When it comes to skin care, there are so many bold, even outrageous claims, that promise to give you rich, luxurious, glowing skin, that it can feel overwhelming when you set about trying to choose the right skincare products.

Then there is the question of how much skin care products to purchase before knowing how they will affect your skin. How daring and risk-taking should you be? What should you look for or pay attention to when deciding which products to add to your skin care bag?

Let’s face it. Skincare can be confusing. You are bombarded with a never-ending array of products and scientific terms that make it hard to feel confident when you’re searching for skincare products that will truly benefit your skin.

There’s no such thing as a sure thing when it comes to skincare. However, there is hope. You can become knowledgeable about the science of skin care and learn what the most important ingredients are when you browse skin-care products. Other ways you can hone in on skin care that is high quality is knowing how to interpret an ingredient label and be savvy when it comes to realizing beauty marketing lies. Also, don’t fall for a product just because it costs more.

 

How to Identify Quality Skin-Care Products

Look at the Ingredients:  When it comes to cooking, the ingredients make all the difference between a raving successful dinner and an utter flop of a meal. When you examine the ingredient label of a skincare product, expect the ingredients that are listed first to be of the heaviest concentrations, with the ingredients listed farther down to be the lowest concentration.

 

If a product claims to use 100 percent of a particular ingredient, it is likely true but the product could contain only a small amount of that element.

Then there are some ingredients that are difficult to understand. In fact, it’s not unusual to run up against long, foreign-looking words when you read the list of ingredients in some types of skin care. Google an ingredient if you don’t know what it is. You want a solid understanding of what is inside a skincare product before you put it on your skin.

 

Packaging Can be Misleading:  Just because you’re impressed by flashy packaging, doesn’t mean the product will deliver good results for your skin. Don’t let yourself be seduced by attractive packaging and get lulled into thinking the package is covering a first-rate skincare product. Try testing out the product first to see if it lives up to expectations. Also, be suspicious of thin, cheap plastic packaging on cardboard. That usually will tip you off that the product is probably poor quality.

 

Read Reviews:  Knowing what your fellow consumers and skincare aficionados think of a product could save you a lot of time. These product reviews – most of the time – should offer helpful insights into the legitimacy of the beauty claims made by a skincare product. But know that, in some cases, product reviews could be slanted. For example, there are e-commerce sites that hire people to produce positive reviews on products online.

In most cases, though, the reviews for a skincare product will be reliable because people typically want to warn others about poor products and also sing the praises of high-quality products. A key indicator for deciphering reviews is to look for the average star rating for a product.

 

Request Skincare Product Samples:  One way to get immediate clarity on whether a skin-care product is right for your skin is to request a sample from the brand’s customer service department. For example, to see if a moisturizer will really soften your skin or if a cleanser will leave your skin feeling plump and soft, a sample will usually provide enough evidence to know if a product is worth buying.

Request Brand Demonstrations of Skin-Care Products:  Another idea is to find brands of skin-care products that will offer demonstrations of their products. Ask to try their skin care items that are of interest to you and try them on.  Make sure you are confident about how they treat your skin before purchasing them. Get a good sense of how your skin responds to the products. And don’t hesitate to ask questions of the brand representatives if you are not sure of the ingredients or for any other clarifications you need.

Know How to Interpret Labels:  For example, “Dermatologist Tested” and “Dermatologist Approved” mean entirely different things. If you aren’t savvy about product labels, you could be fooled and buy the wrong product. Likewise, “Organic” or “All-Natural” skin-care products don’t translate into 100 percent organic or completely natural. You don’t know if that product is just 10 percent organic, or 20 percent all-natural, for example. You can determine how organic or all-natural a product is by scanning the ingredient label. If there are artificial chemicals dominating the first portion of ingredients, you get a different story and you could spare yourself from a potential skincare disaster.

 

Rules of the Road for Skincare Products

There are some general principles to know and understand when it comes to how skin-care products work and how and when they yield results. You should manage your expectations based on how fast various products will perform.

Here are guidelines that touch on the timeline for results with different types of skincare products:

 

Short-term and Lasting Results

There are certain products that may not produce ideal results initially. For instance, you could experience tingling with exfoliators or peeling and dryness when you begin using retinol. Classify these as normal at first. This contrasts with bad reactions to your face that cause glaring issues such as breakouts, red spots, bumps, etc. That’s when you know you are dealing with an inferior product.

 

Consistency

Consistency means everything when it comes to accurately gauging the quality of a skin-care product.  Evaluate how a skincare product, for example, is working for you over time. You should be looking for steady and lasting results.

Similarly, don’t expect results right away from any skin-treatment product. Ignore over-hyped claims made in commercials or on packaging for a product.

Be skeptical of products promoting immediate results such as moisturizers promising softness of your skin right away. These exaggerated claims may only deliver superficial and short-term results which, in the big picture, will not benefit your skin. You always should be seeking lasting results from your skincare products.

When it comes to consistency from product results, it is helpful to know that active ingredients that work on the cellular level – increasing collagen production, for example – require much more time to produce results.

 

Medical Skin Treatments

Be aware that medical skin treatments such as chemical peeling, injections, laser or ultrasound treatments will typically offer more extreme results than conventional over-the-counter products. If you are looking for core changes, you should research these when it comes to medical skin treatments.

 

 

Agora — The Future of Skincare

Agora has a vision to provide its customers with a quality alternative to skin-care products available on the market today. We set out to deliver high quality skin-care products that provide excellent results while utilizing outstanding customer service.

 Our products utilize unique and potent ingredients that make a revolutionary difference in the quality of skin that our customers enjoy. Our expert Cosmetic Formulation Chemist provides Agora with superior ingredients from around the world to produce the best skin-care products in the industry!  At Agora, we deliver the most effective and results-oriented skin-care treatments to our customers.