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As a wise woman once said; “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.”
Cleansing is the very beginning of mine – and everyone else’s beauty routine I guess. I know micellar water is still pretty frowned upon within the beauty community, but as a self-confessed lazy cow it is still firmly there in my heart.
I use micellar waters in two ways. Firstly I use the lower end ones to remove heavy makeup – I’m partial to a smokey eye and an eyeliner flick so these are ideal. I suffer from really dry eyes and these are the only products that don’t irritate them so I definitely won’t be giving these up.
The Nivea MicellAir and Garnier Cleansing Water are pretty interchangeable in my book, the Garnier comes in a bigger bottle so I will tend to buy that when I’m shopping but as far as I’m concerned they’re much of a muchness.
The other way I use the micellar waters is to add a little moisture or freshen my face up if I feel like my cleanser has been a little too much for my face.
I use the Clarins Water Comfort One-Step Cleanser which I absolutely love. It has a really nice light peachy fragrance and is so nice for sweeping over your face to cool it down, over your eyelids to soothe them a little bit and like I said give your skin a little boost before applying serums, lotions and potions.
Controversial here; I hate putting water on my face.
I hate it, hate it, hate it. For a long time this is all I’d have used alongside the Clarins cleansing milk which I’ll come onto in a minute. I have no real reason to hate using water, but it just makes me super uncomfortable.
And no, I’m not a soap-dodger, it’s just my face I don’t like it on!
The closest I got to a proper cleanser previously is the Clarins Cleansing Milk with alpine herbs and moringa. It’s a gorgeous milky cleanser with a thick consistency and lovely scent to it. I like products with a bit of a smell but nothing too overwhelming. Upon applying it does feel really soothing on skin, it was a godsend when I was sick earlier this year and had a fever – no matter how awful I felt I was able to apply a wee bit of this to help cool my sweaty wee face.
Even as I get over my distain for ‘proper’ cleansing this will still feature on my shelf. I am a massive Clarins fan, my mum uses their products and I’m a bit of a sheep, but I find their price point at the higher end of affordable for me, and I really like that they often have deals both online and instore – and their customer service is something else!
If you’re a member of Caroline Hiron’s skincare group on Facebook (I promise this whole series isn’t all about Caroline!) you may have seen people talking about their first and second cleanse. This was an alien concept to me. What this basically means is cleansing twice, first with a heavier product to remove the bulk of your makeup and general dirt and the second to cleanse a little further into your skin. These are generally oils or balms. That’s ‘balm’ not ‘bam’, ya bam.
I have two different oil cleansers that I’ll use for different reasons. Superdrug’s Vitamin E Dual Cleanser is an oil/micellar hybrid that you shake to activate. Once the mixture is combined you use cotton pads to cleanse, this is great as it’s super oily so on a heavy makeup day or a cold day this feels lovely on skin.
The other oil cleanser I use is No7 Radiant Results Nourishing Micellar Cleansing Oil, I am using this purely because I bought it with high hopes and don’t want to waste it but I don’t really like it. It doesn’t feel like it really does anything to my skin, it doesn’t remove eye makeup that’s for sure. But it helps to loosen things I guess, but I can’t say I’d repurchase.
I occasionally use the Clinique Take The Day Off balm, it feels lovely on the skin and with it being so heavy really feels like it covers all areas of the face effectively. I imagine this would be great for eye makeup but due to my eyes being easily irritated I can’t use it for that, so the thickest product this removes really is concealer, but it does the job.
The newest cleanser I’m using is the Neutrogena Hydro Gel, I picked this up this week as I really like the serum and fancied giving them a go together and so far I’m really pleased with it. It’s pretty standard as cleansers go and it’s formulated for dry skin so suits me to a T.
What do you think of these products, have you tried them before?
Coming up next is Exfoliators, Toners and Acids so be sure to check back.