but also hydrating. I really like that but it's not heavy, it actually has this like airy, almost whipped texture to it while still maintaining a lot of richness. This brings a lot of the balance that my skin is craving in a cream: a good amount of moisture but not a lot of thickness. I do like that this actually offers a little bit of a glow. This cream does offer a really nice base for sunscreen and makeup. It's also been really helping with brightening and hyperpigmentation after some breakouts, and I love that it's all in one, multiple benefits in one product."
"This has antioxidant content from another tea source which is matcha, but there's also a lot of centella content in here that brings a lot of calming and soothing to the skin. This has the tiniest kiss of moisture. It is a milk toner after all, but it is incredibly light and it's perfect for early fall mornings because it's still pretty warm during the day, but the air is getting drier and cooler and that tiny bit of moisture is appreciated. As we move further into the season, I will switch this step out with something much more rich, but for right now, it's perfect."
"I've been using this since 2022, and I bought so many bottles of this with my own money because I deeply enjoyed it. I even named this as some of my favorite hydrating skincare and some of my favorite toners in 2022 and 2023. It's a really fantastic toner, very very hydrating, and I have a dehydration beast in my skin so I need something very, very hydrating, and this dives down deep into the skin to give that replenishing deep hydration. It also has just a little bit of plumping body to it that helps lock the hydration in, while still maintaining a lightness and a wateriness, a quickly absorbed quality, without drying sticky or tacky on the skin. The ingredients are so good, there's fermented tea content, it's kombucha, lots of antioxidant content, polyphenol content, amino acids, and the fermentation supercharges all of it. This summer I only need one layer of it because that's just how good it feels on my skin."
"TIRTIR heard the feedback that the original Milk Skin Toner felt heavy and greasy, so they created this lighter version, aimed at more oily skin types or people who didn't like that greasier feel. They did achieve that in the texture, it's actually quite lovely, very light, quickly sinks into the skin, with just the tiniest kiss of moisture and skin conditioning, reminiscent of rice products since there's a good amount of rice bran creating non greasy moisture. Lightening up the moisture does mean you give up some of that glass skin glow the original had. The formula is nearly identical to the original, with the same star ingredients, but they removed the witch hazel extract and added hinoki cypress extract, while keeping a similar mix of botanical extracts including peppermint and star anise. [...] I was so sure it was the witch hazel causing my irritation with the original, but this light version still irritated my skin, maybe not to the same extent, [...] but noticeably. Sensitivities aside, I do think this texture is appropriate for oily skin types and earns the label of light. [...] I'm giving it a 7.5 out of 10. This is definitely an upgrade, but definitely not one for sensitive folks."
"It has a very watery texture, but there's just a little bit of body, just a little bit of plumpness. It's not sticky or tacky or thick, but there's just a little plumpness. It absorbs deeply into the skin very easily and delivers that deep down hydration and plump juicy feel without building up thick on the skin. I use this in one layer, two layers on my skin and it feels amazing. This texture really lends itself to being able to layer it up onto your skin a couple of times. Put one layer on if your skin still feels thirsty. Apply another layer. And so I would recommend this for all skin types."
"I adore this. [...] What I really like about it is two things. Number one, the texture. It's really light, fluidy, very quickly absorbed into the skin. [...] It's not sticky or tacky. It just really absorbs very deeply into the skin to replenish hydration deep down at the source. [...] I can put on one layer, two layers of this and get a lot of hydration. I do suffer with dehydration, so I really need my toner to work hard for my skin. I would recommend it for all skin types. I love the Centella content in this. They use really good quantities of Centella. They use quality Centella that really helps to soothe inflammation, irritation, redness on the skin. This toner is amazing when my sensitive skin is flaring up, feeling just a little bit off, a little itchy. When my skin gets sensitive, it usually gets red as well. This toner calms my skin on contact, but it also takes down that redness. It's also amazing if you get inflamed pimples, [...] those angry red, swollen and painful kinds of pimples. Centella is amazing for that."
"I was using the Ordinary 7% glycolic acid liquid, very affordable, big bottle, great for body application. I [...] had been using it for a while, liking the results of that one. And then this one came along and I was like, okay, 7% glycolic acid, that actually is exactly what I'm using right now and it's working perfectly for me. So it's a nice switch over to this one. I [...] love the packaging, loved the application. This does have that pretty characteristic [...] glycolic acid smell."
"I have loved this and used multiple bottles of this in the past. [...] This is like a no bells and whistles kind of toner. A big reason why I do like it is just that convenience of being able to buy it locally, you know, just go to the store and get it. So convenient, pretty affordable. It's a really good American drugstore Hydrating Toner. And that is not something that you come across that often."
"It does work. The proteiers does work. It does work, especially alongside of other congestion and texture fighting ingredients. It can be a nice little extra something to add to your skincare routine."
"This is one that I wanted to call out as a misunderstood product. It's actually a combination of rice and clay. There is a clay component to this toner and that is what most folks misunderstand about this product. A lot of folks who are looking at milky toners because they want moisture in their skin, maybe their skin is feeling a little dry or dehydrated, are going to be disappointed by this product because the clay content actually means that it's sucking up oil on the skin. And if you don't have a lot of oil on your skin to begin with, it's actually going to make your dry and dehydrated skin worse. There's a clay component in here that isn't like shouted out from the rooftops in the name or the marketing of this particular product. It's quite unique in the milky toner world. It's not quite like the other ones and it would be a recommendation for oily skin types."
"It's refreshing and even a little cooling and soothing to the skin. The texture is very runny and milky, and it looks very light. At first application it feels light with that hydration, but as it starts to absorb into the skin and the texture settles, you notice a richness that's very surprising for the fluidity of this texture. There's a richness here, a nourishment, not really a creamy silkiness, but an actual richness that feels almost like a watery oil. That's actually what's happening in the ingredients list. There are beautiful humectants here, but then there's a lot of plant oils offering a ton of moisturization, nourishment, and skin softening. They're using evening primrose oil, borage seed oil, and a couple of other oils that offer nourishment but also strong antioxidant protection. This is one of those textures that plays with your mind because when you see it, you think it's really watery with just a kiss of moisture. But actually there's richness here, almost like a watery oil feel, that's really lovely for this season because it's light. It doesn't weigh down on the skin like a creamy moisturizer would or like a thicker essence or toner texture that has more body to it."
"This is one of my favorite toners, like generally speaking, but also from Numbuzin. This is such a really great lightweight, easily layerable, hydrating toner that really dives in deep to the skin. Really provides a lot of hydration and it's particularly good if you do have sensitive skin, but you're also suffering with things like redness, inflammation, and acne because not only does it hydrate the skin, it also has some great anti-inflammatory and soothing ingredients in it as well. In the ingredients list, this toner is really made up of 39% of centella, 28% of heartleaf, as well as 25% of licorice root extract. All three of these are amazing for calming inflammation, for calming sensitivity, irritation, and redness on the skin. They all have really great healing benefits to the skin. Some of them including heartleaf are antibacterial, which can be particularly good for folks who are suffering with breakouts, but it is a very minimal and very gentle formula as well. This toner does not contain any forms of drying alcohol, no fragrances and no essential oils. And it does have this really nice lightweight, very runny texture."
"This is Stradia Aqua Factory and this is actually a newer product from Stradia. I think it's been out maybe close to a year now. I want to say it came out in fall of 2024. And this has like betaglucan in it, has urea in it. There's a lot of different humectants in here. I always say it's like a masterclass in humectants that are so good for hydrating your skin. It's a really good formula. It's a runny watery toner with just a little bit of body to it, just a little bit of plumpness to it, and it feels very very hydrating, very good. Dives deep into the skin. I'm going to rate this a nine out of 10. And the only reason I took a point off is just it's small. It's 120 milliliter toner. And for some folks that just like one layer of toner and then they move on with their life, that's good. I'm kind of like a two layer, three layer type of girly. And then doing that, washing your face two times a day, doing skincare two times a day, those layers add up fast. This bottle empties very quickly."
"I really don't like this toner and it definitely gained a lot of interest and popularity. [...] They are really focusing in on the chamomile extract that they're using in the formula. This actually does have soothing and anti-inflammatory properties for the skin, but it is definitely an extract that can cause some sensitivity issues for certain folks with very sensitive skin. [...] They're also using rice bran extract, which is very popular in K beauty and can really lightly moisturize the skin, but it's also something that smooths the skin, brightens the skin, brings a lot of antioxidant care as well. They've got niacinamide, another brightener in here. They've got sodium hyaluronic that helps to bring hydration. And then they have ceramide NP, which everybody's throwing a little ceramide NP into their products because everybody knows ceramides are so good for your skin and for your skin barrier."
"If you're in the same boat as me, you do like moisture, you do like these milky types of toners, but you want it without fragrance and without the runaround of these fragrant ingredients, and you just want to sidestep things like witch hazel, I would really recommend the Isntree Yam Root Vegan Milk Toner. This is so good. It's very nourishing, very milky, very comforting, but I don't find it greasy. You can offer a lot of moisture and a lot of comfort and nourishment to your skin without it feeling like it's sitting on top of your skin, without it feeling heavy and weighed down. So this does that beautifully. It has that really milky, watery type of texture. It's not a thick texture and it absorbs in really beautifully. It just doesn't get greasy under your fingers. It just doesn't feel incredibly heavy. But it does actually really soothe the skin. It really softens any dryness on your skin."
"This toner uses 95% snail mucin. This is a mucin that is particularly good for calming inflammation. It's great for wound healing. It's very good if you have acne prone skin. It can take down redness. It can soothe irritated skin. It can help to heal the skin, really great overall while also containing all those great skin nutrients and components in the snail mucin that really help your complexion look very healthy. They also have a little touch of hyaluronic acid here, and Centella, which is really contributing to the blemish busting part of this toner. It's really good at reducing inflammation and redness, and it's also an antibacterial ingredient. So it's really great if you have acne prone skin. I just want to put a warning out there that if your skin dries just a little bit and then you put this on, it feels a little bit thick, so know that there's a little bit more thickness to this one. That being said, I think any skin type will enjoy it, especially if you have acne prone skin."
"This is loaded with fatty acid content, this is really all about keeping your barrier strong in addition to moisturizing it and hydrating it. And because it has a little bit of a gel-like quality to the texture while also having some moisturization, it's actually quite plumping, makes your skin quite bouncy and very conditioned and softened and silky at the top too but not heavy. I think this is particularly good if you need to soothe an inflamed or barrier right, inflammation, redness, stinging on the skin. You need to strengthen your skin barrier, this is a nice one. I didn't rate it but I wanted to say nine out of 10 because I was starting to get picky when I was making this, like too picky. I'm not to point off because Paula's Choice just in general is a little bit of a pricey skincare brand."
"Numbuzin does it again with the number five plus vitamin boosting essential toner. They're using a lot of different brightening active ingredients like arbutin, vitamin C, niacinamide, as well as a brightening antioxidant glutathione which has been blowing up in popularity in K beauty products. It all comes together in a toner that hydrates and plumps your skin. Your skin is going to feel really juicy and very firm and bouncy. But over time as you consistently use this, you're going to notice that there's going to be a perkup in your complexion, particularly for folks who have a little bit of unevenness or dullness to your skin tone. I think you're going to see a lot of benefit from using a product like this. It's not the best at targeting hyperpigmentation, but combining it with another active like a targeted serum with brightening actives, I think that it can really maximize your results. So it can act as a boosting toner or just an overall complexion glowup product too. It offers deep replenishment but in a thin, watery texture and it's layerable. It comes in a giant size of 300 ml for this toner bottle and it's very affordable too. It's a pretty minimal ingredients list and to my sensitive skin, absolutely loves it."
"Beekman 1802 Milkshake Hyaluronic Acid and Squalane Facial Toner Mist is so fun. I love a good base product that's when there's like two layers to something, usually like a moisturizing kind of like an oil-based layer and then like a hydrating or sometimes a creamy type of portion. That's what this is, a kind of like moisturizing oil-based layer and then a really hydrating hyaluronic acid kind of like toner layer. It's super fun to shake this up and it's also unique in the fact that it's a mist toner too. It [...] does deliver a very fine mist. [...] You can use this as a really light toner layer in your skincare routine, or if you're somebody who when you layer products in your routine things just get a little sticky and a little weird, this works for that. It's a really beautiful fine mist and the way that this disperses is really beautiful."
"I love it. You're paying for a bit of an experience here, a beautiful aesthetic bottle, the pink color, the scent. I think the ingredients for what's available at Sephora are fairly unique. I'm loving the use of PHA here, it's a new generation AHA, so it's all about getting those dead skin cells off the top surface of your skin, making your skin a lot more smooth, helping to address texture and pores, and helping to give your skin a really beautiful bright glow. Traditional AHAs tend to be a little bit more aggressive on the skin, they can be irritating and they do cause your skin to be more sensitive to the sun. PHAs do all of those things but they don't do the aggression on the skin and they don't actually make your skin more sensitive to the sun, so it's a really nice gentler alternative while still getting some really great results. I love that they have used that gentler form and then put it together with BHA, which is my favorite chemical exfoliant because it gets inside of the pore where PHA and AHA work on top. BHA goes inside and decongests the pore. I love that they've married both of those together."
"I'm From Rice Toner is a really great example of a traditional Korean skincare ingredient which is rice. It has [...] a watery texture [...] but it's milkier as well, and that's the rice element at play here. Rice is an amazing skin conditioning, skin softening ingredient. It offers this really light balance of moisture that makes your skin feel super silky soft but it doesn't actually create an oily or greasy or overwhelming type of moisture. It's not thick, it's just a very light moisture at the top that really makes your skin feel very conditioned. [...] I think it can actually still work for oily skin types."
"April Skin Artemisia Rice Essence Toner, I'm going to rate this a four out of five. It has nothing to do with performance. It's so hydrating, it has a little bit more body, just a touch more plumpness in the texture. It's still really runny, just a little bit more slip, and it dives in really deep, super duper hydrating. I absolutely love how this feels. But the reason I knocked a star off is because it's just kind of hard to find. It's not available on all K-Beauty retailers. You can really only find it on April Skin, sometimes you can get it on Amazon. So I don't really love that it's just not widely available. But I really love the hydration level of this toner."
"Skin1004 Centella Asiatica Toner Plus, it never really went away but it's getting a lot more used now. Much lighter, essency type of formula. It just feels so good, so lightweight. It doesn't feel like my T-zone is super duper greasy when I use this."
"I like this toner a lot. Is it the most hydrating one out there? No it's not, but I think it's a really nice solid toner and I understand why it's so popular and why it's still ranking very high at Olive Young, because it's something that I can see working for a majority of people. It's just a very simple toner, very simple ingredients, very simple texture, and I can see it working for a variety of skin types. It's something that has gained a lot of popularity over the last year, I think it's going to continue to be popular, and it's just a really easy to use type of product."
"Propolis is one of my favorite ingredients for acne prone skin. It's a very gentle type of ingredient but it does have anti-inflammatory and antibacterial benefits. It can really help to reduce the size, the inflammation, the redness of the pimple. But it's also a wound healing ingredient, so it really helps to promote that healthy skin regeneration and healing after the [...] pimple. Propolis has been used really for centuries for its medicinal and healing properties for the skin. [...] It's one of those ingredients that always brings up that natural healthy lit from within glow to your skin. So if you're looking for that really even healthy look, also looking to reduce texture, also looking to reduce redness, and looking overall for a nice gentle ingredient to calm acne down, this is a great one to look at. [...] What COSRX has done is they've taken that propolis content but they have created more of that toner texture, so it has more fluidity to it. It is lighter on the skin. It's very, very hydrated."
"I get that deep brush of hydration down into my skin which I really really appreciate but then that little plumping gel right up at the top gives me that bouncy feeling that I absolutely love. This is another way to keep your moisture barrier healthy in all seasons because you know your moisture barrier is what helps to hold hydration in place. I also just find when my skin is really hydrated it just looks better it just looks healthier it looks firmer and plumper and juicier and more glass skin-like and glowing."
"The oil is not creating a really thick texture or very creamy texture, it's still very watery like you would expect a toner to be, quickly absorbed with a nice amount of hydration, but you're going to feel a lot more moisture, a lot more nourishment, a lot more richness. If your skin gets irritated from [...] dehydration or dryness and that's why you're seeking out a moisturizing toner, this one does have a soothing effect to it. [...] What's also unique about this is it's still maintaining a lighter texture, it's mind-boggling because you expect something that has this amount of richness to have to be quite thick, but it actually has this really nice light property to it, which truly makes it an appropriate toner type of product because toners go at the beginning of your routine. If you like to use other products, sometimes really thick toners can interfere, [...] so I think that this layers up really nicely. [...] One or two layers of this for skin that is feeling a little bit dry is perfect. If you're really dry, go for more, but just know the more that you put this on, the more rich it becomes and the more the oil starts to build up."
"This is the Cane Kombucha Balancing Ampule Toner. [...] It's Kombucha Tea in here so we've got that fermented tea goodness. It's really hydrating, [...] deeply hydrating and replenishing and watery. It'll just kiss your skin and give you just that little fullness and that little plumpness to the skin. If you have congestion prone or acne prone skin, you have inflammation prone skin, and snail is so great for treating all of that, reducing redness and swelling of pimples to facilitate healing."
"This actually feels really refreshing and breathable while maintaining a little bit more of a medium type of texture. I would say I'm a hydration skill here, this is definitely delivering a four out of five when it comes to hydration. The moisture level on this toner from Thayers is a two, it is actually very light, we're really leaning more on the hydration side here. I think that this is going to be best for combo folks because we're getting a little bit of both, we're getting that kiss of moisture and a lot of hydration. I do think oily skin types might enjoy this too. If you're looking for something to really plump up your skin or give you a little bit more of that medium type of feel with your toner you might really enjoy this. It is not greasy, I can't say this enough, there's no oils in here, it's not greasy, it's not super duper emollient, so I think it would still be really refreshing and breathable for oily skin types. If you're a dry skin type looking for a really nourishing type of toner, I don't think this is it. Right now it's feeling really nice on my skin and I have to say I find this to be a really nice value too because this is a huge bottle, 355 milliliters of toner."
"I was really impressed because I saw three different types of ceramides niacinamide cholesterol phytosphingosine all of these ingredients are amazing for fortifying and strengthening your Skin Barrier"
"The numbuzin Number 9 NAD+ PDRN Glow Boosting Toner is the first bottle I've emptied of this product, and I really do enjoy it. It's a toner but it feels almost like an essence. If you look at the ingredients list there's a lot going on besides just humectant hydrating ingredients, there's NAD+, PDRN, and about 50 peptides. It's a nice booster product for a skincare routine. I'm not mad at it, I would happily use this again, and with everything going on in the formula it can double as a toner and an essence in a routine."
"This is a very lightweight, milky lotion texture. It's not a stiff cream, not gel-like or emulsion-like either. It's just a very fluidy, lightweight lotion. This is a really good amount of balancing moisture without overwhelming your skin. Great for combo skin types. This is great if your combo skin leans just a tiny bit more dry in certain areas. You're going to appreciate how much moisture this brings without the grease and without the thickness. This doesn't bring a lot of occlusion to the skin, although a little bit more than the Skin 104. If you're severely dehydrated, this may not be the very best moisturizer for you. But this is going to be really great for folks who just have a tiny bit of dehydration, a little bit of that dry feeling on the skin. Oily folks may or may not like this. If you have a lot of thick oil on your skin and you don't like a lot of moisture, I would probably skip this one. Or if you like a little bit more moisture in your nighttime routine, this could be a good night lotion for you. But I think this more firmly stands for balanced skin types, combo skin types, people who are leaning with just a kiss of dryness on the skin. You're going to enjoy this one a lot. What I really like about it is it's not sticky or tacky in the finish. It softens the skin, sinks in really good, does the moisturization inside without any tackiness on the outside."
"Stratia released a hydrating toner and the first thing I did was look at the ingredients list and it is short and sweet and simple but there's some great stuff in here. It's a real masterclass in humectants. They are using urea, one of my favorite hydrating ingredients, doesn't get enough love. It's a natural moisturizing factor so it actually really helps to support skin health, it really hydrates the skin and it's quite soothing as well. They're using panthenol, this is such a goodie especially if you do have dehydrated skin. Not only does it hydrate the skin and relieve the dehydration symptoms but it also helps to strengthen your moisture barrier. It fortifies the lipid layer within the skin and that's what helps to keep the hydration in your skin and resist the dehydration where the hydration escapes out of the barrier. Panthenol soothes the dehydration, the tightness, but it also helps to fortify that lipid barrier so you can hang on to more of your hydration for longer. They're also using sodium PCA, glycerin, and they're using beta glucan which is a really interesting humectant. It does bring deep hydration but it generally has a little bit more slip."
"This is really hydrating and that's the first thing that I want from my toner because my toner can't really deeply replenish and hydrate my thirsty skin I'm not gonna mess around with it for any other benefits and this [...] absolutely does replenish the skin it feels so good so refreshing. [...] I am looking for that hydration that dives deep into my skin and I feel like this dives deep. There are quite a few different humectants in here, they are using eight types of hyaluronic acid. [...] The hyaluronic acid in here is very very light, it definitely has a touch of body but it is runny, it's watery, it sinks into the skin really really nicely. It's not sticky, it's not thick and it's layerable. I use two to three layers of this and my skin is very happy, it's very plump hydrated but it's not sticky or thick and it doesn't affect any other products that I want to use on top of it."
"This is a beautiful combination of hydrating, plumping gel-like humectants with a kiss of milky ceramide-based moisturization. While it's called an essence, I personally use it as a toner and an essence step, it's one of those products that can cover a couple of different steps. The green tea content actually makes this not just hydrating and moisturizing but quite soothing as well, there's a calming factor, not as immediate as like my skin is burning and I put this on and it feels better, it's not quite like that, but there's a nice calmness to it. [...] This is great for cranky skin, especially if your skin goes a little bit red or inflamed. I've also used this when I've had a few inflamed pimples and it helps take the inflammation and redness down. Green tea is amazing for that, it's also a good antioxidant, just great for supporting healthy skin overall. This is my second empty of this product, I emptied one and immediately opened another."
"I actually find both of these really nice, they're really good quality products. They're just really standing out to me for different skin types and different skin concerns. The humectant content, the lightness in the application, the way it doesn't feel as heavy on my skin, and the way that it's not so overly rich, it's not causing congestion or whiteheads for me. It actually suits my skin really well right now, where some days are warm but still windy, some days can be a little on the cooler mild side, but I'm not going full on hardcore dry, and I'm still dealing with some oil and balancing out some potential congestion, so the Rhode Glazing Milk Ceramide Facial Essence is really a nice balanced product for me right now. I do want to point out that this product does not contain hyaluronic acid."
"I'm pretty well known for adoring this product since 2021. I love this so, so much. I have probably not talked about it as much recently as I used to back in 2021, 2022, maybe even 2023, but it is still something that shows up in at least one routine every single year. I really, really love this essence. It is everything I want an essence to be. Essences are products that I'll use after a hydrating toner, almost like a booster to my skincare routine. I'm looking for hydration, and this definitely has it. [...] There are two layers here, and the hydrating portion is packed with fermented tea, lots of antioxidant content, lots of polyphenols, great for well-aging concerns. It is really anti-inflammatory and calming for the skin, reducing redness on the skin as well, and just everything in there promotes that lit from within kind of glow. I also like essences to have a little bit of a thicker texture than my hydrating toner, to really lock in hydration and balance out my skin. I have combination skin prone to dehydration, and that cream portion to this essence really does the trick. There is a sunflower seed oil"
"This is the Dr. Althea Aquamarine Jelly Mist. [...] I really enjoy it. It is a sprayable jelly, thick jelly type of texture, and it layers in some more hydration with that gel texture. It's very plumping, but because it's sprayed, it is a nice fine even application. It's not too heavy or sticky. I do tend to do a generous spray with it. It feels really nice and light in the mist, but as you start to pat it in and spread it across your skin, you're going to feel building up that plumpness."
"It just sort of sits on top of your skin. I don't think it's particularly effective peeling or exfoliating gel. I don't think it's a particularly effective hydrating serum. It might be an interesting moisturizing fermented type of product if you can tolerate the texture. I think it's interesting. I don't think it's good."
"The mist application is so good. I've run into a few mists that I really hate lately. Some that spit out too much product and it's like very wet and uneven and some that are so fine that's just a puff of product in the air and it hardly any of it landed on my face. This avoids all of those issues. It's a really good mist. [...] I've been loving it so much, especially as the weather is getting a little bit more mild. My combo skin is starting to wake up the oil a little bit, trying to avoid congestion as much as possible, and this is fitting the bill beautifully. This is pretty versatile. I would recommend this for [...] combination skin, oily folks who like a liquidy cream type product like a cream mist or essence as a final layer. This is ideal, especially in the misting format because you're going to sidestep that feeling where it's so easy to just pour it out and put on too much and all of a sudden your skin feels really weighed down and greasy. This is not a shiny finish mist either. [...] If you have [...] balanced skin type, this product would be very good for you because it's not like overly moisturizing and heavy. If you have dry skin, you may feel that this is not enough because it is on the lighter side of things."
"I would say that the product that I most recommend from Then I Met You is the Giving Essence. I'm a really big fan of this particular product. It's a really good example of what an essence is in the Korean skincare world because the names, toners, essence, even serums and ampules have all kind of blurred and blended together in a very interesting type of way. But traditionally speaking, an essence really functions as this sort of bridge between a hydrating toner product and a serum or ampule treatment type of product. It lands somewhere in the middle of the hydration that toners can bring to the skin that replenish the skin, kind of prep the skin for the rest of your skincare routine because we know that hydrated, moist skin is going to accept other skincare layers better. They're going to absorb better into your skin just from the hydration levels. But also, if your skin is lacking water, if it is dehydrated, replenishing that with a hydrating toner can make a huge difference. And just hydration itself smooths and plumps the skin and promotes healthier skin."
"I really love the hydro essence in this line, too. And I do recommend this one. This is interesting because it is a little bit more thick in texture than the cream mist. This is an essence that you would pour out onto your hands. But it's more of like a gel meets a cream texture instead of that purely creamy milky texture. And so because there's that gel element, it's actually more hydrating, aka watery, more plumping for the skin with just a touch of skin softening, skin conditioning moisture that doesn't feel oily or greasy. I would recommend this for combo skin types, balanced skin types, maybe even some oily skin types. This could even replace a moisturizer product if you want something a little bit plumping, skin softening, but not greasy. But it's not offering max moisturization. Ingredients-wise, it lives up to the Atobarrier name here. They are using lab-made ceramides. We also have some squalane urea. There's a touch of lactic acid in here which is barrier supportive. And we do have cholesterol and a lot of amino acids."
"One of my favorite products from Aestura is definitely the Atobarrier 365 Cream Mist. I love the misting format because it actually puts so much control back into your hands. You get a really nice even application, fine misting application of this richer, more moisturizing toner essence product, but it's so easy to build that moisture up with control without overdoing it so quickly if you were just pouring it out into your hand. Ingredients wise, we do have the lab made ceramides in here as well as some cholesterol, some hydrating glycerin. Notable for folks who like to avoid too much niacinamide in their products, there's no niacinamide here in this one or hyaluronic acid. It's a very straightforward, very simple ingredients list. This product has not been reformulated, and it does actually remind me of the old school Lanèges cream skin refiner, the older formula, not the serapeptide version. So it does have that amount of richness and moisturization to the formula, but in the misting format, it opens it up to a lot more skin types. Even people who've been interested but maybe a little hesitant about moisturizing toners, get a mist because it's going to put so much power back into your hands."
"This is going to be great for folks with a balanced skin type, with a combination skin type, folks who are looking for some barrier care and strengthening in their serums as well as a skin healthy serum that can help to support a glowing complexion."
"This really soothes the skin, plumps the skin, hydrates the skin, a kiss of moisture to the skin, but it also reduces redness and sensitivity. It does soothe the skin, bring anti-inflammation benefits, anti-redness benefits, and that moisture to the skin that's very calming, but it's not overwhelming. It's not oily moisture. It's not heavy moisture. So it can actually be a really good kind of moderate moisture choice for folks who need the nourishment but don't need the weight, who don't need the richness. 10 out of 10. I really enjoy this product."
"I like this one because it offers a little bit of moisture to my skin, but it still feels lighter and refreshing for this still very hot weather that we're having."
"It's a treatment mist. It does deliver this really nice fine even mist all over the skin. It's quickly absorbed. It's a thin texture, quickly absorbed in the skin. No stickiness, no greasiness. My favorite way is washing my face, a layer of this, moving on with the rest of my normal skincare routine. This just adds that layer of comfort and soothing to my skincare routine. Sometimes I do also put a layer in between my toner and essence and serum just to get a little extra blast of the ingredients. And remoisturizing your skin care layers kind of helps it absorb into your skin a little bit better, too. So it can function two ways there. And I do notice that with more long-term use, it does help mildly with the redness. If you have a lot of redness, you'll want to add a lot of other stuff into your routine. But this definitely does seem to help. It definitely takes down the inflammation. It kind of just gives my skin a layer of calm that I need. Especially when we're dealing with all the sweat, with all the heat, with all the humidity, with all the actives, and the hot water, and all the things that can test your skin, this just kind of helps you bounce back."
"Let's talk about the Tower 28 SOS Rescue Spray. This is a product that is new to my routine this spring. I have been using it in the winter and as I shared with you in my March favorites, I've been using it over the last couple of months to help prevent breakouts from sweating. My skin can sometimes get very irritated when I sweat a lot from my workouts. I'll use this spray before I work out, I'll sometimes spray it right after, or I sometimes build it into my routine right after my shower from working out. [...] It's not a toner. It's not an essence. It's really a targeted mist for folks who suffer with inflammatory conditions on the skin. It helps to reduce the inflammation, the irritation, the redness and potentially things like eczema, rosacea, and psoriasis flare-ups on the skin, which are all rooted in inflammation within the skin. The only ingredient here is the hypochlorous acid, and this is a great ingredient for what I just said. I have found that it's been really helpful like I said for preventing breakouts because there is an antibacterial benefit to this ingredient, but it's also soothing inflammation."
"There's a little bit more juicy plumpness to this SK-II Facial Treatment Essence. This works so fast and gives such great results on the skin. It really brings a very beautiful glow to the skin, it really improves the quality and the texture of my skin, it helps to smooth out texture and pores, and it's just really a fantastic product. I use this as an occasional treat for my skin, and quite honestly with this one I think it's okay to do that because it works so well. If you have dry skin but you like a little bit more plumping type of texture to be built into your skincare routine, I think you will like this. I think balanced skin types will enjoy this."
"This is actually a really great alternative to the SK-II not just for budget but I think also on ingredients as well. They're not using galactomyces ferment but they're using some other fermented ingredients that offer similar benefits. They're using 97% yeast ferment extract, which is what Missha is calling their fermented seea enzyme extract, and so this is a fermented ingredient that helps to improve skin tone and texture. And then they're also using bifida ferment extract, which has had a really big moment in K Beauty over the last two or three years. We're talking about something with biologically active compounds that help with the health of your skin, that help to protect your skin, and that help to improve the quality of your skin. What's interesting about bifida ferment that the other fermented ingredients don't have is that bifida is particularly good at helping to strengthen the skin barrier and helping to strengthen sensitive skin."
"On top there's a little bit of moisture and almost a kiss of richness that feels a little slippery, almost like an oil, which I wasn't expecting because there's no oil content here, but it does have a little bit of an oil slip as it absorbs into the skin, a little bit of moisture, and it does leave a little bit of a shine on top of the skin. I do have sensitive skin and I am sensitive to the essential oils and the fragrant compounds present within this formula. They do make me itchy, and this product is no exception. It made me itchy. The essential oil that they use here is rose geranium oil, and that's really the forward scent that you're getting. It's a very floral, rose-based type of smell, but it's just not for me. I don't really particularly enjoy it. It doesn't feel very sophisticated or interesting to me at all, quite honestly."
"This gets to the source of that tight, dry feeling, that dehydration deep within my skin, and it just expands and fills every little crevice, every little cell in my skin and in my epidermis, full of hydration without weighing it down and without feeling sticky. On top of that, it comes in a giant 500ml bottle, which I find very economical because I do go through toner very fast. The Dr.G R.E.D Blemish Kombucha Tea Essence, 2021 is when I discovered this product, and I have to say it was a good year for skincare for me. It's also just beautiful, I love these two layers here, the hydrating tea portion. My skin does really well with tea, it really does help to reduce inflammation and perks up my complexion, so this is a really beautiful tea portion, and then this creamy portion that's based in sunflower oil. So these two base layers, it's so fun to mix them together, it reminds me quite a bit of the creamer that I pour into my coffee. So you mix it together and then it actually applies like a hydrating essence, with this really silky, elegant, creamy, nourishing feel to it. It is so wild because it nourishes and moisturizes without being heavy. Now I think if you don't have dry areas on your skin it will feel heavy for you, but if you do have dry areas like I do, I have combination skin, so this area here tends to get very dry for me, this area here tends to get quite oily for me, this area just feels so nourished and so comforted, [...] it goes into every little dry crack in my skin."
"CeraVe Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence is very hydrating and has this gel-like consistency that does definitely plump up your skin, especially if you are lacking hydration. It makes your skin feel firm and bouncy and juicy and moist, but it also has this balancing effect to it that feels really nice. [...] The snail secretion in here is an ingredient that is great for skin health, it has antioxidants, it promotes wound healing, it's a very protective ingredient, and it may also help contribute to collagen stimulation and the anti-aging journey. It's great if your skin needs that perk-up, it's great if your skin needs that hydration. It's just an overall goodie."
"I really wanted to put some light on the Skin Food Royal Honey Propolis Enriched Essence, another product that calls itself an Essence but absolutely is potent enough to be used as a serum. I use this as a serum. It has a good amount of propolis in it and it really does support not only a glowing beautiful healthy looking complexion but it also supports some moisture in the skincare routine, a little bit of plumpness in your skin. I think that this is a little bit of a more elegant, richer take on propolis, and so this is going to be more of an ingredient for combination skin and dry skin folks. But if you really wanted to narrow in on propolis without all of the anti-acne stuff, this is the one to go for."
"It just bursts into hydration, fills every little crevice of your skin with deep down refreshing hydration. It feels awesome. I did prioritize using this, showed it in a few routines, emptied it. I'm going to miss it since it's discontinued. It's something I go through very fast."
"I've used so much mugwort, I love a lot of different mugwort products, nothing has worked as fast as this and has calmed down my skin as fast as this. There is something about the way they treat this extract that is really bigger and better for the skin. It is a very potent mugwort extraction as well. You can smell it from the bottle, a very intense smell. There's no fragrance, nothing has been added to enhance that; it is just a highly concentrated extract of mugwort that you're smelling. This may not be the most appropriate for those who have very sensitive skin who have had issues with plant extracts in the past, because even though this is a very quality extract there are still sometimes fragrant compounds that can come through and cause irritation. [...] It has a really thin, quickly absorbed texture, not a lot of hydration here. It's really just that mugwort getting into the skin and working its magic. This functions really well as a prep product if you want to put this first in your skincare routine, because it is so highly fermented it does seem to increase the hydration of anything that you put on top of it, or increase the absorption."
"This is an old favorite of mine I've liked this for many many years and I didn't quite realize that there was glutathione in here but once I realized that I was like this actually makes a lot of sense why this works so well. It's better known for its snail secretion filtrate contents about 72% as well as the 5% of niacinamide that's the difference between this product and the original COSRX 92 snail mucin power Essence. The [...] 5% is definitely a great amount for brightening the skin, but it's also an effective amount for stimulating your body's production of serum cholesterol and fatty acids so it actually really helps to support your skin barrier. Really brightens the skin, it also helps with collagen stimulation so well aging, brightening, barrier support, it's a goodie. Along with the snail which is also a natural antioxidant, it helps to promote wound healing on the skin. It's very hydrating, it's very barrier supportive. Some studies suggest it may also help with collagen stimulation and just that well aging journey can help to address photo damaged skin from exposure to the sun so sun damage. Amazing overall."
"I really like the essences from Secret Key as well as from Sinic, they don't break the bank, they give you back to my SE ferment, and if you're struggling with dull skin or maybe just starting that brightening journey or looking to kind of boost those glowy results, do consider adding this ingredient into your routine."
"This is an essence that features a high concentration of snail secretion filtrate, namely 95% of it. [...] Snail is an amazing ingredient that has various benefits for the skin. It's a really amazing hydrator, it really helps to hydrate, smooth, plump, and calm the skin. It's a very healing ingredient and so it can be very helpful for those who have sensitive skin but also for those who suffer with acne. It's anti-inflammatory, it helps to heal those pimples up, and it can also reduce inflammation and redness. It does also have some benefits for the aging journey, but all around it is just an ingredient that really helps to support the health of the skin with natural amino acids, vitamins, minerals, even its own natural peptide content. [...] They've also added in some peptides to boost the overall formulation. [...] Copper tripeptide 1 is found naturally in snail secretion itself as a [...] naturally occurring ingredient with lots of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and peptides for the skin."
"I love this because it uses 15% of propolis which I've really shown you how it can be a nice alternative to niacinamide, but propolis is definitely an ingredient that pairs up well with others. Here it's being combined with 59% of heart leaf extract, which is another one of those gentle skin clarifying types of ingredients. It's antibacterial, it's anti-inflammatory, it's hydrating for the skin. But then they've also combined these two ingredients with zinc PCA, which is another gentle ingredient that can be quite helpful for oil control on the skin. [...] Zinc PCA is one of the more gentle ingredients, it doesn't strip the skin, but it just helps to encourage a little bit more oil control and balance within the sebum. You see how all these three ingredients really do help as an everyday type of serum."
"I love this because it is such a simple ingredients list. It is just mugwort, that's a little bit of water, there's some preservatives in here, but this is what's considered a single extract essence so they're really just using one extract, one star ingredient to really give you all of the benefits using a high quantity in this essence. Mugwort is an amazing ingredient, you know it is very soothing. A lot of people go towards mugwort for soothing irritation. But you can see that there's a little bit of a fullness to the texture here and you absolutely feel that in your skin as you pat it in. It's very hydrating, it's watery, it's quickly absorbed, but there's just that little bit of plumpness. It's like, oh yeah, I love that plump feeling, especially when you want to build lots of hydration but without hyaluronic acid."
"This is a really interesting product because it's using snow mushroom extract and snow mushroom actually has very similar properties to hyaluronic acid"
"I'm feeling a really pleasant hydrating gel texture, it's spreading really nicely. The smell [...] is very strong with some essential oils and fragrant compounds. It has a very woodsy scent, clean woodsy rather than smoky. It's got a pleasant lightweight feeling with a hydrating gel essence."
"The Haru Haru Black Rice Probiotics Barrier Essence is a very rich, luxurious cream essence. It's incredibly thick and it packs a lot of moisture into the skin along with all of those great barrier supportive ingredients like ceramides, cholesterol, and fatty acids. This is going to be really great if you are having barrier issues and it's accompanied with some dryness. It's going to be a great option. Even if you just have some dryness and your barrier is strong, you're still going to really enjoy this. Personally me with combo skin and I am a bit more prone to congestion, but I do have quite a bit of dryness on my skin too. I wait every cold season to break this one out of my skincare stash. It's a little too rich for me in the warmer months personally, but once the cool weather rolls around, I cannot wait to open. I have at least one bottle waiting for me. I absolutely adore this. I recently just started using this about two days ago and I was like, oh yes, my skin my skin wants you back in my life."
"I'm going to use the Numbuzin No. 9 NAD+ Lifting Serum Essence. It's called an essence, but look at this texture. It's moisturizing, plumping, and it offers a really beautiful dewy finish to my skin. This is not your average essence. Plus, the ingredients are so incredibly beneficial for well-aging concerns while being incredibly gentle. We have NAD+ for cellular energy, peptides for collagen support, and there's a strong base of protective antioxidants. I've been using this product since 2024. I've gone through so many bottles of it. It makes my skin look incredibly fresh, rejuvenated, healthy, youthful, and glowing. But it also provides a good base of moisture that I really appreciate in my nighttime routine. Plus, it is a great base for my sensitive skin for the retinoid product I'm about to use next."
"This is a great PDRN product. If you are interested in plant-based PDRN from VT, this is the product that I suggest you get. This is so so good. It uses 10% of the Wild Gins PDRN. PDRN is all about, you know, it's one of those like complimentary ingredients that just really help your skin to behave more youthful. It helps with the processes that stimulate collagen. It helps with wound healing on the skin. Long-term consistent PDRN use can definitely help with collagen stimulation. It can help with skin elasticity. It can help with just skin firmness overall. And it also just contributes to healthier skin because your skin is just functioning more optimally because it just kind of like energizes all the cells in your skin. PDRN is an ingredient that is vague and subtle, but if you work it, it will work for you. Especially if you combine it with other harder-hitting actives like, you know, retinoids, high percentages of [niacinamide], vitamin C, that kind of deal."
"This is so good. [...] You could use this like an essence in your skincare routine or you could use this like a hydrating toner or like a hybrid combo product. [...] It really does cover what both of those products would do. [...] It has the hydration like a regular toner, but it also has those actives and those benefits that you might expect from an essence, but it's not in a full-on serum or ampule like texture. This is definitely something that I would reach for right now for cooler temperatures with my combo skin."
"This has been my go-to body sunscreen for summertime. I really don't like wearing body sunscreen normally, especially the heavy duty water-resistant ones that feel like rubbery Barbie doll legs on my skin, but this is a Japanese J-beauty formula with some denatured alcohol in it that helps it dry down and form a film on the skin without that greasy, sitting-on-top feeling. It's a water gel texture that blends into my skin effortlessly, no white cast, no streakiness, no hardcore rubbing to get it to set. There's always a conversation that these Japanese sunscreens aren't the most protective, and maybe the protection could be higher, but the trade-off for the better texture actually helps me wear this consistently every single day instead of avoiding sunscreen. I forgot about how good J-beauty sunscreen is during the pandemic when it was hard to get, and I'm really glad I circled back to it."
"Ranking number three is the older version in the same family from Nivea, the Super Water Gel SPF 50 PA+++. I started using this product a long time ago, forgot about it for years, and recently brought it back into my routine. It's still actually a really good body sunscreen, even though it has less protection than the EX version. I keep it by my back door so I never forget to put it on, and it's about convenience, wanting to wear it and making it easy to wear, which is why these are the most emptied sunscreens of my summer."
"This is a sunscreen packaged like a toner, watery and pourable, offering SPF 50 plus PA++++ protection using new generation chemical filters. It goes on in the same step as sunscreen, on top of moisturizer, not before serums. Even though it's water, it actually clings to the skin nicely and coats it in a layer of protection, applying like a very thin, watery sunscreen without feeling greasy or oppressive, letting your skin breathe. It's also really great for makeup application. I use this specifically for casual sun exposure when I know the UV is lower and I'm not going to be outside that long, not for high UV situations, sports, or sweating. This just feels so much better on the skin, so much more breathable, so much lighter, and it solves the problem of not wanting to wear a heavier sunscreen on those low key days."
"I will be honest with you, I wish I had been able to test this off camera just a little bit longer. I already have quite mixed feelings about this and I'm actually planning on doing a video update because I haven't fully landed on my opinions on this one. I'm very much in the middle. It does spread really beautifully, but there is a bit of white streakiness that kind of needs a little bit of extra elbow grease to work in. It's not hard to spread, but when you first put it on you're like, 'Oh no, I'm gonna get a white cast,' but then you see how it kind of blends in, you just have to spend a little bit more time spreading it. It's a little bit of a thicker texture. The way that I felt about it when I first applied it, I was like, it doesn't feel like a K beauty sunscreen."
"This is SPF 50 broadspectrum protection and this is a chemical sunscreen. This is a US market sunscreen. So it's just the older generation filters. I kind of like this. I don't love it. This is a mixed bag empty. It is a cream texture, does kind of have that traditional feel at first. It does actually spread onto the skin more like a cream gel. It does have an elegance to it that I wasn't expecting. I really experienced a white cast with this. This feels comfortable. A little bit emollient on the skin, just a little bit, but generally speaking, pretty comfortable on my skin. Good protection with this one. Worked really nicely underneath makeup. It's not like my all-time favorite K beauty sunscreens. It just doesn't feel as elegant as that, as comfortable as that. And this one, I do find when I'm wearing it for a longer period of time, I can sometimes feel a little itchy, and that is because my skin doesn't love these older generation chemical filters, they can create some very mild background itchiness in my skin. Most of the time I was using this, it was actually pretty good. Pretty good. Not great, not amazing, not like holy grail, but like pretty good. And then other times I was like, I'm going to wash my face in the middle of the day because it's so itchy."
"My least recommended from Innisfree is probably the Daily UV Defense SPF 36 Sunscreen. This is a product that in the past I've liked but not loved. It's SPF 36, which is pretty low SPF for K beauty usually. You know, SPF 50 is the standard. This is a little meh in the SPF protection. It's always used the older generation chemical filters, so nothing has been tweaked here. This is what the formula has always been. It does have some fragrance that is pleasant but fairly strong in my opinion, and I'm not a big fan of that. It's not as elegant in the texture. It's more elegant than maybe something you might get at the drugstore in the United States, but it's not as elegant as other K beauty sunscreens are. It's just kind of somewhere in the middle."
"I've been using this Supergoop Resetting 100% Mineral Powder SPF 35. It's like a zinc oxide powder, so there is some sunscreen protection in here. It's not going to give you like super duper full coverage sunscreen protection, but it's actually kind of a nice product for touch-ups, especially when you want a little extra sun protection or you want to control the oil. Not only does it help to take down the shininess just because it is a powder product, but I find this one to be pretty good at controlling oil. And it's just nice to get that little extra coverage when you are touching up in the middle of the day. I love how that just takes the shine down."
"I also carry the Beauty of Joseon matte sun stick, the same one you saw me with last summer, and I am on another one this summer. I like to use it on the tops of my hands especially, and on any exposed areas that need more sunscreen like my legs."
"I use the Medik8 Advanced Day Ultimate Protect sunscreen on my neck and chest. I did not love it on my face, but it has a nice, very lotion-like, elegant texture. It smells a little bit like sunscreen at first but that smell goes away, and since it was sent to me by the brand I like to use it up rather than waste it."
"They found a good balance between the tints, the undertones, the sheerness, and the zinc. [...] I'm kind of leaning towards a six out of ten. I'm not over the moon about using this every single day because I am feeling some dryness. [...] Denatured alcohol and zinc oxide are two ingredients that have historically, time after time, made my skin feel dry and dehydrated. [...] The more I'm talking to you, the more I'm feeling it in my dry areas. [...] It's not too bad, it's not super uncomfortable, but I [...] didn't feel the drying until about the four-hour mark, so I was impressed that it didn't happen right away. If you're sensitive to denatured alcohol or a [...] high percentage of zinc, [...] you're going to feel it. Up close, you start to see the flaws, it's kind of settling into the lines, clinging to the dry patches, getting a little bit cakey, kind of breaking up."
"I personally hate mineral sunscreens, but I do like this one. I don't like mineral sunscreens because I have some melanin in my skin, so there will always be some type of white cast, and I also have very dehydration-prone skin and mineral filters seem to zap a lot of moisture from my skin. However, what really impressed me about this sunscreen is that it actually doesn't really seem to dry out my skin that much. There is a little dryness that will always be present for my skin because of zinc and titanium, particularly zinc because it is quite oil absorbing. But there is just something about this one that's so much more comfortable in the grand scheme of mineral sunscreens that just feels so much better for me. I was really impressed with how it felt on my skin and I was also really impressed with the texture of this."
"It works really beautifully underneath makeup though. I think that grippy top I really like that for makeup because it almost like doubles as a primer, and I'm a big fan of makeup primer so when a sunscreen can actually take the role of that it's pretty impressive. I do feel very comfortable sweating in this sunscreen. I do still feel protected with this, though obviously at a certain point you're going to have to reapply if you're continuously or profusely sweating, but I do feel like this can hold up to sweat nicely. I don't know that I feel comfortable swimming in it. With the water resistant testing they don't actually release how water resistant it is. They don't give an up to rating. I couldn't find that information in any of the marketing, it wasn't on the box, it's not on the tube about water resistant up to, so I don't actually know how water resistant it is. I get the sense that it's not going to hold up to swimming, it's going to hold up to hiking, it's going to hold up to maybe doing some sports."
"I have been raving about this sunscreen for years at this point now it really is one of my favorites for its lightweight feel and I often classify this as a weightless type of sunscreen. I really cannot stand heavy feeling sunscreens especially in the summer especially for my daily sunscreen and something that I'm going to use underneath makeup right and so this fits the bill perfectly. It has this really gorgeous lotion like texture to it, you know they do call it a sun cream but I just don't agree with the word cream. Cream in my mind thinks like something much more emollient heavier moisturizing even shiny right and this is so much more airy and lotion like. It applies in a really beautiful thin but even layer on the skin it does absorb and dry quite quickly in my opinion and it has a very mild dew finish to it, you know semi dew finish if you will. It's not dewy not full-on it's not a glass skin kind of sunscreen and it's definitely not a shiny sunscreen. There's just a little hint of a dew but it's really not too much in my opinion and it's so weightless it feels so incredible."
"Isntree Hyaluronic Acid Watery Tinted Sun Gel, it is part of the top 10 bestseller list. It's a chemical sunscreen using six filters. Some of these chemical filters are the older generation, so beware if you have sensitivities. It does have the watery gel texture like the name suggests. It feels really cooling and refreshing and breathable, but it does have quite a dewy finish that some folks love like I do, and some folks really hate. So be aware that it is very shiny in the finish."
"I do find it to be a very affordable, a great sunscreen. The word mermaid skin gel is referring to the fact that this is a sunscreen that is going to give you a lot of dewiness to your skin, a wetness if you will to your skin, and it is really sold as like a works great under makeup type of sunscreen. This one being a hybrid sunscreen so they're using chemical and mineral filters. Because there is that hybrid there, there is a bit of a white cast to this. It's not full on white cast, but it's definitely not going to work as well for deeper skin tones, so please keep that in mind. The texture of this reminds me a lot of a gel texture that really just melts into your skin. It's very thin, breathable, lightweight, and just not bothersome. It's not something that's heavy on your skin, and I think that's another reason why this is great for under makeup. You're getting this really beautiful mermaid skin dew, but you're also getting this really beautiful light gel texture that's not sitting on top of your skin."
"This is 1,000% one of those products that's been around for a long time and been popular for a long time, which really tells me something about the product. Not for me personally, but I can still say it's a good product. I actually like a lot about this. What really makes this popular is the texture. It looks like it's going to be this heavy cream, but it actually just melts down into a really thin gel, so breathable, so lightweight on the skin. It absorbs really fast and it really doesn't leave a greasy moisturizing finish like a lot of sunscreens can do. This is just so pleasing in the texture, so easy to use. There is some denatured alcohol in here, and that's such an amazing ingredient for sunscreens. I personally am very sensitive to this ingredient and it doesn't suit my skin, but I love alcohol in a sunscreen formula. There is some fragrance in here too, and some fragrant compounds, again, not my favorite for my personal skin, makes me itchy, but it smells good. They really nailed the scent. It smells like a really sophisticated modern, very light floral scent, and I actually really enjoy it. I find it very pleasant."
"This is a really high quality sun shield from Blue Stone Sun Shields. They really take care with the reflective coating. The shield here actually protects you from about 99% of UVB and UVA rays, which is awesome. I like that it's adjustable, it's comfortable, it's a little futuristic but I think it actually is kind of fashionable and fun at the same time too. And I think it's worth mentioning for those who do have long hair like me, I do like these shield and visor options because you can wear your hair up, whereas the other ones I have to always remember to take my hair down. I usually have my hair up in the summertime so ponytails, high buns, all of that. The shield is very good for if you like to wear your hair up."
"It feels really good on your skin, really no white cast, just a very comfortable type of product, and that's one of the reasons why I rated it so high. It's not my most favorite sunscreen, or maybe the most protective one out there, [...] or the most innovative, but this has definitely been an entryway to daily sunscreen for a lot of people. This is the gateway drug for a lot of people who are used to shopping for their cosmetics at Sephora especially. This is one of the best sunscreens available there, and I think for a lot of people this is the first time they've experienced a sunscreen that feels elegant, that feels breathable, that feels comfortable, that feels like a product they don't mind putting on every single day. I can't discount the product for doing that. That's awesome."
"I noticed quite a bit of that graying ashing out on my skin tone. This is very heavily perfumed. There's a lot of fragrance at play here, but even the actual scent of this I hate it so much, it is so cloying and gross. It smells like baby powder that was made into a perfume, like it's so concentrated, it's so perfumey, it's almost cologne-like. I don't mind that powdery baby scent but it was just so thick and it just sticks with you all day long. This one I found headache-inducing because it's just so hard on your nose and your senses. I did not like it at all. I think it'll hold up to a little bit of light sweating, a little bit of humidity, but this would not be for me personally like an active outdoors sunscreen. Don't bike with this, don't hike with this, definitely don't go to the beach with this. I don't think it's going to hold up to those types of instances."
"I liked how this spread and applied. It dries down very quickly and it almost has a slight powdery feel to it. It definitely has a little bit more of a kiss of emolliency and moisture that you feel, you don't necessarily see it but you feel it on your skin, and then almost like a little grippy powdery type of finish that actually makes it a beautiful base for makeup. This is probably my second favorite from the video to be completely honest with you. I was really impressed with how it stood up to a lot of sweat. If you're going to be really active outside, you can go and be active with this. I think you would be happy with how this stays on the skin, how it grips, and protects the skin. But especially if you're somebody who also likes to wear makeup, this really performs nicely as a makeup base in my opinion as well, just like a nice smooth kind of canvas. It held up to heavy sweating. You will need to work a little bit more to get this off of your skin to remove it, which I think speaks to some of the water resistance. I just think it's a really well performing, water-resistant elegant J Beauty sunscreen."
"It's a chemical sunscreen with five all new generation chemical filters. I've really been enjoying the sunscreen this month because we've kind of fully gotten into some warm weather and those sunny days are really starting to kick in, my oil is really starting to kick in, and I'm appreciating those lighter products now. I was really impressed with the texture and that's why it's a favorite for me and why I've been using it a lot this month. The texture is really weightless. It's one of those sunscreens that I say I forget that I'm wearing it, and that's a good thing. What I mean when I say I can't feel this sunscreen is it's not heavy."
"It's more gel and lightweight than the Round Lab Birch Juice sunscreen. [...] There is some denatured alcohol in here that really helps to keep this incredibly light. It dries super fast on the skin, which is incredibly appealing for a lot of folks. They're also using some essential oils, which I've already covered, not an ingredient for me. I just kind of put this in the middle of the pack because I respect why people like this. I know a lot of people I've given away a lot of my sample products and [...] I've given this sunscreen away a lot, and all I ever hear back is how great it is."
"As soon as I started using this bottle of sunscreen I was like, oh yeah, I remember why I loved that one so much. This blow my mind and feel like new and innovative? No, not at all. I've definitely evolved in my sunscreen use and the products I've been exposed to, and I think the market has changed a lot since that original product came out. But all that being said, this really does maintain a lot of those main characteristics that made it special in the first place. That light, essence-like texture, it's a really airy, lotion-like sunscreen, it's not a cream, it's not a greasy kind of sunscreen. It has a really beautiful light texture that's incredibly breathable, that feels more like a skincare product than a sunscreen product. It feels so comfortable on the skin, it gives this really beautiful dewy finish to the skin that I really enjoy, and so I've just really been liking this. It's kind of one of those effortless types of sunscreen products, and that's really what I prefer when it comes to sun protection. It's not the appropriate choice for every situation. If I'm going to go to the beach or be outside a lot sweating, or I'm going to be in a high UV situation, I might not choose a sunscreen like this, but for every day, casual exposure, it's..."
"If you like mineral sunscreen I have a suggestion: it is the Isntree Hyaluronic Acid Natural Sun Cream. This is SPF 50+ PA++++, using zinc oxide for the protection. It's actually a really light, almost essency kind of a texture, like a gel cream. It spreads in a really nice thin but protective layer and it dries quite quickly on the skin with minimal shine. There might be a little bit of dewy but it's not overly greasy and shiny like some sunscreens are."
"Neutrogena just in general I think is one of the most innovative brands for sunscreen in the American Market. I really do think they offer some really really great sunscreen formulas and I do think their Beach Defense line is probably one of the best water resistant lines for specifically being in the water. I find their sunscreens incredibly water resistant. This is water resistant up to 80 minutes. It does have fragrance and the fragrance actually lingers quite a bit. I would describe the smell of this like old school sunscreen with like a tropical twist, you remember those old sunscreens from like the 90s that kind of smelled like coconut or like a creamy pineapple kind of smell, that's what this smells like. It's not really cloying, it's not like over the top, it's kind of pleasant, but it's definitely a scent that lingers."
"This offers SPF 50 with broad spectrum protection and comes in at 9.99 for 207 milliliters of product. It's a chemical sunscreen [...] using four older generation chemical filters, and it does not contain any drying forms of alcohol. There is some fragrance in here, but I find it to be incredibly light. The scent itself doesn't linger. It's really a very light smell of traditional sunscreen with a little bit of a pleasant clean smell to it. It's not super floral, it's not overpowering at all, and once you apply it you really don't smell it again at all. [...] I really enjoy the texture of this because it's a lighter lotion type of texture. Some sunscreens can have a really thick or greasy feel to them, almost like they sit on top of your skin and never really dry down or absorb. This really does apply more like a lotion without that greasy or thick after effects. [...] It spreads very nicely onto the skin and quickly dries. It's surprising because it doesn't contain denatured alcohol, which often aids the drying process on the skin. Without the denatured alcohol, I do still find that this adheres and dries on the skin very quickly. It doesn't feel thick or heavy, it's not greasy, it doesn't leave a shiny look on your skin, and there's absolutely no white cast to this at all. I've used this so many times with reapply after reapply with no pilling whatsoever."
"And my sunscreen is my year-long favorite, Haruh Haru Airyfit Daily Sunscreen SPF 50+ PA++++. This uses all new generation chemical filters. And this has been a staple for me. I was using it all summer long. I have no plans to switch this up for the coming fall months. The secret for me is the velvety, slightly grippy finish to this sunscreen. It's not dewy, it's not shiny, it's not glass skin. And that actually means that it works perfectly as a base for my makeup in the morning. I don't get any sliding or makeup breakup even in heat or humidity. But the texture itself works year round for me personally. And so I've been leaning on it for a very long time with no plans of changing because it's just perfect for me."
"I'm using a chemical formula today. It does not have much of a white cast. This is the Beauty of Joseon Relief Sun: Rice + Probiotics SPF 50+ PA++++. It's an elegant formula that works well with this method. My makeup is intact and there's a full layer of sunscreen on top of my makeup, offering very good protection that you can control. Plus, it's incredibly affordable. I mean, this is a budget hack."
"It is one of those viral products that has actually maintained its popularity because it was viral like two years ago and yet it's still a bestseller. It is delivering worthiness right people do like it they are returning to it. I do like the texture of this. It has a really airy feel, it is actually similar to a water gel-like texture, very good absorbency into the skin, not overly shiny or wet looking once it is settled onto the skin, and a comfortable, breathable type of sunscreen. For me personally there's a little bit of essential oil content in here so it's just never going to be a daily thing for me because my skin is sensitive to those ingredients. But I have used this a few different times and every time I'm impressed with the texture, the breathability, the feel of it. I totally understand why this is the bestseller."
"My personal winner is TOCOBO Bio Watery Sun Cream SPF 50+ PA++++. I've actually been using this for about a year now and I liked it as soon as I used it. I really find the texture to be incredibly pleasing. It's light, it's refreshing, while still adding a kiss of moisture to the skin. I really like that slightly more gel quality that this has, like a creamy type of gel cream gel type of texture. It feels really refreshing especially in the heat. The artificial fragrance here I like that you smell it on application but it doesn't linger with you throughout the day. I personally enjoy that. I do have sensitive skin and this doesn't irritate my skin. I really like the texture of this and I like that this has like a little bit of dew, a little kiss of dew to the skin, but it's not super duper wet looking or super greasy looking in the finish. I think it just feels really nice, refreshing, and looks that way on the skin."
"You're not going to walk around feeling like your sunscreen is really wet for a long period of time because we have a good amount of rice in the sunscreen we get that moisturization. It's not oily, it's not greasy like some creamy textured sunscreens can really feel greasy on the skin. This has this nice light moisturization element to it that doesn't overwhelm the skin, and in fact it leaves your skin so stinking soft. I cannot stop touching my face when I wear this because it really just conditions the skin. That's really one of the beautiful benefits of rice in skincare, it really does soften the skin, and so we're getting that element here in the sunscreen. The finish on this is a bit dewy but I think it's really pretty. It's not overly wet, it's not really greasy looking, but it does definitely give you that kiss of dew. This dries really quickly on the skin, it doesn't feel really wet. Absolutely no white cast here, those chemical filters are doing their job. Really easy to reapply on the skin because it's so light it doesn't build up really thick and heavy on your second application, absolutely no pilling. Works beautifully underneath makeup because it's got that little kiss of dew that makes your skin just look really good."
"For my second cleanser, I'm using the Remedy Rich Cream to Foam Cleanser. This has a milky gel texture that foams up on your skin, but with a little bit of that moisturizing milkiness built in. It doesn't strip my skin of any essential moisture. That's the balance I really need for my combination skin. Especially as we're transitioning seasons, things can go a little bit haywire. Having a gentle cleanser to rely on is important."
"I washed my face with the Coco Kind Milky Soft Face and Body Cleanser. This is a fragrance-free, gentle option that works for both face and body. It's great for my sensitive skin and it doesn't strip anything."
"The prequel cleanser is a really gentle glycerin-based cleanser with very low foaming action that actually hydrates your skin. It's a really good gentle alternative to a milk or cream cleanser for hot summer months."
"This is the pharmacy green clean cleansing balm in the fragrance-free version, and it's used as the first step in a double cleanse to remove sunscreen and makeup."
"I love this mix of this foaming gel cleanser with the moisturizing gentle milky texture. It's perfect for my second cleanser. This is just going to remove any leftover residue from the cleansing oil, any little bits of makeup that are left on my face, giving me that really good clean canvas to kick off the rest of this routine. But this is so gentle on my sensitive skin. I love washing my face at the end of a long day. It is so satisfying."
"Let's talk about the Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser. I have emptied [...] multiple bottles of this, but I will say it's just not my favorite. I just can't get 100% with this one. I like it. I don't love it and I find myself not using it for my face all that often. This is an interesting texture because it is like a creamy gel, but it's more on the gel side than it is like on that richer creamy moisturizing side. And this is definitely meant for very dry skin, very sensitive skin to not strip the skin barrier. I think that it's actually very good at that. When you wash your face with this, your face will not feel dry and tight. It will not feel dehydrated. It will not feel stripped and irritated. It will actually feel kind of soft and moisturized. I just find that there's something about this that kind of goes in and just almost leaves like a film on my face. Not an actual stickiness sitting on top film, but just because it does leave a layer of moisture on my skin in a way that I just don't love. I don't know what it is. I just don't really like it. Especially because I do go in for so many other skincare products after washing my face. [...] I think it's just not the way I personally prefer to start my skincare routine."
"This is the SkinFix Barrier+ Foaming Oil Cleanser. [...] This is that milky gel, slightly moisturizing cleanser, but unlike the CeraVe, it actually washes away cleanly and it doesn't feel filmy. My skin just feels refreshed and not stripped but not filmy. And so that's why I loved it. [...] I don't know what kind of magic is going on with this cleanser. [...] The pump on this dispenses the exact right amount of cleanser. And you would not believe how incredibly important that actually is. I have tested so many cleansers where you do one pump and it's just so much product. It's like double the amount that you need just for your face. Even if you did your face and neck, it would still be too much, and you just end up rinsing so much of the product down the drain because it is hard to train yourself to only do a half a pump."
"I actually am not a big fan of this. It's not a trash product by any means, but it's not my all-time favorite. I did include this in one of my viral K beauty products I don't recommend video back in the summer. The grinding mechanism is what made it originally very viral because instead of a jar like packaging where you would open it up and scoop out the balm with a spatula, this one twists and shaves the cleansing balm off. I do kind of like that aspect of not needing a spatula, but the grinding mechanism itself..."
"The worst Anua product at Ulta has got to be the Heartleaf Pore Control Cleansing Oil. It kind of just misses the mark for me personally on a couple different levels. Number one, it smells weird. It has this very medicinal smell. I think there's some artificial stuff happening in here as well. This is a fragrance product, but for whatever reason, it just doesn't strike me as pleasant. It just strikes me as kind of medicine-y in a non-appealing way. When I used this product, it actually irritated my skin. It kind of warms up and felt fiery on my skin. It just felt very uncomfortable for my skin. And then the few times that I did use this, I ended up with a pimple in not a normal spot."
"The least recommended from Then I Met You has got to be the Living Cleansing Balm for me personally. [...] This definitely has some essential oil content in it. I'm not the biggest fan of that. [...] For me personally, I just don't think it's a very good cleansing balm. I think it has kind of like a waxy sort of residue that kind of sticks to your skin. It's kind of hard to wash off and I just don't think it's amazing at removing makeup. There are much better cleansing balms, harder working cleansing balms even at Sephora. You don't necessarily need to have the essential oil or fragrant content to it in order to get the job done. But at the end of the day, I just don't really like the texture of this cleansing balm. There's definitely better ones out there."
"The one thing I didn't like about Dr. Althia is it had that waxy texture and hard to rinse feeling to it and this doesn't. This actually feels kind of like [...] it's a little bit silkier, a little bit meltier, a little bit thinner, less like coating your skin in an unpleasant way. And it removes makeup really, really nicely. I've only just started using this in the last couple of weeks, but I do feel like it is standing up [...] to the effectiveness of Beauty of Joseon."
"I do use this actually more for my body. It's a little bit too much for my very sensitive face skin, but I do get breakouts often on my chest, my back, and sometimes the tops of my arms. And this works pretty well to keep the skin clear. This definitely helped to keep the breakouts at bay. And when I emptied this, which was a while ago, my skin started to get a bit congested again, unfortunately. So this definitely works. And because this combination of exfoliants worked so well to keep my skin clear, I'm going to be rating this a nine out of ten."
"It does like to cling to the skin, so [...] you have to wash very thoroughly, and you can't really just splash and go with this cleanser, but [...] I put it in this month's favorites because I tried it just for that video, and [...] it has not left my sink side [...] since. It's stayed in my cleanser spot and I just go for it all the time now, so that's a testament to the product, it's working really nicely. In the summer I like to use a cleanser in the morning [...] because I get a little more oily in my T-zone and my skincare layers feel thicker [...] with the heat and humidity, and this [...] breaks through what I want to wash off my face without stripping my skin or making it feel tight and dehydrated in the middle of the day because it is so gentle. Actually I do feel like it imparts a bit of hydration when you rinse it off, your skin feels more hydrated and soft."
"Once you've done that, your skin is left hydrated, soft, even actually a little bit plump and just incredibly hydrated. I do not feel any of that like stripped, dry, tight type of feeling. I don't feel like my skin barrier has been tested, but my skin feels clean and refreshed. I was actually really impressed with this one. There have been some folks who have had some allergic reactions or some sensitivities to this cleanser, and this makes sense because anytime that we start to go into high percentages of certain ingredients, there's always going to be that risk for skin where it just could be too much. That doesn't mean that glycerin is a bad ingredient or that it on the whole is an irritating ingredient. It's just that when we pack so much into a product, that is always going to be a fringe issue, meaning that it's not going to affect like a wide group of people, but it's always going to be a concern. So it does give you pause a little bit like, is 50% glycerin going to be too much? Is that just for marketing alone for the splashy name and then that high percentage of the ingredient? It's definitely working for your skin. It's definitely hydrating it. It's definitely doing something different than most average cleansers on the market. And I did find it to be gentle and I didn't get an irritation from it."
"I'm actually just going to use some Micellar Water from La Roche-Posay and I'm going to just put that onto a cotton pad to cleanse the sunscreen and any dirt and whatever off of my neck. You don't always have to rinse Micellar Water off your face but I do like to just go in with a wet washcloth just to get any of the remnants off because I do find like it can leave my skin feeling kind of sticky."
"The foam on this still foams nicely, but it maintains that jelly like refreshing kind of cool feel on the skin as you're using it. Don't think that because it's slightly lower foam that it's not cleansing your skin. It cleanses the skin very effectively. This is actually one of my favorite recommendations for oily skin because I'm not going to be recommending high pH cleansers to anybody. Even if your skin is oily, it's just not good for your skin barrier. So this is a really nice light one with a fun type of texture."
"I want to mention the Heimish All Clean Green Foam. This is a longtime recommendation from me. I've been recommending this since the beginning of my channel quite honestly. I don't personally use it much these days, but I still recommend it a lot, particularly for folks who are on a budget because it's one of the most affordable cleansers in K beauty. When I first started recommending it, it was about seven or eight dollars. I think it's gone up to about 12 now, though every site is different and you might find it for less or more. But generally, it's a very affordable, basic type of cleanser, and that's okay because cleansers are kind of boring and basic. They're foundational. It's important to get it right, but once you do, they don't really rock your world, and that's okay. I don't need a cleanser to rock my world. I need it to work. That's another reason I value this philosophy in my skincare routine, especially when budgeting: making sure I'm not spending too much on the cleanser when it's already pretty boring. This really fits my philosophy. It's a low pH cleanser, and low pH is really important for respecting your skin barrier and not stripping your skin or leaving it tight and dry after you rinse it off. But it has a really interesting texture because it's almost like a balm foaming gel."
"This is the Klairs Gentle Black Fresh Cleansing Oil, the fragrance free cleansing oil from Klairs. It's okay, I do like it. I remember when it came out many, many years ago and I reviewed it and I was like, yeah, I really like this. It's a good cleansing oil, I will happily use this until the bottle is empty. But it is actually a little thicker than my favorite cleansing oils are, and so it took me a minute to get used to this more cushy, thicker feeling oil. But it absolutely, you can see it's doing its job, it's breaking down that makeup, it's getting down there so I can wash away this full face of foundation and makeup really cleanly."
"I'm rating this a 10 out of 10, the Dr. Idriss Soft Wash. It is a gentle, sensitive skin friendly cleanser, I expect no less from Dr. Idriss, she really delivered on that front. It is not stripping, it feels really nice on the skin, it's kind of a silky, gel cream kind of texture. It feels like a foaming cleanser but it just doesn't foam up really harshly on the skin. It's not like a milk cleanser, it's not like actual straight up oil that you're putting onto your face, it's just like a really nice gel texture that doesn't strip your skin. I have two here and I actually have another one of these in my shower already, so just for that reason alone, obviously it's stuck with me for a long time. It is a little bit of a pricier investment for a cleanser, it's about $30, so just for that alone I'm going to be rating this a 9 out of 10."
"First Aid Beauty gets it right with a gentle fragrance-free formula. I do find this to be very effective for cleaning the skin. If you're not into double cleansing, I do feel like this is something that could actually remove makeup and waterproof sunscreen pretty easily, you just have to be mindful and take your time. I do find it to be gentle as well, and I do find that the bottle itself lasts a really long time."
"Not affordable right, $40 for a cleanser is quite a bit of money, and I personally, my philosophy is I really don't like to spend a ton on my cleansers, especially a product that you put onto your face but then you wash down the drain immediately. I'd rather invest my dollars into something that sits on my skin. I personally just find that it doesn't work for my sensitive skin either. There's just a little bit of tightness, just a little bit of a squeaky clean feeling with this one."
"It starts to emulsify into more of a milk type of cleanser so it leaves your skin really soft and moisturized. It's not a balm, it's not an oil, but it actually does effectively remove and break down makeup and sunscreen really nicely without that balmy oily kind of feel. It washes away really cleanly so it's really unique, it's really different something I enjoyed."
"This is the CeraVe Makeup Removing Cleanser Balm. What's inside here is fine, it's fine and that's how I feel about it. It's not super duper impressive, it's not the best cleansing balm that I've used. [...] Does it remove makeup? Yes. Does it remove stubborn sunscreen? Yes. Does it take down stubborn eye makeup really well? It's fine, it does the job eventually. I think it needs a little bit [...] of help for really stubborn, waterproof, and hard to remove eye makeup, but it gets there. I've had products that get there a lot faster though. But for my general everyday makeup and stuff, it does really well. I find it kind of filmy though. I find it slightly hard to wash off cleanly. I just don't find it very elegant. There's nothing really enjoyable or pleasurable about the product. It's just straightforward and it does the job and it's accessible and it's at the drugstore."
"This is a cleansing balm and I'm gonna give this The Smiling Emoji because I did enjoy this. I don't know that I'm in love with it or like wildly impressed with it but this is a very good product. I can't fault it too much. This is also a fragrance free cleansing balm which I find very hard to find. I don't have really anything to fault the product with. The only thing I was slightly disappointed in is while the packaging is really beautiful and I really am attracted and drawn into this packaging, the actual package does seem kind of deep and somewhat deep but it actually only goes about halfway down. I emptied this a lot sooner than I was expecting. It's a hundred milliliter of product which I think is fairly standard for a cleansing balm, but just with using it I was like oh my gosh I'm reaching the bottom already. I wasn't quite ready for that."
"This is the Isntree Green Tea Fresh Cleanser and I'm gonna rate this with the laughing but also sweating nervously at the same time emoji because I'm kind of a little bit nervous about this because I don't really love this. I want to love it, but it's just not right for my skin type. That said, I would not hesitate to recommend this for oily skin types. [...] The green tea line from Isntree really is geared towards controlling oil on oily skin types, and I feel like the cleanser is no exception. This is definitely gentle, definitely a low pH respectful type of cleanser. There's not stripping ingredients in here. The texture is more of a jelly, bouncy type of texture with real green tea bits in it. It's very low foaming, which is another hint that it's not a really surfactant-heavy, harsh, and stripping cleanser. It's very gentle, it envelops your skin, it cleans really effectively and feels great, but my skin always just feels a whisper too tight, a whisper too dry when I use this. It's not full-on stripping, but it's just enough where I don't feel comfortable with it."
"This is the Klairs Rich Moist Foaming Cleanser. This is such a fun cleanser because it foams up, it's in that foaming pump bottle so you get a really sudsy experience while washing your face. It's a little bit different than your basic gel and cream cleansers."
"I just started using this cleansing oil about a week or two ago, this is a JBD brand it's under the Cozy line of products and this is something I've been wanting to try actually for a long time. It is a fragrance-free cleansing oil and it has a more medium kind of feel, it's not a super light oil but it's not like really heavy either, definitely somewhere in the middle. And I have to say it has this like cushiony effect, like there's something really cushiony and luxurious about this that I really enjoy. But at the end of the day, it's a cleansing oil, it breaks down makeup really nicely and it's very affordable too."
"I love that this is both a milky nourishing creamy kind of calming sensation but then it foams up and it actually cleans your skin effectively and rinses away without a film."
"I absolutely love this because it retails about 12 dollars so super affordable and we're in that fragrance free sphere as well. I love the texture, it's a medium weight oil and it really just breaks down all of those thick layers really nicely. What I also love about it is it washes away cleanly. I really don't love cleansing oils that leave that film on my skin, even if I follow up with a foaming cleanser, but this oil cleanser just doesn't even have it. Why I really like this in the affordable realm and why I've gone back to it for so many years, you know, 12 dollars for the bottle, awesome, lasts you a good amount of time, and they actually sell refills for that bottle."
"This is the Radiance Cleansing Balm. [...] This is actually a balm cleanser that I would say 10 out of 10. I absolutely enjoy. You've seen multiple empties of this. And I always say this is the balm cleanser that made me love balm cleansers. It's fragrance-free. It's got a very luxurious, melty balm texture. If you're more of an oil cleansing person, you will like the texture of this. It's very melty, very luxurious. Really good at getting the job done. And it's also one of the more affordable balm cleansers as well, especially for sensitive skin."
"I do want to start off with the two cleansers that I've been seeing me use the most over the last probably two years now at this point. And that is the La Roche-Posay Gentle Foaming Oil Cleanser as well as the La Roche-Posay Lipikar AP+ wash. I've seen these in like all of my skincare routines lately, and that is for a reason. These are not only products that are incredibly gentle for my sensitive skin, they don't strip my skin of any essential moisture whatsoever. They feel so comfortable, but they do clean my skin very effectively. I also really enjoy the value of these products. While they are a little bit more expensive, they come in these really big sizes. I love carrying these into the shower with me so I can wash my face in the shower, but also they're great as body washes, too. Especially if you need something that is very sensitive, skin safe, these have you covered. The gentle foaming oil cleanser from La Roche-Posay, what you need to know about this product because you might be confused. It's not an oil cleanser because as you look in the ingredients, there is no oil content. I hate the name of this product. It's so confusing."
"Let's flip the script a little bit and talk about something that doesn't foam up at all, that actually contains oil content and gives us a milky, silky, creamy texture. That's going to be the Isntree Yam Root Vegan Milk Cleanser. For me, oh my gosh, look at this beauty, this milky, creamy, silky, luxurious, rich, nourishing, comforting texture. This is truly the most luxurious milk cleanser I think I've ever tried. This feels amazing on the skin. What an experience. A true milk cleanser just spreads so beautifully on the skin. It offers that moisturization and that nourishment. It's actually quite soothing if you have that dry irritation on your skin, because yes, the moisture feels very comforting, but the fact that they don't foam up on the skin and they don't contain those harsh surfactants is really critical when your skin is very sensitive or irritated and inflamed, because those types of ingredients, while great on healthy and strong skin and can really give you a nice cleansing experience, they can actually really irritate your skin when it's already weak and damaged. Those surfactants can kind of do a number on your skin. So that's why sometimes when your skin is in that state, you don't even want to wash your face, because it can be such a harsh process. And so using products like this that don't foam up on the skin can be a really smart move. Plus, the moisture that they bring can bring a lot of soothing to the skin. They can help to reduce the inflammation and the redness on the skin as well. It's not just about treating dryness necessarily."
"This is Drunk Elephant Baby Facial, it costs $80 for 50 ml of product. I first tried this around 2019 and I remember it being incredibly intense, like a hardcore AHA resurfacing mask. I have very sensitive skin and that was too much for me, and it was one of many products that made me turn away from AHA for a long time because they were all so harsh on my skin. Even though it promised to be gentle, it did not deliver for me back in the day. This product has recently been reformulated to be gentler and more barrier respectful, and I do think there are some meaningful upgrades here. It has a 25% AHA blend of glycolic and lactic acid plus 2% salicylic acid working at two different depths to exfoliate the surface and decongest the pores. This really delivers on what you'd want a baby facial to be, refreshed, renewed, brighter, smoother skin right after washing it off. It's just so freaking expensive at $80, and it may not be an investment everyone can afford upfront."
"Multi-Acid Milk Peel retails for $23 for 226 ml of product, so there's a lot of value price-wise and the size difference compared to Drunk Elephant can't be ignored. It has a 15% AHA blend of glycolic, phytic, malic, mandelic and lactic acids, and instead of a BHA it uses an enzyme blend of lipase and protease that helps decongest the pores without adding extra irritation. It's a leave-on essence rather than a wash-off mask, so with my sensitive skin I use it once a week and still get smoother, brighter, more radiant skin, plus the enzymes help decongest. I've actually been using this for about a year now and I really love the results. Because it's a bigger, more affordable bottle, I also use it on my body, my back and even as a big part of my foot care routine. Value-wise it's kind of a no-brainer."
"For exfoliation I use the Dr. Idriss Major Fade Flash Mask [...] once a week. I really like it because it uses 15% glycolic acid as well as 3% lactic acid, which gets it into mini peel territory, [...] no joke percentages. I like this product for the delivery system, it's a wash off mask, so I can tailor my mini peel experience by how long I leave it on, usually around 10 minutes for me, sometimes only 7 if my skin feels more sensitive than usual. [...] I really like having a product in my routine that gives me [...] that pick me up sort of instant result when my skin is looking a little dull."
"I used to like the Laneige Cica Sleeping Pack back around 2019, and then I changed my tune about that product and I was like, 'Never again.' What went down back in the day was I did like it. It felt really good and soothing for a while, and then it felt kind of irritating and itchy and burning and stinging on my skin because why did Laneige do this? They added in two essential oils into this mask that was meant for sensitive skin, raw vulnerable skin, healing up the skin, and then they put in these essential oils. That's just not a good mix for me and my sensitive skin. So, I was at Sephora a couple months ago, and I saw this container with a beautiful aqua color. I was looking at the Laneige Cica Sleeping Mask. I don't remember the Cica Sleeping Mask looking like this. I'm like, 'Did they reformulate this? This is different. And I don't see essential oils, and I don't see artificial fragrance, and I don't see fragrant compounds, and I don't see drying forms of alcohol.' Laneige is notorious for using any and all of the ingredients that I just said. So, I was like, 'Wow, I can actually put this on my face. This is exciting.' And then I opened up the demo and I was like, 'That is not the same texture, either. This is legitimately a new product.'"
"I've been jamming on this since 2018, maybe even before that, maybe even pre-YouTube. I adore this wash off mask so much. This is amazing for soothing the skin, for bringing in a lot of moisture, calming down redness. It's really great if you have some breakouts going on at the time. I use this a lot when my skin barrier was weak and damaged. I've used this a lot during winter to soothe really dry, irritated skin. I've just used this to get that really gorgeous honey glow that I absolutely love. Honey is antibacterial and promotes wound healing for acne prone skin. But there's always been something about honey that just brings out this glowiness, this healthy lit from within vitality and radiance to the skin. It's not about targeting hyperpigmentation or dark marks, but just an overall even complexion. This is a really luxurious, gorgeous wash off mask. It has a really good content of honey in it. This isn't like we threw in honey and it's at the end. There's a good portion of it. It looks like honey in the texture."
"It's moisturizing. It's plumping. It's fine as far as living up to the hype of everything. I do like this one though. I do like it. I would do this mask again. Is it amazing? No, not necessarily. Is it a nice one though? It's a nice one. I think for plumping and smoothing is probably what I'm seeing the most right now with my results."
"The collagen here is going to hydrate and plump your skin. It's not going to meaningfully alter fine lines and wrinkles, but it is going to plump up your skin and smooth it out. I did not get those results. My skin actually became dehydrated, inflamed, red, and even actually a little bit bumpy, and quite itchy as well. I actually had a bad reaction to this mask. My skin doesn't love hydrogel masks. There is rose extract in the collagen mask itself, and plant extracts can sometimes have fragrant components to them that can irritate sensitive skin. Rose extract in a toner or toner pad may not flare up my skin, but when you're leaving something in close contact with your skin for prolonged hours, that's going to ramp up the potential for irritation. That's exactly what happened with this mask. I did get very visibly red, irritated skin."
"The Strawberry Smooth BHA and AHA Serum is a very gentle blend of BHA and AHA, the two chemical exfoliants. One works on the top surface to smooth out texture and roughness and brighten up the skin, and BHA works deeper within the pore to help with deeper bumpy congestion, clogged pores, and even acne. There's a little bit of fragrance in this one, but it's very light and it's not a heavily scented product. I do have sensitive skin and I generally avoid fragrance, but this one I've had no problems with. It's one that I like to reach for for that gentle dual exfoliating benefit. Some folks can use this daily or multiple times a week. It is a much more gentle formula, and that dual exfoliating process with that K beauty philosophy of going a little bit slower and a little bit gentler on the skin really hits in this formula."
"Paula's Choice is really kind of the OG 2% salicylic acid liquid exfoliant product for sure. [...] It actually does work so well for reducing texture and congestion and really getting that good amount of salicylic acid into the skin. This product has earned its reputation."
"This product has earned its reputation. [...] It actually does work so well for reducing texture and congestion and really getting that good amount of salicylic acid into the skin. I think Isntree is a little bit of a nicer experience, a little bit more hydration, a little bit more plumping, a little bit softer, a little bit gentler on the [...] skin. I really do appreciate the way that this delivers into the skin with a kiss of hydration. [...] I am happy with it not just as a cheap dupe, but I think as in some circles a superior product."
"The Medicube Collagen Night Wrapping Mask [...] is interesting because of the way it acts as an occlusive. It has this thick gel texture that you spread across your skin into a very thin layer and it actually dries on your skin, kind of like a peeloff mask, and you sleep in this. So this actually creates a nonmoisturizing and non-hydrating layer that sits on top that will fight dehydration while you sleep. And then you just peel it off in the morning. [...] It actually works as an occlusive very nicely. If you don't like thick layers on your skin or if they're too rich and your cheek sticks to your pillow, or if you just have those sensory issues, you may want to try this one out. It actually is pretty comfortable to sleep in."
"The magic of this mask and why it gives visible benefits as fast as it does is the delivery system. You're getting more and you're getting it over a longer period of time, so the brightening effect is going to be faster with this mask. That's why I'm very comfortable recommending this for instant gratification for special events and things like that. It's very reliable, very hydrating as well. Galactomyces, we always talk about its abilities to brighten the skin, and that is the benefit. The number one thing you're going to notice if your skin is dull, if it's uneven, if hyperpigmentation marks are just very dark, you will notice an improvement in all of that as well as redness. Galactomyces also has antioxidant content and it can help to soothe the skin. It also helps to hydrate the skin. There is a really diverse and interesting skin nutrition profile with galactomyces. There's all these micronutrients and vitamins and amino acids and natural peptides in galactomyces that support healthy skin and support a well aging journey. All of those things, healthy skin is glowy skin. It's not just about blasting your skin with brightening actives, it's about supporting the health and the hydration of your skin, and that's where that true beautiful glow is going to emerge. This is a really fantastic essence to hold to your skin for a long period of time and really deliver deep into your skin to support that health, to support the hydration, to support the glow. Because that sheet mask does bring a lot of hydration, you're going to get quite a bit of plumping from this mask as well."
"Cetaphil has been killing it this month. Another new release from them is the exfoliating rough and bumpy cream and this is so cool because it contains 20% of urea. I love this humectant and I'm so glad that it's starting to emerge in more skincare products. Urea especially at 20% is excellent for those conditions. [...] I'm so glad that it's starting to become a lot more common because you really don't have a lot of choices when it comes to high percentages of urea at least where I'm shopping for drugstore products there's very little choice. I love to see this high amount being used, especially in a larger bottle. A lot of my favorite urea products are so tiny, so I love this for full body application."
"The I'm From Mugwort Face Mask has this clingy gel texture that's very soothing and great for redness and inflammation, but the gel texture really clings to the face well and stands up to the moisture and the humidity and heat of a shower or bath really beautifully. It's a great way to protect your skin. I actually discovered this many years ago when my skin barrier was damaged in winter time, severely damaged, and I started to use this mask in the shower to protect my skin because even just the water would make my skin feel so dry, so tight, so irritated because my barrier was that damaged. The mask actually helped me get through that quite a bit."
"I put the mask on after I got out of my bath and [...] my skin feels like it's on fire. [...] My skin is really burning. I've used this mask so many times, [...] but my skin is increasingly on fire and so I just washed the mask off within just a few minutes. I could not keep it on my face, my skin was burning so bad. [...] I went back and looked at the ingredients the next day and right at the bottom is an ingredient called farnesol. This is one of those fragrant ingredients that carry such a potent irritation potential that it has to be listed separately. Why is it in a product that is marketed for a compromised skin barrier? [...] You don't want to expose it to anything that is going to potentially irritate it because when your skin barrier is a little bit weak or damaged it's very vulnerable."
"It's a very potent product. 30% is a lot. I have absolutely used this and I have absolutely irritated and burned my skin when using this, even with caution. [...] It's a very potent AHA product. [...] There was a lot of misinformation about what it can do and who it's suitable for, and I do still feel like there is a lot of that going around. [...] It's a very, very potent amount of AHA that can definitely address texture and dull skin, but it needs to be approached with caution and with respect. I just don't think that it's going to suit a lot of folks. [...] It's not my favorite, and it really is just because I've seen so many people get burned by it. I've seen so many people misunderstand how to use it, thinking that they need it when they probably really don't."
"It's a sleeping mask it can be used in place of your moisturizer at night time or on top of your moisturizer at night time, but you could even use it as a moisturizer during the daytime so it's very flexible. It really is meant to infuse your skin with a lot of hydration as you're sleeping and help to restore your skin through that restful process. I do think that it delivers on the hydration. It may not be the most hydrating out there anymore, it may not be the most innovative product out there anymore, however I don't see a lot of sleeping mask products available at Sephora so I think in this market it definitely has a renewed interest and renewed innovation. [...] I used it many years ago and I liked it then, it kind of fell out of my routine, it didn't grow along with me, but I do think it is a nice product."
"This felt like it delivered medium hydration if you will. It was definitely not just sitting at the top of the skin, there was definitely a nice hydrating effect to this, replenishing, cooling, refreshing, but it just didn't feel like it lasted with me. It just didn't feel like it was working hard for my skin over time. By a couple of hours after doing my routine I was starting to feel a little bit more dehydrated. This definitely was not that. It can only do so much. I think it delivers on a medium amount of hydration but it was kind of underwhelming. Part of it I think is due to those big claims that they were making, and part of it is just because the hydration level of this, it's not bad but it's not like mindblowing either."
"This has helped with brightening up that under eye area from the lack of sleep and the stress, so it's just a really good performing product. I love this texture. It's a sleeping mask but I've never really encountered a sleeping mask with this beautiful jelly texture. It's not gel, it's truly a bouncy jelly texture and it feels so hydrating, so replenishing, so cooling and refreshing on the skin, but it's a nice hefty gel that really does work nicely as a sleeping mask. It has that occlusivity that helps to hug in hydration and all your other skincare layers to really resist dehydration. The ingredient rice really helps to give this really beautiful overall brightness to the skin, that healthiness to the complexion, and it actually makes your skin feel so soft and conditioned as well. It's a new take on slugging, it is something that improves the skin, and it is a winner."
"Another recommended product would be the Beauty of Joseon Ground Rice and Honey Glow Mask. I love this and I find this to be somewhat of a unique wash off mask because it is a combination of a clay-based mask which is going to help to control any excessive oil on the skin. It's great for congestion, clogged pores, uneven texture on the skin. But it also combines that with honey which is antibacterial, moisturizing, soothing for the skin, reduces redness. And so it actually is this almost mousse like clay texture. It's fluffy. It's almost whipped up because think about clay mixed with honey, right? It's not dense and dry and hard to spread. It's fluffier. It's moistier. And so it's really beautiful and elegant to spread onto the skin. The honey means that the clay actually never really dries out. Keeps the masking experience much more comfortable, much more hydrated, moisturized. But the clay is still working on sucking up excessive oil and helping to refine texture on the skin. When you wash it off, your skin will be very even, very glowy. The name promises glow. I do believe it delivers. Any redness that you might have had on your skin is reduced. Any texture that you saw on your skin is going to be smoothed out."
"This is one of those masks that you wear for a couple of hours or you could sleep in and it slowly infuses into your skin over time to really plump it, give you incredibly glowy, glossy, glass skin effects. And especially with the PDRN's ability to really get that good quality going in your skin, that healthiness in your skin, plus the dewiness and the plumpness that you get just from the hydrogel experience alone. It's a real beautiful match made in heaven in my personal opinion."
"This actually takes the beautiful benefits of the essence and soaks a firming sheet mask in that essence and gives you really amazing sculpted firm results for your skin in like 30 minutes. It's a really amazing mask. I want to see visible improvement when I take the mask off my face, and this mask delivers very nicely. Ingredients-wise, it's just the essence, so you've got the antioxidant content, the NAD+ content, the peptide content, and a milky, creamy, dewy, chewy texture. It's a nice thick cotton mask with lifting fibers in it. If you buy the pack of four, you get the lifting band, which really helps you sculpt and firm and lift your face. You put the mask on and use the lifting band under your chin and stretch it out."
"These are LED masks that deliver powerful red light infrared light and blue light to target anti-aging or well aging goals as well as acne inflammation and redness on the skin."
"I absolutely love this because we can get the red light and the infrared light benefits with this mask here targeted on the neck and chest. This is not the hard shell like the mask, this is actually a little bit more flexible silicone material. [...] Flexible masks can get a little sweaty, a little sticky, and feel uncomfortable when they sit on your skin for a long period because there isn't a lot of air flow. But iRestore thinks about these details that I really appreciate. [...] They have actually created a little bit of air flow underneath the mask with these little nubs that they have put on the panel, and that just helps it sit off of the skin ever so slightly. You're still getting all of those benefits but it just allows for the skin to feel a little bit cooler, a little less like sweaty and sticky as you're wearing it. So I find it to be very comfortable."
"This has been one of the more popular products in the K-beauty scene this year and I honestly really like it. This is capitalizing on colostrum, which is an animal-derived ingredient that is supposed to have a whole host of benefits for the skin that can help with all the processes that make your skin look more youthful, to help with skin texture, quality, tone, all of that. But there's actually some other more interesting ingredients in my personal opinion in this, like ingredients including Syn-ake. This is a peptide that can actually boost the synthesis of hyaluronic acid within the skin. So this is actually a peptide that helps your skin stay hydrated. It hydrates the skin and helps it stay hydrated for longer. And then it's also formulated in a way that helps to smooth out the skin, hydrate the skin, plump the skin. It's particularly good to use in a skincare routine or prior to makeup. You can put it on almost like a primer, like a makeup prep spray. You can also set your makeup with it. And then again, if you're not a makeup user, you could actually just use this like a spray-on essence or toner."
"The K18 Astro Lift Volumizing Spray [...] is kind of taking it to the next level for me. I feel like I'm getting some nice little lift, nice little bit of volume at my root and it's because of this spray. What I really like about it is it's long lasting. I can spray it on my roots, dry my hair, and even my second day hair has some really nice lift to it, but it doesn't damage my hair. I feel like a lot of volumizing sprays really dry out your hair in a way that makes it so with long-term use it makes your hair more brittle, more dry, and it looks more frizzy. It looks damaged. I've been using this almost all of this year, [...] almost every hair wash and dry, [...] most of them, and I have not sustained any of that drying, brittle damage that other volumizing sprays do because they're using that K18 technology to keep your hair nice and healthy. I just really like what it does for my hair."
"Cherry Stem is my latest obsession. I'm wearing it today. I love the smell of this so much. I describe this as a grownup maraschino cherry smell. [...] This scent is so good. [...] It's sweet, but it's not cloyingly sweet. It is cherry, but it's not overly on the nose like [...] candy cherry. [...] There's a sophistication to it. There's a hint of like a smoky spiciness to this that's really good, but it's not peppery. [...] There's just a little smokiness, just a little something, a depth to this that is unexpected. The way that [...] it settles into your skin over a longer period of time, you get this really nice spiciness, spicy cherry, grownup cherry to it that is so alluring, intoxicating. There's nothing else quite like it, quite honestly."
"I remember using the Proactive three-step system. My mom would buy it for me. I remember staining all the towels in our house with the benzoyl peroxide, you know, spot treatments and face washes and all of that."
"I love the feeling of washing my face in the morning. It's so refreshing. So I'm going to put on a layer of the thermal water mist from La Roche-Posay just to keep my face moist as I put my contacts in so I can actually see what the heck I am doing."
"I'm going to use the Lancome Ultra Precise Waterproof Liner. And this is in the color matte syrup brown. So, I'm just going to line my lower lash line kind of starting from the mid part of my pupil and then going out and kind of matching where this sharper line is going. And I like this liner. I've had it for a while and it's kind of that like foamy marker tip and it's just kind of gotten just worn down enough where it's like the perfect sort of smudgy liquid eyeliner now for me instead of like super sharp and precise."
"I am learning to like it now because of this pillow and it's becoming more natural and second nature for me to sleep on my back because of this pillow and that has helped tremendously with [...] the pain that I have actually been going through for a few years now. It's very supportive, firm, low-profile, but it really helps to support your neck. When I do go on my side it is kind of nice because it doesn't smoosh my face anymore. If sleep creases bother you, [...] this can help. I will admit this is really stinking expensive, it's about $180, but you do get to a certain point where you realize that it is actually important to invest in those types of things. It's [...] worth it to pay for that type of support."
"There has been some criticism of this one where people are experiencing pilling. I haven't experienced it, and so this is something that you have to take with a grain of salt. It could happen to you or it may not happen to you. It's just something to be aware of. I'm not exactly sure what's causing the pilling. The fact that some people are getting it and some aren't makes me think it has something to do with it not matching up with certain moisturizers. Often pilling is two products interacting badly with each other. It's not always just one product, but it's often two products not interacting well together. I still think this is a fantastic sunscreen. I think it helps to create more diversity in the K Beauty sunscreen landscape, which I think is also a good thing. When we have more diversity it helps to open up new formulations and new ways of thinking about sunscreens and new consumers for sunscreens, which makes sunscreen more accessible and easier for different folks to get on."
"This is much lighter than the other serums that we've talked about today, but there's a little kiss of that oil moisture that feels very nourishing and very comforting on the skin without being sticky and shiny and greasy. This is I think first and foremost really respectable ceramides, cholesterol, fatty acid serum and that's I think what really kept it in my routine for a really long time because it really does help to strengthen the skin barrier. I do like this texture too because while I love the creamy serums, they don't always pair well with maybe some other things that you might be wanting to add into your routine. If you have thicker toners or creamier essences that you like to use or maybe some oil, not all of these super creamy textures may work well for you. So this is kind of like an alternative take on a nourishing and moisturizing supportive type of serum for cold weather. It doesn't always have to be creamy, it doesn't always have to be thick. This can work for many different skin types in my opinion."
"There's a lot more ingredients that you don't want to mix it with, so definitely be aware if you do like lots of layers, lots of different steps in your routines, this may not be the right choice just based on how complicated it could be to add into that type of routine. I personally run into a lot of issues using this one. I have to really simplify my routine sometimes. It does feel a little stimulating on my personal sensitive skin, so I'm just putting that out there. I'm not saying that it is a harsh product, it's just if you have sensitive skin you got to be careful. If you're looking for the benefit of that antioxidant that gives that boost to your SPF in the morning and has some additional benefits for reducing some redness, maybe if you get very red in the sun, and also helps a little bit with just an overall brightness and evenness to the complexion, this would be the one to consider."
"I personally find this product it hurts, you can feel the needle pricks, it did not feel good on my skin and it actually did cause irritation for me so not a big fan. I don't think it's for everybody."
"It probably would have been much much higher on my list but as you may know it was recently reformulated in January of 2024 and what they reformulated and changed about the product I think it's taken away a lot of what made that product so unique and so good. I'm salty because what they took away is what worked for my skin so that's why I'm ranking it pretty low right now."
"I don't think you have to isolate it through a serum like the one from the ordinary that we're talking about. I don't think that it's necessary since it is actually sprinkled into so many other products. It's often in multi-peptide blends, you don't have to add it in separately. And know that you're not getting 10% in this product, it's a solution, so it's not pure 10% peptide. I think that it's so easy to manipulate the marketing especially around peptides because peptides are a huge class of ingredients that do so many different things, but that key piece of information is often missing from average consumers. It's so easy to manipulate the word peptide to just kind of hint at the idea of anti-aging. But I also think it's really easy to market on percentages of peptides because most people don't know that peptides in formulations are used at 1% and lower."
"This is really a booster and that is really how it's meant to be used. If you're just using this on its own, maybe adjust the expectations about what it can do for your skin because I do suspect that this is a little bit more not as concentrated, like there's not as much of a concentration of peptides in here as there are in the serums. But that's okay, peptides do work at very small concentrations. This is really meant to help the rest of your routine kind of go the extra mile. I really like the ingredients and I think the mix of peptides that they're using is really compelling. Good proven peptides."
"This has been really really helping my skin as a second toner in my routine. It makes my skin feel so plump, so juicy. It's really moisturizing. It's very affordable. If you haven't tried it, it's been on your mind, it was everything I expected it to be and more."
"The Halo device retails for 350 and comes with an app that has preset routines to help do different things to the face. The mechanism is sending microcurrent into the muscle so you're going to get some facial twitching. I do find the device a little bit more ergonomic, a little bit lighter, fits in your palm a little bit better than the other one which is a little heavy. I have grip issues and tendinitis so I do like the Halo a little bit better, but both work equally as well and the benefits I think were exactly the same for me."
"Propolis is just a really fantastic ingredient with a gorgeous balancing quality to it, brightening the complexion and bringing out that inner glow. Most propolis products have kind of that medium gel texture, like the beta glucan does, but a little bit more of a kiss of moisture to it. The texture of the Cosrx Propolis Light Ampule is a medium gel texture but it has some moisture to it, so I think that makes it maybe not the most appropriate choice for very oily folks or those who don't like a lot of moisture or a lot of weight on the skin. Even though they call this the light ampule, I do still find this to be more on the medium side of things. Propolis is generally speaking just a little bit heftier kind of ingredient, so I just want to make you aware that it's not the lightest propolis serum out there, but it's not the most rich propolis serum out there either. I think that's where they're getting the 'light' from. Combination folks, I think dry skin folks you'll like this too because that little bit of moisture is really nice, but it's not overly rich. Overall I think it's a really nice expression of a simple serum that focuses mainly on propolis."
"It is Twinkle Pop Glittering Eye Stick. It looks almost like it might be a pinky champagne. It's not super chunky glitter but it gives you that like a Glitz or like glistening kind of an effect to the eye makeup look. It can be blended in a little bit with the hands."
"I do a lot of product comparisons on YouTube and Stratia is one where it's like I don't usually find dupes or like super comparable or like the ingredients are the same but the effects are not, the performance is not. So I think that's actually, I really just have to commend you because like the space is so crowded to be able to kind of figure out what is a different take or something new is just increasingly I think becoming harder, but you're doing it which yeah it's very impressive."
"I do like having them on hand. They can be very handy. I have to say I don't find a huge difference between the different brands. I use La Roche-Posay a lot, and this one's from Avène but it's not different. They're all the same to me and they all perform the same. I want to give this the yawn emoji, but don't misunderstand my ranking: it's not because it's bad, it's not because it's not useful, it's not because I don't want to use this anymore. It's just I don't really have anything else to say about it. Convenient, handy, nice to have, not necessary, and for a lot of people probably kind of boring."
"It just helps with skin texture a little bit, helps to brighten up your skin. It's not even as effective as an AHA quite frankly, but it can help to improve the complexion just a little bit and it can help if you are prone to breakouts. It is one of those oils that has some secondary benefits for acne-prone skin. I just don't see the ingredients here holding up to that claim. You're going to be better off using a retinoid or vitamin C or even a five percent niacinamide serum in your nighttime routine to get that rejuvenated appearance on your skin."
"I'm ranking the Then I Met You Snail Mucin Eye Cream number two. I like this one, it's refreshing, hydrating, and plumping, with a gel cream like texture that feels incredibly good in the summer heat and humidity. I mostly use it in my morning routine when I want to keep things light but deeply hydrating, and the plumping gel texture helps smooth out my under eye area on days I haven't slept well. But I don't personally feel like it creates the same meaningful volume or firming that the Clarins does, and that's exactly why I'm ranking it number two and not number one."
"I was excited about this one because there are some really great active ingredients in here, including caffeine, niacinamide, kojic acid and matrixyl, ingredients I would look for for that gentle well-aging support for an under eye area. I don't like this product, I really struck out with this for a few reasons. While I do on the whole enjoy their formulas, uniformly this brand has some of the worst packaging I have ever encountered. This is an Eye Cream that has one of those ceramic applicators, there's a lightness to this, it's not as thick as the Clarins Eye Cream, there's more of a hydrating, looser kind of texture to it. There's something about this applicator, when I use it especially, it pushes this product into my eyes instantly, making them burn and sting, it feels so uncomfortable. I do think the applicator pushes it into my eye, and when I don't get it into my eyes it actually feels very irritating for my eye skin. I highly suspect it's the kojic acid, which is a really good brightening ingredient but it's also an ingredient that has historically stimulated my skin, effective but stimulating. I've used it in face products too and I know it's just too much for my skin, so it's probably just not a match for me personally, but I do find it irritating. This is definitely not a morning and nighttime Eye Cream, plus traveling into my eyes and burning and stinging more often than not, this is no good for me personally."
"Heat can make everything swell a little bit. If you're already prone to puffy eyes, you may notice that they actually get worse in the summertime. This product has a metal roller ball applicator, which is amazing for creating that cooling, rolling, massaging sensation in the eye area that is going to help to depuff the eye area, especially if you feel that or if you just have a hard time waking up and feeling refreshed in the morning. The coolness and [...] massage helps get the lymphatic drainage going in that area, which is also going to meaningfully contribute to depuffed eye area. The texture is a gorgeous medium gel. It is not oily, emollient, or moisturizing. It is truly hydrating and it's such an amazing gel texture. It cools and refreshes. It dives deep down with a lot of hydration. [...] When the under eye area gets a little dehydrated and it's not really plump, the fine lines appear a lot more prominent. [...] This gel texture actually really plumps and smooths out the eye area in a really appealing way, and then it hydrates long term. It feels really cooling and it's not heavy. So you're going to get a lot less mascara smudging if you're a makeup wearer and just less overall grease and heaviness in the eye area, plus the cooling sensation. [...] This is a great one especially for folks who maybe skip out on eye cream because of that creamy texture in hot weather."
"Pyunkang Yul Black Tea Time Reverse Eye Cream. I've been loving this one since I think 2019 as well. [...] I really like this eye cream because it's got this really gorgeous, luxurious, buttery texture. This is a moisturizing eye cream. So, it's not going to be appropriate for all skin types, but I happen to have quite dry under eye area that responds to moisture very, very well. This has a buttery texture, but it's got great absorbency. It [...] will just kind of glide in the skin really beautifully and really soften that skin, smooth that skin. There is even just a like a touch of plumpness to this cream that is really appealing. So, I just love the texture in the application of this. The ingredients here all kind of come together to really give you an eye cream that is going to really refresh that eye area. Is it particularly like hard-hitting for fine lines, wrinkles, and collagen production? Not necessarily. I think that this would be a really nice one to add into your routine if you're also using like a retinoid eye cream or a retinoid eye product."
"Let's talk about the Klairs Fundamental Eye Awakening Gel. This is really great if you're looking to smooth and firm the eye area but also plump it up with lots of hydration. It's also great for soothing the skin as well. This is one of my favorites to go towards in the hot months because I don't want a lot of heavy dense creams around my eye area, especially underneath makeup when it's hot and humid. So this is a really good one for humid climates, hot temperatures, or if you just need something lighter. Maybe you have oily eyelids and all this cream and moisturizing is not your jam, this one will be lovely. We do have a couple of peptides here. They're using copper tripeptide one, a collagen stimulating peptide, great for fine lines and wrinkles. Acetyl hexapeptide 8, very common to find in eye products, but a really nice one for giving a firming effect to the skin. You'll notice there's a couple other peptides in here, they're not super duper notable. One of them is oligopeptide 29, an antioxidant peptide, so preventative, beneficial, and this peptide also just generally helps with the overall formula, as well as oligopeptide 32, which can be another skin conditioning peptide, but ultimately it's really more here for the overall formula and its performance for your skin. As individual peptides, not particularly exciting, I must admit."
"This is a very affordable eye cream, but why can't I get into this? It's the texture. It's gross. I don't like it. It is so strange. It is a cream, it almost looks like it's going to be like a cream gel type of texture, but it's not. Once you spread it, it feels like almost balmy and ointment-like. It almost feels like a cream with some Vaseline in it. I was expecting something a little bit lighter, more lotion-like, but it's actually a lot thicker than it first appears. It's definitely occlusive, it's definitely balmy. There's a little bit of a rich slip to it. It's not fully greasy, but it's borderline greasy, and it does not absorb into the skin very well. I was having the hardest time working this into my skincare routines, putting this on the under eye area. And so that area does have a little moistness to it already, but this is just like not absorbing fast into that eye area to the point where I was trying to put the rest of my skincare layers on next and it was like disrupting that."
"I love these eye patches because they are fragrance-free, which was so important to me. [...] I found that so many eye patch products actually had fragrance in them, and this one did not. [...] It's a good eye patch that's hydrating and plumping for the eye area. Caffeine is super good if you do get puffiness under the eye, which I do when allergy season is at its worst, and the caffeine can really help take down that puffiness."
"The Ordinary Multi-Peptide Eye Serum, I'm reading this two stars out of five. I was really excited when this launched, I finally bought it and I didn't really get to see any type of results with this because the packaging sucks and that's why I knocked so many stars off of it. The packaging is a little dropper bottle like most Ordinary products are, however this is a very runny formula, it's not an eye cream, it's truly like an eye serum, it's very very runny liquid. In order to apply this you have to put it onto your fingers and then you have to get it onto your face right away, and I just found that I would quickly drop the dropper into the bottle in order to not have it run down my hands. I would always knock this over, I would never have enough time to close this before it started running down my hand. I lost so much product, I lost over half of the bottle because it would tip over and spill out into the sink. The packaging sucks. This formula really does need a more precise kind of packaging."
"I did knock one star off of it cuz there's not really anything really compelling in the well aging Department that's really something that I look for in my eye creams"
"This is from Jin jangs, it is the hybrid face and eye cream. It's really similar to panel in texture, it's not really buttery. There's some hyaluronic acid in here that creates like a hydrating kind of a feel. There's seven different peptides that focus in on collagen stimulation, firming, I believe a little bit of brightening as well. There's glutathione which is a really great antioxidant to protect the skin. It's quite silky but it's not heavy. There's a nice amount of moisture but it just doesn't create that thick kind of layer on your skin. I can get a lot of peeling in this area if I go too thick so this actually feels really great. It's about 80 ml for this, so if you're like yeah there's affordable eye creams but it's still a little bit too expensive, something like this actually gives you a really nice good size but still gives you that eye cream vibe. You can absolutely use this as an eye cream, you can use it as a face cream if you want to as well, but I think it actually makes a really fantastic lightweight but still very potent and effective cream for your neck and chest."
"If you're looking for some brightening in the eye area, [...] Mary and May Tranexamic Acid and Glutathione Eye Cream has a similar take to other brightening products, a little less active brightening ingredients but with a similar combination. They have niacinamide, tranexamic acid, a little touch of ascorbic acid pure vitamin C, and then glutathione, so they're really combining all of those antioxidants that really help to brighten up the skin in a formula that's a little bit gentler and better suited for the eye area. [...] This cream does contain some artificial fragrance. I do find the scent of this to be pleasant, it's kind of a clean floral scent, it doesn't linger, it's not super duper heavy or offensive, but it is present in the formula, so you know, sensitive skin and especially sensitive eye area, you know, proceed with caution. This has a really nice gel cream texture."
"One thing that I always say it kind of lacks occlusivity, but the eye cream has some petroleum added into it which is just enough to really help hug in all of that moisture and emolliency and help to protect the eye area from moisture loss. The skin around your eye is a lot thinner, it's a little bit more delicate, and that's why it's more prone to moisture loss or hydration loss and more prone to the breakdown of collagen. I think it was a really smart move to add that into the eye cream formula. They've also added in collagen peptides so it helps to stimulate some collagen production around that eye area which can be more prone to showing the fine lines and wrinkles and the collagen structure breakdown a lot sooner, so I love that they've included peptides specifically for that purpose. There is no niacinamide in the eye cream formula, and one other change is the addition of three special ingredients that are meant to target darkness in the eye area."
"I picked up this because I remember the caffeine is supposed to be good for puffy eyes, so I started using this and it worked. [...] I haven't had puffy eyes the entire time I've been using it until now, and so it really did take down the puff. [...] There's like ever so slight redness just beneath the surface, and it really helps to make my eyes look less allergic. They still feel allergic, they're still gloopy, but they don't look it, and this has been really really helpful. Usually how I use this is I'll [...] add it around my eyes and just kind of step back for a minute and let it sink in. It does take a minute to kind of sink in. It's got good absorbency, it's not sticky, but it can feel kind of wet for a little bit. I'll let that settle into my skin and then I'll top it off with an eye cream just because my skin can get kind of dry around there. I do still need that emolliency and that creaminess to really help keep that eye area moisturized and nourished."
"This is the CeraVe Skin Renewing Eye Cream and I'm gonna rate this with the like side eye flirty hey kind of emoji because that's how I feel about this product. Is it a solid smiley face no and is it a solid Holy Grail [...] not necessarily but I'm interested, I'm intrigued, I'm flirting, I might want to see some more. I [...] do like the ingredients list here, it's a peptide-driven eye cream. I like the texture because it's kind of a hybrid between like a gel and a cream. It's not like super duper hydrating, it's a little bit more cream with some gel. [...] It's got a nice consistency that just kind of almost like a very light balmy kind of feel that just sinks into the skin with one little swipe. It's a really nice texture and it's not overwhelming. [...] Results-wise [...] nothing like spectacular benefits-wise, I'm not against it, [...] I'm open to using this again. I really like the texture, like the experience. That's half of the battle with skincare is you want to have to use it."
"This is the Caffeine Eye Cream from The Inkey List, and it has that creamy gel type texture. [...] If you don't like super thick eye creams, look at that, it's not super creamy, it's got more of a gel type of texture, and it just feels really plumping, which I love. I love to plump up my under eye area with eye creams. It's quickly absorbed and really just fresh feeling, which I really appreciate."
"I'm using the Numbuzin No. 9 NAD+ Retinol Volume Toxy Eye Cream. I like a dedicated retinol or retinol-hide eye cream for this area rather than relying on the [Paula's Choice] because my under eye area is prone to dryness and it's much more sensitive than the rest of my skin. And so I want that collagen stimulating benefit, but I don't want to irritate my eye area. And this product is the gentle solution for that. In addition to the retinol, we also have some great niacinamide content for brightness."
"My number one eye cream is the Clarins Total Eye Lift. This is my second empty bottle and I have a third one waiting. I really, really, really like this one. It's expensive, but I personally find it worth it if you can afford it. There's something about it that not only brightens the skin but firms the under eye area especially, there's a real lift to it. I'm thirty seven and starting to see aging come in under my eyes, so I appreciate that this is firming and plumping the under eye area meaningfully, not just brightening or plumping through hydration alone. It does have fragrance in it, but I never smell it and it's never irritated my skin."
"This is the Stradia Lipid Gold Eye Cream. It has the cami cholesterol fatty acid content in it to strengthen up the skin barrier, but it's been formulated for the thinner, more delicate under eye and top of the lid skin. [...] My under eye area gets quite dry and dehydrated in the winter. [...] I took a selfie [...] early in December and [...] I was smiling and I could see all the lines underneath my eyes, and I realized it's because I'm so dry. I just need a little extra moisture in that area. It's the dehydration and dryness lines that are just making it look a lot worse than it truly is. It feels very soothing."
"The revive serum is a combination of ginseng and snail mucin. Ginseng is that traditional K beauty ingredient. It is a strong antioxidant. It supports skin elasticity. It supports skin circulation. So it actually brings a really nice evenness to the complexion. Snail mucin is an ingredient that promotes healing, wound healing on the skin. It also brings antioxidant content. It is also something that supports a very gentle well-aging process on the skin. It's a very supportive well-aging formula."
"This is the VT Reedle Shot Lifting Eye Cream, and this isn't just your ordinary eye cream. It's not your ordinary eye cream with a metal tip applicator. This eye cream actually vibrates the eye cream into your skin. This has an incredible texture. It's really silky and luxurious and moisturizing, but it's not a dense cream. It's very airy and almost like a whipped kind of a cream. So it actually glides onto the skin beautifully and has great absorption even just on its own. But when you use this applicator tip, the metal is so cooling on the skin. And this is particularly good if you suffer with seasonal allergies because this can really help to soothe the redness and the puffiness associated with that, especially around the eye area. This feels incredibly soothing during allergy season. This is actually delivering up to 12,000 micro vibrations to really help to get the eye cream deeper into your skin to really help visibly firm and tighten the skin."
"Fifty six dollars for, like I said, not really impressive ingredients, not many actives. Benefits wise it was nourishing and moisturizing and that's about it. It wasn't helping to make the eye area look more awake or refreshed, or working on fine lines or anything, it just felt moisturizing. Just because it's so pricey, I am going to rate it with the X eyes emoji."
"I like this. I actually like this. If I had to get like a lip balm or a lip sleeping mask from the drugstore, I would buy this again. It's actually fragrance-free. That's rare for the Hydroboost line. And I really like it. It stays with your lips a nice long time. Gives you a nice little glossy look. I've used this during the day, too. And it keeps your lips comfortable, soothe, moisturized, smooth. It worked super well. My lips are very sensitive."
"I want to shout out the Dr. Jart+ Jelly Bear Lip Mask. This is the unscented version in the blue container and I am absolutely loving this for so many reasons. [...] A, because it's cute. [...] I love this packaging, the color, that clear [...] jelly like plastic with the bare face. It's just different, it's fun, it brings me joy when I pick it up. [...] I actually have this out on my counter in my bathroom so I see it all the time. [...] The product itself is very good. It is an unscented lip mask and I find that fairly difficult to find. If you are a sensitive lip girly and you don't want to use fragrance in your lip masks, your options are Aquaphor, Vaseline. There are a few unscented products for sure, but they're just okay in my opinion, and there's just [...] so few options to choose from, especially if you ever want to go shopping at Sephora for lip masks. Good luck finding fragrance-free products there for your lips."
"I really love the Abib PDRN Collagen Lip Mask Glazed Jelly. [...] This is a product that I just like from the packaging to the scent to the texture to the results. It's such a nice little lip sleeping mask. [...] The PDRN in this is not it's not PDRN your lips. [...] It's just marketing, but it's still a darn good lip sleeping mask. I love this sphere packaging, this frosted pink sphere. It's so cute. When you open it up, it's jelly, baby. It's glazed. It's ripples of gorgeous smooth gel jelly bounciness. [...] It really [...] has such a lovely plush, bouncy glaze jelly type of texture. It does have some fragrance in it."
"I really like the CNP Propolis Lip Serum Sleeping Mask. This has such a thick texture. They're not even putting it into that traditional tub, they put it into this dispenser that you have to twist the top off of and it will push up a little bit of the lip mask because that is how jellylike thick, luxurious and protective this is. I do find the twist mechanism a little tricky. This is so thick, so occlusive. It's so much thicker, more ointment-like, so protective. And this lasts on your lips so well while you're sleeping. It really nourishes them, moisturizes them, smooths and softens them."
"The Fenty lip gloss, okay, this was a while ago, but [...] I really like this lip gloss. It was so cute. It was so shiny and sparkly and gorgeous, and I loved how it looked and how it felt and how it wore. I felt so good in this lip gloss. But this triggered the worst lip eczema for me. Oh, it was so, so bad. This is loaded with all those fragrant compounds, and I am just so prone to eczema around my lips that this just triggered it up. I got all scaly and oozy and not cute."
"Now, let's talk about Dr. Idriss Barrier-Based Lip Peel. That's right, an AHA peel for your lips. I didn't know I needed a product like this, but I actually need a product like this and I really like this one. So, this is a really interesting combination of [mandelic] acid as well as gluconolactone, which is also known as PHA. Now, PHA, not technically an AHA, and yet it is often considered a new generation AHA. So, it has a lot of similar properties. It does exfoliate on the top surface. It helps to really rejuvenate, resurface, helps with texture, tone. It's a brightening ingredient. It helps to shed away all the excessive dead skin cells on top of your skin. It can soften up rough patches. What's different about it is that it is a lot gentler than say glycolic acid. It's a much lower on the totem pole of aggressive factors. Glycolic acid would be at the top, and PHA is on the bottom. But it does still is still a chemical exfoliant and it still has a lot of benefits very similar to AHA."
"I don't like the balm that they sometimes bundle with the lip peel. I don't think it's a very good Lip Balm, quite honestly. [...] There's some ingredients in it that actually make my lips feel irritated and kind of numb. [...] There's peppermint oil in it and some fragrant compounds. I was actually surprised that a dermatologist branded line would use ingredients like that in a lip product, especially considering we're putting it over an AHA that opens up the lips for more absorption. I do get eczema, often around my lips, and I can't do those types of ingredients. [...] They make my lips feel really weird and numb."
"I have a little bit of Clarins Lip Oil on right now. That's why my lips are so pink. I do like to put this on and it just perfects everything. It makes everything look really nice."
"I picked up the Fwee 3D volumizing gloss in December and I've absolutely obsessed with this. I particularly like this 3D gloss because it's exactly what I'm looking for in a lip product. Not only does it bring the high gloss shine that doesn't wear down too quickly, but it's not a sheer gloss. It actually has more of an opaque milky color payoff to it. Everything I need is in this bottle. I'm wearing it right now and I'm not wearing anything underneath it at all. With this one they're offering the same colors in different saturations, so there's a lighter one that's maybe a little bit more sheer, but I am not looking for sheer. The 70% gave me exactly what I was looking for, which is so great. It's this milky, like pinky beige type of color."
"My lips are feeling super dry so I'm going to put on a layer of the Torriden Solid-In Ceramide Lip Essence. It's a really nice restorative type of lip balm but it has that really kind of appealing, really high gloss kind of a look, but it actually does restore dry and chapped lips."
"I have been reaching for the Naked Sundays lip oil for working outside purely because it lasts on my lips for a really long time and I cannot be bothered to be running inside to put on some lip product every like 20, 30 minutes while I'm mowing the lawn and pulling weeds and working in the dirt. [...] I spend a lot of my weekend outside these days. I need a product that's going to keep my lips hydrated and moist [...] because my lips can get really dry, and I'm very prone to lip eczema so it's important to keep things moisturized. I like that this has SPF. This doesn't bother my eczema at all, and I'm pretty sensitive."
"The YSL Rouge Volupté Shine, the color is called Showstopping Rose. It's almost like a hot pink. I really like the formula of this because it's like a cross between the color payoff of a lipstick but the kind of moisturizing balmy feel of a lip balm, and that's perfect for my lips."
"I don't like the texture of this balm. It's very stiff, it doesn't really melt, it doesn't become balmy. It's very stiff, it's kind of sticky, and I don't find it to be very moisturizing. It really just kind of sits in like this kind of sticky thick layer at the top of your lips, but it doesn't really moisturize or hydrate or really honestly plump. This isn't plump deep within the skin at all, and that's really what my skin wants. I want deep down replenishment, deep down moisturization. [...] This just really doesn't do that."
"This product surprised me because it's essentially a clear mascara meant to hold a curl on your natural lashes, and I've historically found clear mascara does not hold a curl for me, I have very stubborn stick-straight eyelashes. But I was surprised by this, it holds a curl on my stubborn lashes and I did not think that was possible. It also defines and separates the lashes a little bit more than just curling them with no other product. Not only did this solve a problem for me, it delighted me in a way I thought I couldn't be delighted."
"The Natasha Denona I Need a Nude Palette is the only eyeshadow palette I have been using for over a year. It is [...] really nice because the browns are not too red-based, which does not work with my complexion, they are very neutral browns."
"These little false lash clusters are so cool. They come in two sizes, a medium and then a long. I don't mess around too much with the medium ones but the long ones are what I'm after because these guys are so pretty right at the outer corner of your eye. I usually just use one cluster, if I'm going for a little bit more I might do two or three, but it just gives a little bit of a swoop and a pretty shape to my eye. Because it's a small cluster the glue starts to dry pretty quickly so you want to move fairly quickly."
"This is the Nyx Brow Glue and I like this just to kind of help the hairs stay in place I like them brushed up just a little bit not a full on like soap brow but like you know close"
"This is an eye shadow palette and the box is so pretty, it's giving me like astrology vibes. Presentation wise this palette is like 10 out of 10. They look very shiny, they are a mixture of some like chunkier glitters, some smoother kind of like shimmery glitters, and they have some dimension to them. The glitters all kind of capture different lights but they are very subtle in hue. This is definitely the type of palette if you like a bolder color, you know, this is to top off the color and add some shimmer, or if you like that shimmery look but you like it to be a little bit more neutral, this could fit the bill too. But I think that this has a lot of versatility if you like glitter in your eye looks. This can definitely complement other colors or wear on its own for a very glisteny, glittery, shiny but kind of nude look. So overall I'm really impressed."
"This is the Urban Decay Primer Potion. And this stuff lasts me forever. I know sometimes people are like, 'Oh, there's better ones or there's cheaper ones.' And I'm like, 'I know, but like I never empty my tube.' Um, so it's going to be a while for me. Um, but I do need a little bit of primer on my lids. Eyeshadow primer is a must for me."
"Brightness and smoothness of the skin was a secondary discovery of studying retinoids for acne-prone patients. Retinoids can be very beneficial. I'm talking about ingredients like retinol, retinol palmitate, tretinoin, adapalene - particularly good retinoid for acne-prone skin. La Roche-Posay actually sells one that you can get without a prescription. Those are four main actives that really help control acne and inflammation on the skin."
"I was showing you the Peach and Lily Retinol for All serum. It does use retinol, and I loved that so much. It's empty, which means I used the whole thing. I really feel like this is a great fit for where I'm at right now with my journey with retinoids."
"I started off with [azelaic] acid with prescription online services so I first started with Curology back in 2016 and continued onward with their sister brand Agency, which I currently use now."
"[Paula's Choice] Pro Retinaldehyde Dual Retinoid Treatment. I've been using this consistently since 2024 and in the two plus years I've been using it, it has genuinely transformed my skin. The secret is the two retinoids. Retinaldehyde for collagen stimulation. This is great as a preventative strategy at 37. Keeping that collagen structure strong resists the formation of fine lines, wrinkles, loss of elasticity, but can also improve the look of existing ones. It also brightens up your skin and it helps to clean out your pores. The second retinoid is adapalene. This is a novel form of adapalene and this helps to further increase the benefits for clearing out the pores, addressing congestion and helping to meaningfully target inflammation on the skin. This is good if you are prone to acne, which I am, prone to congestion, which I am. This helps to keep those breakouts at bay. So, this formula has not only addressed all my well-aging concerns, it's cleared out my skin and allowed me to address hyperpigmentation, which makes my skin appear much more bright and even and glowy. Right now, I've been using this product between four to five nights a week. As my skin gets drier in the colder months and we move further into fall, I will pull that back slightly depending on how my skin is feeling."
"If you're a beginner, sensitive skin, or you're really looking for something less on the anti-aging side and more on the pores and acne kind of side of things, this seems to perform pretty well for that in my testing experience so far. Definitely not the release I was hoping for from Beauty of Joseon, but I'm not mad at it either."
"Tretinoin is a prescription ingredient here in the United States, so you would need to go to a dermatologist to obtain a prescription or you can use an online dermatology service. I have used Curology, I've used Agency, and I've also used Dermatica, and all three of them I've had really positive, good success with. I've also been able to combine my azelaic acid and tretinoin with all three of these services. Tretinoin is helping my skin and helping to communicate to my cells to behave in a more youthful manner."
"The Avène Cicalfate+ Serum brings immediate relief to irritated, itchy, and inflamed skin. Avène uses an ingredient that they call TRP Regul, but you'll find it on the ingredients list as tert-butyl cyclohexanol. And this actually works by targeting the nerve receptors in your skin that are responsible for that burning, stinging, and itching sensation. It actually stops the sensation in its tracks. That is why when you use this product, that feeling—that cranky feeling in your skin, like nothing makes your skin happy anymore—this serum will make your skin happy. Within a couple of minutes of putting it on, you will feel finally my skin feels relief. All I wanted was for the irritation to stop nagging at me. This serum does that and it does it beautifully. And this is such a helpful friend for me when I go through allergy season. This serum saves me every single time."
"I've been on a Hero Pimple Patch kick lately. These are just really easy to buy, you know, like at Target or IH Herb. I just like the accessibility. I know it's a little bit more expensive than K beauty brands. These are just hydrocolloid patches. They suck up the juice from your pimples. The ones that I have here is I have the original which are just like pretty standard thick hydrocolloid circles and then they have the invisible version which just have like tapered edges. They're thinner at the edge and so they actually blend into your skin. They're a little less noticeable and I do like those especially for daytime use."
"These are pimple patches from The INKEY List. They're made of hydrocolloid material and that is what sucks up the juice right from the pimples and help drain it and flatten them. However these are also treated with salicylic acid and so that is the chemical exfoliant that can get a little bit deeper into the pore and to help work as like a spot treatment to further help draw the pimple up to the surface or help to heal it down."
"Full disclosure, this was sent to me by Differin, but I picked this out actually. I was like, well, we'll see if anybody can do it. I feel like Differin can, and they did not disappoint. I was actually very pleasantly surprised and I've already bought another box because these actually work. I was going through quite a bit of chin breakouts, hormonal-based breakouts, a lot worse than I've had in a while. These came in handy because they do have salicylic acid, but as I was looking into the ingredients, I realized these work so well for me because some of my other favorite gentle anti-acne ingredients are in here, including Madecassoside, the active compound in the Centella plant that helps reduce inflammation, really soothe the skin, and also induce healing. But also they're using Houttuynia cordata extract, heart leaf extract. I have been raving about heart leaf for how many years when it comes to acne and breakouts with my skin. There's just something about the ingredient. It's anti-inflammatory, it's soothing. There's kind of like a clarifying effect to it without stripping your skin, without being astringent. And I found great success with that ingredient in various K-beauty products. Centella also really wonderful, and salicylic acid, I mean, that is the exfoliant that goes deep into the pore."
"I've really been liking the results of this. I've been noticing some modest but promising improvement. The modest results are that's totally on me because I'm still building consistency with my body care routine. I could be applying this a lot more than I am. I'm using it like once or twice a week and I could be doing it a lot more and seeing faster results. I don't think it's really meant to be a replacement for your body lotion, especially if you have dry skin like I do, so in winter I definitely coat myself in another layer of moisturizer, a dedicated moisturizing cream for my body, just in case."
"This is an interesting one because the texture it's more balmy and ointment-like than the lotion and cream that I just mentioned. It has a little bit more of an almost like a gel kind of balmy ointment texture and it's very occlusive and occlusivity is a really great quality to find in your hand products because it really helps to hug and seal everything in."
"I've been using it now for about five weeks or so and I'm really really happy with it because it is absolutely working and it's easy and that's what's important to me. [...] It's an airless pump so when you hold down the pump you don't have to keep pumping it, you can just hold it down, it keeps spraying and the little shelf inside lifts up the product towards the pump. The two percent salicylic acid, it's so good for diving into the pores and helping to clean them out and to keep them clean over time. My issue is lots of dead skin cells, I'm dry but I do get some oil back there, and then when I sweat it all gets mixed together, it gets stuck inside of the pores and sometimes that sweat will bring in some bacteria and then we get the big [...] inflamed breakouts. My strategy is to just kind of always be shedding those dead skin cells because the less dead skin cells that I have on my back and chest, the less chance for that sweat and bacteria to mix together and create that inflamed pimple. I've just been using this regularly every time I get out of the shower, I towel off, I spray my back, I spray my chest, a little bit tops of the arms, just let it dry."
"For a body care treat I'm going in for the First Aid Beauty KP Bump Eraser Body Scrub. This uses glycolic and lactic acid at 10% to help exfoliate the skin, but it also has some scrubbies in it which is great for my rough elbows and knees."
"This is a nice silky lotion, it's got a really pleasing feel between your fingers, but it actually doesn't absorb very quickly into the body. It does leave quite a bit of streaks, you really have to work it in to get it to absorb. Even when you towel dry your skin it's not soaking wet, it's still not soaking in without really rubbing, rubbing, rubbing it in. I just don't have to do that with like CeraVe and Cetaphil, you know what I'm saying, which I get a lot more product for a lot less money. This is not cheap, and it's fussy. Skin care and body care and all these types of products, you have to want to use them, right? And I just don't feel like I want to use this."
"Vaseline comes in at five to seven dollars. It contains petrolatum at a very high percentage, [...] and this ingredient is a very, very good occlusive. It creates that temporary barrier that holds your skin care in place, holds the moisture and the hydration deep within your skin, and resists the dehydration, the dryness, the tightness, and the irritation. When you create that temporary barrier on your skin, you're really sealing your skin care. It's going to work for you better. It's going to stick with your skin longer, and it's going to translate to faster healing. [...] You can [...] apply it to the areas that feel the most dry, tight, and irritated, [...] apply it all over your face, use it on your lips if they're feeling dry and irritated, or even mix a bit of this into your moisturizing cream at nighttime."
"This is the La Roche-Posay Cicaplast Gel B5. This is going to be a great olusive for very oily skin that can't stand heavy layers because the olusive here is actually a high quantity of glycerin that acts as a skin protectant. Not only to hydrate the skin but also to help prevent water loss."
"This is Aquaphor Healing Ointment. This is a petrolatum based ointment and I love this for my lips especially all year round but especially in winter. It is fragrance-free. It is occlusive but there are some emollient ingredients in here that offer moisturization as well. And so this is moisturizing, softening but also protective without any fragrances or some of the really fun ingredients but that can sometimes just not be beneficial if your lip area is really acting up."
"I love CeraVe Healing Ointment. It contains about 46% of petrolatum. Now petrolatum is by far the most occlusive ingredient that you can use in skincare. It really does create the most barrier. It really seals everything in and it is really great for fighting severe dehydration, especially as you're sleeping. Some folks have really good success just putting this all over their face and they wake up with really glowing skin in the morning. But you may also consider mixing a little bit into your existing moisturizer to kind of cut down some of the greasiness. I personally have found some success where I'll selectively slug with CeraVe Healing Ointment on certain areas, especially with combo skin where I get a little bit more dry and [...] dehydrated in some spots. A big one is my under eye area can get very dry and dehydrated very quickly. And it really helps to hold all the hydration in place. So my under eyes are nice and smooth and plump when I wake up in the morning. I also sometimes will put it around my chin area."
"This is the Dew Blush in the color baby. And it is this really gorgeous cool toned candy kind of pink color that I'm absolutely obsessed with. I do have some neutral to cool undertones in my skin, so this really suits my skin so nicely. So just a couple dots and then I just blend it in with a brush. I love all of these cream textures. [...] This blush just has a really nice hydrating kind of effect to it. It [...] really emphasizes the finish that I'm going for, which is just really dewy, hydrated, healthy looking skin."
"I use the Rare Beauty cream bronzer in Bright Side, drawing a three on each side of my face and blending it in. It adds some definition and contour plus a little warmth, and I like these cream formulas because they work well with the dewiness I build with my skincare."
"This is the Hints true dimension radiance balm. It's like a highlighter stick, a fleshy champagne colored highlighter and it's very beautiful. It's subtle. You see the shimmer? It's not glittery. It's just very light bouncing shimmery. It has like a dewiness to it. It's so melty and so moist. It's so much more dewy and plump and all than a powder highlighter. I love a good powder highlighter. When I was testing this out, I put it under my brow bone and I wasn't too loving that because my lashes touched the top of my brow bone and I was getting a little bit of smudging because of how moist this is. It can get a bit smudgy for the eye area depending on your eyes. But for cheekbones, gorgeous."
"This is the Lily by Red Love Beam Cheek Balm and it is this cute little heart compact. [...] This is more of a creamy kind of blush with really a very subtle kind of dusty sort of a pink but really pretty. I can see that working for a lot of different skin tones, just giving a tiny little bit of flush of color."
"This concealer from Tower 28 is such a perfect match for me. And it's been a favorite of mine for many years. It also has a slightly moist, kind of a creamy finish to it. Some concealers can be kind of chalky and dry or very very thick and almost even like putty like, honestly, in a way. And so this has a really nice fluidy hydrating kind of a texture. It just evens everything out and creates a really nice base. It is shimmery, but it is not glittery. It's kind of like a very nice grownup kind of a sparkle, if you will, that I really, really enjoy. And I think it just creates a really gorgeous, very wearable, very comfortable skin tint."
"The Merit Complexion Stick in Oak is like a cross between a skin tint and a concealer. It does not have full foundation coverage, but it evens out discoloration and redness while letting your natural skin shine through. I have been testing it without a primer and I am not getting any creasing, caking or splitting, so skipping a layer is nice for summer."
"I'm using YSL Touche Éclat. This is like a highlighting stick and I put it in the corner of my eyes and very important I put it right under that sharp winged eyeliner and that's really going to sharpen that line and clean everything up. I also like to put it on top of my eyebrows just to again give a more defined look and then right down the bridge of my nose and right around my lips and then I blend everything together. That just gives everything a little bit more of a perfected look. The YSL Touche Éclat bounces light and gives definition."
"I've been using this for a few years and just over the last year, year and a half, I've been using this almost exclusively. [...] After washing my hair and conditioning my hair, I will use this as a leave-on treatment. I use one pump for all of this hair, [...] work it on my ends and then through the mids. [...] You just leave it in. It is a reparative strengthening bonding hair product and it does work very very nicely. One way to use this is to actually replace your conditioner product with this."
"A couple of years ago, I got a Shark hair dryer and it really changed the game for me. It made it a lot easier for me to dry my hair in like 20 minutes instead of like half an hour even or longer and to get it fully dry too, not just like good enough dry. And so I actually started drying my hair after I washed it. And that has made a huge difference because now I'm not sleeping on wet hair and I'm not sustaining as much damage. Investing in a good hair dryer has definitely helped me."
"It actually thins out and you can see there's a hydration element to this while also having that plump body and kind of that creamy element. As it hits your skin it kind of melts down to a lighter layer than it first looks as you squeeze it out of the bottle. This feels so good. It's a little bit plumper, a little thicker, slightly stiffer than a watery toner, so I know where to put it in my skincare routine. I chose this because of the texture, that mixture of the hydration element and that slightly creamy element, but it's not super duper thick. I'm building in my hydration and moisture balance in equal amounts with it."
"The CurrentBody LED mask uses red light to help stimulate collagen, improve tone and texture on the skin, and promote healing. For me personally, I found the design of the CurrentBody mask to be very very comfortable, and I think it does deliver some really nice results. I've noticed some great benefits as far as skin texture and tone. It helps with dark marks and it particularly helps with healing, especially if you suffer with breakouts. When the skin breaks, when the skin peels, when a pimple pops, it really promotes healing. I think it's also a great preventative type of product to add into your routine if you have the funds and you're going to commit to it, as a preventative for collagen stimulation and just overall good preventative well-aging measures that we can take in skincare."
"There's another one that looks just like this from Omnilux, it's incredibly popular and it's I think $395, maybe so we're pushing $400 for this mask, very expensive, a huge investment. With this one you're supposed to use it for 10 minutes, like as many times a week really as you can, to be very consistent with it, multiple times a week, 10 minutes at a time, where you're getting this red light all over your face in an even layer."
"This is a red light mask which helps to reduce inflammation, stimulate collagen, help target fine lines and wrinkles. It can even help with reducing acne on the skin as well. It's a really good preventative type of product. It's an investment money and time-wise, but I have found using this consistently has really contributed to that glow. My skin is more plump. It's even-toned. It's more glowy, and I'm absolutely loving the results of this. I wear the mask for about 10 minutes, and when the timer goes off, it is time to take it off and proceed with the rest of my skincare routine."
"This is the NARS Light Reflecting Advanced Skincare Foundation and the color is Doville. I like to start with about one pump and see where I end up because this is a not cheap foundation. I like to put just a little bit on and spread it in a nice really even and thin layer. I shear it out with a beauty blender."
"I am obsessed with the Sniff perfume in Crumb Couture. It smells like the most sophisticated croissant ever, like almond and vanilla, so good but not sickly sweet, and it has a really good long-lasting scent."
"This is the three-step system that I've been using that I really like. What I was most impressed with was the priming wand, and it is sold separately on the Dr. Dana site. I think they've taken a lot of care with really helping to transform nails that are uneven, that have those little breaks and ridges and peels in them, and really help smooth that out but also get that nice protective polish."
"I'm going to use the Tula Filter Primer, this is the color Luna. So you can see it's kind of pearly. It's loose, but as you work it into your skin you can see that there's just a kiss of color. There are different colors as well as one that doesn't have the pigment to it. It doesn't really deposit much, but there's just a little bit and then there's like a pearlescent kind of look to it. You can see how it perfects the skin and it adds a touch of color."
✓Yay
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