Cream Face Wash for Dry and Sensitive Skin

Details

A cream cleanser that barely foams, for dry, tight or easily irritated skin and for anyone whose face stings after an ordinary face wash. Twelve ingredients, each with a percentage on this page. The cheat that hurts reactive skin most is not an ingredient, it is a word. Sensitive-skin cleansers are routinely built on the same surfactant load as an everyday gel, then given a soothing extract at a fraction of a percent and a claim on the front. What actually decides whether a wash stings is the surfactant, how much of it there is, and the pH. This one runs at about 2 percent active surfactant, roughly a quarter of what our own gentle daily wash carries, which is why it does not lather and why the skin's own lipids are largely still there afterwards. The second cheat is the fragrance word. A fragrance-free claim on a product for reactive skin is worth nothing if an essential oil has been used to carry it, because a botanical fragrance is chemically a fragrance and the 26 declarable components do not care where they came from. There is no fragrance here of any kind. The third is the herbal upgrade, and this listing does the opposite of it: the sunflower oil in here is refined, deliberately. On a face that reacts to everything, an unrefined oil's higher load of plant proteins, waxes and free fatty acids is a liability rather than a virtue, and we would rather have the boring oil and say why. This is the dry-and-sensitive end of a three-wash shelf. Normal to combination skin should buy the gentle daily face wash. Oily and breakout-prone skin should buy the clarifying face wash. Between the three, every skin type is covered, which is what a curated shelf means.

• Full INCI, in descending order: Aqua, Glycerin, Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil, Coco-Glucoside, Cetearyl Alcohol, Glyceryl Stearate, Avena Sativa Kernel Flour, Panthenol, Phenoxyethanol, Xanthan Gum, Ethylhexylglycerin, Citric Acid
• With percentages: Glycerin 5.0, Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil 4.0, Coco-Glucoside 4.0, Cetearyl Alcohol 3.0, Glyceryl Stearate 2.0, Avena Sativa Kernel Flour 1.0, Panthenol 1.0, Phenoxyethanol 0.7, Xanthan Gum 0.3, Ethylhexylglycerin 0.1, Citric Acid to pH, and Aqua is the balance at 78.9
• The 1 percent line falls after the panthenol, and below it order carries no information
• Colloidal oatmeal at 1.0 percent, named as Avena Sativa Kernel Flour and given a number, because with oatmeal in particular the word does the selling and the dose is usually a rounding error
• Panthenol at 1.0 percent, which is a working level, not a trace
• Measured pH 5.5, per lot
• About 2.1 percent active surfactant, from coco-glucoside alone. No SLS, no SLES, and no secondary surfactant brought in to make up the foam that removing them cost
• Preservative is phenoxyethanol 0.7 percent with ethylhexylglycerin 0.1 percent. No parabens, and no MIT or CMIT put in to replace them
• No fragrance, no parfum, no essential oil, no masking fragrance, none of the 26 EU declarable components
• No exfoliating acids of any kind, no menthol, no camphor, no dyes, no mineral oil, no alcohol denat, no silicones
• Honest trade-off one: it does not foam. A cream wash at 2 percent surfactant produces a thin milky slip and no lather, and if you rinse expecting squeak you will think it has not worked
• Honest trade-off two: the same low surfactant load that makes it kind also means it will not shift a full face of long-wear make-up or a thick mineral sunscreen in one pass. Take the sunscreen off with an oil or a balm first, then wash
• Honest trade-off three: fragrance-free means it smells faintly of oat and sunflower oil, which some people dislike, and there is nothing in it to cover that