Are we being ripped off with skincare products?

[PinkPondQueen]

After hitting my mid-forties 2 years ago I started using lots of different Estee Lauder skincare products (cleanser, day and night creams, serums, eye creams & gels). Prior to this I just used mid-range products. Honestly I've seen no improvement whatsoever in any lines or the texture of my skin but I have carried on using them hoping in the long-term they would prove beneficial.

Anyway, I was given a Nivea gift set for Christmas which included both day and night creams. Never used Nivea before but it felt wasteful not to use them so I have just been using them on work days/nights. Honestly the difference in my skin after only a few weeks is remarkable! It feels and looks so much smoother and even my make-up looks better!

So Mumsnet, what gives?! Are we being ripped off? Do I carry on with the EL stuff?

@SoapCollector I tend to buy soaps that state that they are suitable for face and body and don't stick to any particular brand. I have been using Simple soap and then a l'Occitane soap. I now have some M and S rose soap. I also have some bars of Dove and Imperial Leather in my cupboard and a Bodyshop Rose soap specifically for face and body.

Yes. It is lovely to use but did bugger all for me. My friend said the same. We're both old and raddled. Didnt turn us into old and unraddled unfortunately

Depends I have a mix of stuff that I like because it works for me. I use kiehls glycolic acid (which tbf lasts a long time) and la roche sunscreen for it’s high ppd I use eucerin face moisturiser because it does what I need it to do.

tbh the most effective thing in my view is tretinoin, sunscreen, glycolic acid and a decent urea or glycerin based moisturiser. But I imagine many people enjoy the more expensive brands for reasons other than efficacy. Because lets be honest most of it is nice smelling moisturiser in pretty packaging. My one big exception is clarins oil which I used during pregnancy, I know it helped because I missed a bit and have more stretch marks on that bit than on the biggest part of my stomach.

Make up is a mix of dior, givency, charlotte tilbury.

I’m quite partial to rituals and that basically goes down the drain.

Thanks @RampantIvy I see you are a bit of a soap collector like me!! 😁 Not tried any Bodyshop soaps for years though, I'll have a look next time I'm passing.

I like to analyse the ingredients to see if they are harmful or beneficial. I would avoid any that interferes with the endocrine system and find that many expensive brands have way too many chemicals in. I do make my own night serum with base oils and essential oils and that's been great over the years. Obviously I'm not a qualified chemist but a bit of digging and collating information is great because you can understand what the ingredients do or not do.

@Bringonthesunforthewashing I have clarins double serum and honestly don’t really like it. Locctaine sp? Do a lovely one and I have a nice Dior one but I wouldn’t buy any clarins skincare again tbh. I do like Estée Lauder I use their cleanser, toner and moisturiser if I get a good deal. The pink moisturiser sits lovely in my skin it’s thick and luxurious and feels really nice. my makeup always looks nice on top of it.

Nivea always smells of holidays for me, it looks nice but it goes for my eyes I think the perfume I end up with big red watery eyes which is a shame. I’ve tried a few of their products I can use on my body but not on my face for some reason.

I like the aldi day and night caviar moisturisers. The ordinary but c and hylauronic acid have both made my skin look brighter and more hydrated. I’ve just started using a Skin&me ‘prescription’ tret at night. Jury’s out on whether it’s doing anything though.

Yes, I think we can be ripped off with skincare products. I don't think the big skincare companies are in business to help people! Their main aim is to make profit and charge what they can get away with charging!

I sat on an own brand shampoo customer focus group for a large supermarket years ago. They were asking about our perception of the brand from the value type range bottles of shampoo and conditioner, up to what would be the most expensive in their own brand line. One of the questions they asked about a new own brand line was "how much would you be willing to pay for this?"

Personally I would stick to the Nivea 😀

It depends very much on the ingredients, I'd say.
I've seen both good and bad in both higher end, mid and budget.
If you're honestly asking, I'd stay away from petronchemicals and silicones (you see that alot in Nivea, but it is present in alot of others also).
Moo Goo is fabulous for the price.
Sorry, I know you're not looking for a run down, but I would honestly stay away from the ones with paraffin oils and heavy alcohols.

It’s about the active ingredients imo. If they work (and some do eg tretinoin, many are just nonsense) then they work in cheap packaging just as well as expensive packaging.

We all need to look at ingredients not products. Only the first 4 or 5 ingredients in a product are there in enough of a quantity to do what the manufacturer of the product claims they do. So a "retinol" moisturizer with retinol listed near the end of the ingredients list, frankly, isn't.

No cleanser can do anything for your face other than take your makeup off and clean your skin, and exfoliate it if you wash it off with a cloth. Whether it costs £5 or £50. It's not on your face long enough to do anything else.

Some serums can do more than others. Estée Lauder's ANR was groundbreaking back in the day as one of the first hydrating serums. These days there are literally thousands out there. Yes, people notice a difference if they don't use it. Because it's a decent hydrating serum. As is Clarins Double. Neither contain any actives so can't do anything other than hydrate. Which in turn will make fine lines look plumped out. The £4 Superdrug hyaluronic based one or Hada Labo in the enormous bottle for about £20 will do exactly the same. Because it's all they were all made to do.

I'm another Nivea blue pot and Astral devotee and as a pp above said, do I feel like a goddess using them? Nope. Do they work as well as the Lancome Hydra Zen that I adore, the Dior Capture that I adore, and the L'Occitane Divine that I adore. Yep.

There are so many decently priced products with the same ingredients as the heavily marketed and beautifully packaged high end products out there these days.

We aren't being ripped off, as pps have said, nobody makes us. I do think we are lied to by touched up photos (and I'm including Inkey List with their ridiculous before and after lips- they've now lost all credibility for me, particularly as there was a famous before and after which appeared to show the lip balm was also capable of changing the person's skin colour and removing a mole 😏)and a load of marketing bollocks.

SPF 50
A cleanser
A moisturizer

A vitamin C at a decent level
A retinoid.

An acid toner. (£££ Paula's Choice or £ Nip and Fab. Both 2% salicylic for example)

A peptide serum.

The first 3 are essential
The next 2 will make a huge difference
The last 2 will make a smaller, but still evident difference.

We can get them from Superdrug , Boots, High End counters in department stores or Dr Sturm.

The prices will differ. The results less so.

100% on Nivea. I also made this shocking discovery after seeing the creams under different scientific lenses and Nivea was v similar to La Mer. My skin is glowing since switching!!

https://www.thefactsabout.co.uk/endocrine-disruptors

Busting the myths about ingredients in skincare affecting the endocrine system.

Similarly there's nothing wrong with paraffin oils in skincare. Lots of natural oils and ingredients are potentially far more harmful to the human body.

It’s not as simple as saying high street = poor, premium = good or vice versa.
The ingredients are what makes a product effective, the dose and the combination.

It is quite true that you can buy solid products with great ingredients on the high street. If you were just looking for something super moisturising then Nivea is a great choice. However if you were looking for a decent retinol then those sold at boots like no7 aren’t going to cut it (the % level is just too low to get maximum results long term) you’d need a prescription from someone like Skin + Me, which is a more expensive brand. Also more high street brands will charge for more expensive products - example is the ordinary, most of their products are £10/£15 but their copper peptide runs at about £28 (it’s brilliant by the way). It is more expensive because the ingredients are higher grade I guess.

I actually dont think for most things you need to spend a fortune, but I’d definitely be looking at quality and combination of ingredients over the price tag / brand as both lower and higher end brands will have their basic & amazing products

Yes we are. Over the years i have bought some incredibly expensive skin care products and i can honesty say my skin was no better than it is currently with my cerave face wash and nivea blue pot.

I think expensive make up is worth it and you get what you pay for...
but if you look at the ingredients in some expensive skin care they can be the same as cheaper brands.

@WingingItSince1973 please could you share your recipe?

for the last 2.5 years I use everything Elemis, I love the results, used to be a Clarins fan.

Obviously no way of telling if my skin would look not as good if I’d used something for a quarter of the price.

🙃

@zaxxon

I'm pretty sure the cosmetics marketing teams just make a number when it comes to setting the price. Then double it.

Much worse, actually. Look up the term "vanity pricing." Cosmetics companies do customer research where they test out new products on focus groups, giving different price points, and quite frequently it turns out more people will be interested on buying the product the higher the price is.

So yes, we are indeed being ripped off, but we do it to ourselves.

I have dry skin and have tried every cream under the sun, from Aldi to Crème de Mer!

I’m using Ceravee at the moment which is used for very dry skin and I use tonnes. For my face I use the lighter Ceravee with SPF 30. There is no noticeable difference at all!

A few years ago I was under immense stress and it impacted my skin. I got massive boil type things on my face when they healed they left a type of discoloration scar that flared up when I was hot iyswim. I would have red splotches where the boils had been. This went on for about a year.

Anyway I started using Neals Yard frankincense cream and the red splotches started to fade. The cream didn't make any such promises and I didn't use it thinking it would help. I don't know if it was the cream but I strongly suspect it was.

I suspect a lot of expensive creams make promises that they don't deliver but I agree with people that SPF is important and then a cream that you like cos it feels nice or smells nice. I have always used moisturiser as I always liked to wear makeup and I do notice that my neck,which I didn't moisturise, is way more aged than my face which has very few wrinkles.

Thanks everyone, some very helpful replies. It's funny so many of you mention the Nivea blue pot - my late stepmother swore by it and she had great skin.

I'll use up these tubes and see how my skin is then. I do have a feeling that long-term they might not be so great - I remember using some Vaseline Intensive Care Hand Cream that someone had placed in the bathroom at work and it really seemed to make my hands look younger so I went and bought a bottle. But by the time I had used it all my hands were actually drier than they'd been before 🤨

I'm certainly going to pay more attention to the actual ingredients from now on! As I said all the EL skin products were freebess anyway so i've not actually spent a fortune on them - I might be very pissed off if I had!

It has been shown that the only thing that has small enough molecules to pass through the skin barrier is tret. Everything else just sits on top. You can use exfoliating products/ but a moisturiser will just sit on the skin and prevent moisture loss. Absolutely no point spending loads of money on them.

Shocker, a website from the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfume Association says there are no issues with the products its members sell 🙄 a more evidence-based site is https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ - they cross-link to scientific studies on each ingredient and talk about how strong the evidence is.