A Korean routine for congestion and blemishes
Korean formulators reach for a different exfoliant than the US shelf does. Betaine salicylate is the one you will see over and over: it is salicylic acid carried on betaine, it is what Korean brands use where an American brand writes 2% salicylic acid, and it behaves gently enough that the same product can be used more often.
The engine treats it as a first-class marker rather than an obscure one, alongside capryloyl salicylic acid. It also weights niacinamide and zinc PCA highly, and it deliberately does not weight tea tree oil highly, because melaleuca oil is an essential oil and reactive congested skin is the most common case for ruling essential oils out entirely. Rule them out in question three and every product offered will have an ingredient list naming none.
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.