A Korean routine for dry, tight skin
Tightness after cleansing is a water-loss problem and a lipid problem at the same time, and the two want different ingredients. A humectant pulls water into the stratum corneum. A barrier lipid stops it leaving again. A routine that only does the first is the reason your skin feels wonderful for twenty minutes and tight by lunchtime.
So this routine ranks products by where the humectants and the barrier lipids actually sit on the declared list. Sodium hyaluronate at position 6 is a different product from sodium hyaluronate at position 34, and the ingredient list is where the difference is visible. Ceramide NP, phytosphingosine and cholesterol carry the most weight here, because those three are the lipids the stratum corneum is actually made of and Korean formulators put them in creams at levels the US drugstore shelf rarely matches.
Built for skin that sits comfortably through the day. Ranked against 0 published ingredient lists across 5,294 products you can buy today.
The routine
1Morning and night
Cleanse
Everything after this lands on bare skin, so this is the step that decides what the rest of the routine is working with.
Everything in this category names at least one of the things you ruled out.
Loosen question three, or browse the shelf yourself.
2Morning and night
Prep
The watery layer. It rehydrates after cleansing and thins the ground so the treatment step spreads instead of sitting.
Everything in this category names at least one of the things you ruled out.
Loosen question three, or browse the shelf yourself.
3Morning and night
Treat
The step chosen for the answer you gave. This is where the actives are, and it is the one product in the routine worth reading the whole list of.
Everything in this category names at least one of the things you ruled out.
Loosen question three, or browse the shelf yourself.
4Morning and night
Seal
The lid. Without it the water the first three steps brought in leaves again, which is the mechanism behind skin that feels wonderful at 8am and tight at 2pm.
Everything in this category names at least one of the things you ruled out.
Loosen question three, or browse the shelf yourself.
Reading the reasoning
Each step says which entries it matched and where they sit on that product’s own declared list. “Panthenol 4th of 34” means panthenol is the fourth of thirty-four ingredients, and because an ingredient list runs from the highest concentration down to one percent, fourth of thirty-four is a formulation decision and thirty-first of thirty-four usually is not.
The positions are the whole argument, and they are checkable. Open any product on this page and the full list is printed there, unabridged and not as an image, which is the one field where this store beats every competitor in the category. If a position here disagrees with the list there, the list there is right and we have a bug worth telling us about.
One rule overrules the ranking, and it is the only one. A routine may carry at most one exfoliating acid or retinoid step, and the treatment step is the one that gets it, because the treatment step is what the actives step is. A toner is a hydrating layer and a moisturiser is a lid; neither is where a second acid belongs, whatever it ranks. Left to the ranking alone this page once offered a glycolic toner, an AHA-BHA serum and a lactic acid pad in the same routine, each of them the best-scoring product in its own step and the three of them together a barrier injury. Whichever step ends up carrying the acid says so, and prints the entry on its list that put it there.
What we will not do is tell you a product will fix something. A position on a list is a fact; an outcome is a promise about your skin that nobody who has not seen it can make. Every step has four alternatives behind it for exactly that reason, and the acid rule does not hide them: if you want the acid toner anyway, it is in the swap list under the step, one click from being yours.