Questions people ask
Short answers to common skincare questions, from double cleansing to eye cream.
Do you need a separate eye cream?
We lined up eye creams against face creams by ingredient list, then counted how 140 ad lines about the eye area held up when checked.
Is an EWG green rating on a Korean label worth trusting?
An EWG green rating is an outside score given to single ingredients, not proof a product is gentle. Of 64 Korean ad lines citing it, 1 was backed by evidence.
How long until skincare works, and what the label promised
Moisture changes in days, tone and fine lines take two to three months. We counted 697 Korean ad lines that name a time and checked what they promise.
Do cleansing wipes count as cleansing?
Where a Korean wipe prints a usage text, it tells you to wash afterwards. Only 9 of 32 print a concentration, and the one that skips the rinse carries an acid.
Does collagen in skincare do anything?
Collagen on a Korean label runs from nineteen percent down to a hundredth of a part per billion. The size of the molecule matters more than either number.
What does an enzyme powder cleanser actually do?
The enzyme cuts protein. Sebum is not protein. 15 of 31 Korean powder cleansers print an enzyme level, and the surfactant is doing most of the work.
Essence, serum, ampoule: is there any difference?
When this was written we compared 106 Korean products across the three names. The medians sat within ten ingredients, and ampoules disclosed least often.
Is alcohol in skincare bad? Read the position, not the word
About one Korean product in twelve carries a drying alcohol. One in four carries a fatty alcohol, which is an emollient. The word cannot separate them.
Can you use niacinamide and vitamin C together?
244 Korean products put both in one bottle. The flushing story comes from high heat conditions. The real reason to separate them is pH, which nobody publishes.
What does a modeling pack actually do?
The rubbery set is alginate meeting a calcium salt. It is real chemistry doing a real job, and the job is not what most pages claim it is.
What is PHA, and is it really the gentle acid?
Gluconolactone appears on 265 Korean labels and 13 print a level. The research that made PHA interesting ran at 8 percent. Most labels print nothing.
How much of a moisturizer is water?
Most of it, and the label will not print the figure. What the first entry, the next five and the nine exceptions tell you about a Korean moisturizer.
Does the 7 skin method actually work?
Seven layers of toner does something real and smaller than the name suggests. What repetition changes, and which Korean toners can take it without a problem.
How much cica is actually in a cica cream?
Five Korean cica products that print their own numbers, and a gap of more than four thousand fold between the top of the range and the bottom.
Should you buy a PDRN cream or a PDRN serum?
The format is not the variable that decides this. Three Korean PDRN products read end to end, and the thousand fold gap between what their labels disclose.
What is salmon DNA in skincare, and where does it show up on a label?
The word salmon almost never appears on the ingredient list. Three Korean products with three different origin stories for the same ingredient family.
What does a rice toner actually do?
Rice is usually the story and something else is the mechanism. Four Korean rice products with their printed figures, including one at ten parts per billion.
What does a Korean toner do, and why is it not the toner you remember?
The word covers four different products in Korea, one of which is a moisturizer. Four labels read end to end, including a toner with oil fourth on the list.
Do you need to double cleanse?
Not every night, and the answer depends on one thing rather than on your skin type. Four Korean first cleansers read for what they actually remove.
How often should I exfoliate my face?
Once or twice a week suits most skin. Here is how that shifts for oily and sensitive skin, what quietly counts as exfoliating, and how to tell you went too far.
What order do you apply skincare in?
Thinnest to thickest, with sunscreen last in the morning. Here is the morning order, what changes at night, and the three products that make a routine.
