Do you really 10 need different face creams?
Single-ingredient beauty is all the rage, but...
SO, HOW do you choose your skincare? Do you go for a well-known brand, and grab a cream that looks right for your skin and budget? I suspect that’s what most of us do — but now some companies hope we’ll go for a more personalised solution.
Instead of one-size-fits-all products, they’re offering an array of little pots and bottles, each focusing on a single active ingredient. The idea is you get more concentrated skincare and can work out what really works for your skin.
This new single-ingredient approach was pioneered by The Ordinary, the ground-breaking range from beauty company Deciem. Other small brands followed suit, and Boots has taken the trend mainstream with Ingredients.
So is there a case for using single ingredients rather than traditional skincare?
‘Absolutely,’ says Nicola Kilner, CEO of Deciem. ‘The consumer has control over exactly which ingredients they are putting on to their skin. Multi-ingredient formulas make it difficult to understand which active [ingredient] your skin does or doesn’t like.’
But sorting through all those little bottles’ effects can get quite scientific. Get it wrong with retinol and it could cause a nasty case of peeling, irritated skin.
And then there’s the price. Depending on which ingredients you choose, the cost can start to stack up quickly.
But women are increasingly wise to skincare ingredients and curious about how they work. In the past, if you wanted to try a vitamin C serum, you had to splash out £40 or more on a specialised product. Now you can experiment for a fraction of that.
Here’s how it might work: you could start in the morning with a vitamin C serum, to brighten and strengthen the skin. If your skin is dry, you could layer a hydrating hyaluronic acid serum over it before your daily sunscreen.
Or If your skin is oily, you could use a porecleansing salicylic acid. So who is buying these products? ‘Single-ingredient skincare appeals to opposite ends of the spectrum,’ says Shabir Daya, the co-founder of Victoria Health, the company behind single-ingredients line Garden of Wisdom.
‘One is the novice overwhelmed by the myriad creams available; the other is the aficionado who wishes to experiment.’
However, not everyone loves them. Dermatologist Dr Stefanie Williams finds her patients can use singleingredient products over-enthuastically and erratically, ending up with new skin problems.
‘I can’t understand how anybody could prefer a single-ingredient product if they can have a clever combination of active ingredients working together,’ she says.
It is also worth pointing out that ‘single-ingredient skincare’ rarely means just one ingredient. Most need to be woven in with other substances so the skin can best use them.
If you are applying more than one product at a time, start with the runniest, which will be the most easily absorbed, wait until it has settled into your skin, then apply the next.
That’s how I use these products. I could find similar ingredients in a typical day cream, but I prefer this direct approach where I know exactly what I’m applying . . .