How to Pick the Right Skincare Products for Consumers: Essentials
Published on November 14, 2024 by Yidan Zhong
Understanding the ingredients in your products is key to choosing skincare products that suit your skin's needs.
It sounds simple, but there is often no way to begin. Lotion, cream, essence, eye cream, lip mask... Especially for newcomers to anti-aging or skincare, a whole list of them can be dizzying to hear.
This article selected a heavyweight topic “essence”, from the ingredients, texture, skin type, efficacy and other dimensions to tell you how to easily find the desired serum.
Part 01
Positioning of Essence
From the perspective of product development (formulation), the most obvious characteristics of essence, containing a high concentration of active ingredients (which is also the reason why it is more expensive), to provide a deeper level of skin nourishment and repair. Moreover, different essences satisfy different skincare scenarios, such as moisturizing, whitening, anti-aging, and so on.
So, in a sense, the essence of the product is to meet the main effect of a certain development is more targeted.
Part 02
Common Problems
Only look at the brand, not the ingredients: Some people think that only big brands or high-priced products are good, which is actually a misunderstanding. Brand or price is not the only criterion to measure the goodness of a product. Some brands are famous, but the ingredients in the product may not be suitable for your skin; while some less expensive products may contain the core ingredients you need. Of course if you have more money, your call.
Pursuing quick results and ignoring safety: some products claim to solve skin problems overnight, but such products often contain hormones and other unsafe ingredients. We need to understand that skincare is a long-term process, and rushing is likely to cause skin problems.
Blindly follow the trend, do not take into account the skin type: everyone's skin type is different, others use good products, you may not be suitable. For example, dry skin but choose too refreshing serum, resulting in poor moisturizing effect; oily skin but choose too moisturizing products, aggravating the burden on the skin. So, when picking a serum, be sure to choose according to your skin type.
Part 03
How to pick?
Look at the list of ingredients: this is the most important step! Know the main ingredients of the product, but also check the starting concentration of the ingredient. Are they able to fulfill your skin's needs? Some ingredients are indeed more expensive, such as recombinant collagen that costs more than $100,000 a kilogram. It is also important to be especially wary of bad ingredients to avoid damage to your skin.
Consider skin type: As mentioned above, choose the right serum for your skin type. For example, dry skin needs to choose a good moisturizing effect; oily skin needs to choose a refreshing, oil control.
Look at the efficacy: clear your skin needs, choose a serum with the appropriate effect. For example, if you want to whiten, choose a serum that contains whitening ingredients.
Know the brand and reputation: reputable and well-reputed brands can ensure the quality and safety of the product. At the same time, remember to search more and more platforms for reviews and usage feelings of other users as a reference. In addition, the more mature the brand formula is relatively more mature. After all, it has eaten more rice than some so-called new brands have eaten salt.
Consider the price: price is not the only measure, but you should also make sure that you are buying a cost-effective product. Do not blindly pursue high-priced products, and do not choose low-priced inferior products in order to save money.
Part 04
Tips for use
Before using a serum, make sure your skin is thoroughly cleansed. This will allow the serum to be better absorbed by the skin.
Take an appropriate amount of the serum into your palm and gently massage it into your face and neck with your fingertips. Pay attention to the direction and strength of the massage to avoid overstretching the skin.
After using the serum, you can continue to use other skin care products for follow-up maintenance. But be careful not to overuse skin care products, so as not to cause skin burden.
Part 05
Lastly
In fact, picking any product to read the list of ingredients is the most important. So the most basic thing to know is what are the main ingredients of each effect.
For example, the chemical name of the flavor may include cationic guar gum guar gum hydroxypropyltrimethylammonium chloride ethanolamine ethanolamine, but usually we see in the ingredient list of the name of the flavor more descriptive, such as “flavor” or “PARFUM”, in addition to such as Odor rose ketone, methyl geranylate, vanillin, lauryl alcohol, citral is also representative of the flavor.
For example, methylisothiazolinone, methyl hydroxybenzene, ethyl hydroxybenzene, bis(imidazolidinyl)urea, quaternary ammonium-15, and DMDM glycolide urea all refer to preservatives.
Then the main representative ingredients for whitening are vitamin C, niacinamide, arbutin, and translucent acid, etc. The representative ingredients for anti-aging are retinol, boswelline, peptide peptide, collagen, astaxanthin, etc. The ingredients for moisturizing are hyaluronic acid, squalane, and urea.