Retinol help please

[LizzieWallace]

I've been using retinol for a while, but just the boots own brand which is relatively cheap (doesn't have a percentage on it).
I was given these 2 for Christmas.
Can anyone tell me which is the weaker of the two so I can start using that one first? Thank you.

1% is weaker than 5%.

Just realised they are two different products so not a clue. Sorry.

Retinol is usually weaker than retinoids so I’d go for the retinol first. I could be wrong but that’s the one I’d try first

I think that retinoids are gentler for the skin but I’m not sure how to compare strength given different concentration. Your best bet would be to contact the ordinary and ask.

The retinol is more like to cause irritation to your skin than the retinoid.

www.deciemchatroom.com/the-ordinary-retinol-retinoids/

To be honest, over the counter retinoids are a waste of time in my book. Better off using tretinoin which is a prescription retinoid with decades of data behind it and 20 times more effective than over the counter retinoids which your body needs to convert into tretinoin anyway. Can be found online at companies like Dermatica, skin and me and And Begin

The one on the right is granactive retinoid and needs dividing by 10 to get the true % of active ingredient. It's also relatively unproven regarding efficacy.
If you were previously using a high street one which didn't mention % but was a reputable brand like N7, it's likely to have been around 0.3% of decent entry grade retinol.
So using the granactive, you're really downgrading tbh. If you were ok with the N7, then you're probably fine to go with the 1% in squalane one.

Retinoids is the generic term for retinol, retinal, granactive and any other vitamin A derivative.

PS @LizzieWallace you can see from the small print on the granactive one that it's actually telling you that 5% granactive= 0.5% actual active ingredient.

TO used to be buggers for this. Making you think you had a 1% retinoid when really you had 0.1% because it was granactive only. They received stick for mislabelling and now add the small print.

Thank you all, really helpful (and good to know I'm not the only one who didn't know)
@BlindurErBóklausMaður fab info. Thank you