We’re just like you – we read the ingredients.

If this resonates with you, then you’ve probably experienced something like this:

One morning you were washing your face. A bit distracted, you started reading the cleanser bottle because there was nothing else to do while you waited a few minutes, as the instructions dictated.

You came to the ingredients. The first few were familiar, but as you moved further down the (unusually long) list, you found a few you had never heard of before.

So, you did what everyone does when they’re confused. You Googled, or DuckDuckGo’d….or Binged…we don’t judge, and came to the horrible realisation that some of the things you’d been putting on your face are also used to make plastics more durable or are known carcinogens or endocrine disruptors. 

Now, this isn’t a weird conspiracy-based “everything that isn’t entirely natural is bad for you” type article. The fact is, skin care products (even ours) need a certain level of preservative in order to last more than a few weeks. Additionally, there’s more to this story than just ingredients – formulas also have a huge part to play in how products respond to different skin types. This can be explained using the example of chlorine (calcium hypochlorite) which, when added to a pool, reacts with the water and forms hypochlorous acid. The nature of the chlorine has entirely changed as a result of application and formula.

The question we then asked ourselves was, which formulas (ingredients, formula and application) :

(a) get the best results, and

(b) don’t have a negative impact on your skin and the environment?

We’re going to explore ingredients more in future articles, but this article is about two things.

1. Ingredients matter, but as the above example shows, the formula dictates what ingredients are when you come to use them.
2. Application matters. 

On the second point, we found that poor or clumsy application of a product can have a neutral or even a negative impact on the skin, either immediately or over time.

In summary, we confused ourselves. Formula impacts ingredients, which impact other ingredients and the application (impacted by the formula and the ingredients) impacts the skin. 

It’s no wonder most people don’t bother reading the ingredients!

We hope you’ll visit us again as we explore our findings, talk about the different types of skincare ingredients and explain formulas in, we hope, plain language. You see, we don’t want to yell and scream about Hexaderm being ‘better’, we want you to help you understand what good skin care actually means, and contribute to you making good choices.