The Ideal Face Cream Formula

A face cream is probably the most important part of our daily skincare routine. No wonder - according to the recent scientific research, a facial cream is essential if we want to protect our skin from stress, adverse environmental influences and ageing issues. However, what is the perfect face cream formula?

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Are you 100% satisfied with the skincare you are using?

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Are you able to see the radical skin improvement promised in the advertisement? Are you sure that skincare you are using won’t lead to additional skin and health problems in a few years? Maybe some other skincare could improve your skin more?

 

Bad news: it might be hard to answer these questions without a little understanding of the ingredients list and of the composition of the cream.

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Good news: find an easy explanation of the cream's composition below! And check the Examine skincare quality section for tricks that make reading an ingredients lists easy. This will help you to assess the quality of your skincare.

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How to find your ideal facial cream?

 

First of all, we need to understand what a facial cream is. Unfortunately, most face cream users have only a vague idea of it - and skincare producers exploit this fact. However, becoming a skincare expert is easier than you think - and will allow you to stop spending money on ineffective products! Have a look at our short explanation below!

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Facial cream: what’s that actually?

 

In essence, a facial cream is an emulsion (like ice cream or mayonnaise). This emulsion can be of two types: “oil-in-water” and “water-in-oil”. The first type is more widespread, however the second is more nourishing.

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To mix oil with water, emulsifiers are used. In basic terms, a cream is composed of an oil phase, water, emulsifiers, and additional ingredients.

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Tricks of skincare producers

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Most skincare producers use a vast amount of skin-useless or even harmful ingredients. Their ultimate aim is to make the production process easier and cheaper. Moreover, such ingredients, for example silicones, make cream look flawless, which increases its attractiveness for customers.

 

However, a good smell, a nice consistence and color of a cream do not guarantee its effectiveness and quality, even though it’s a very expensive product of an exclusive brand and is promoted by a famous person. Just have a look at the ingredients list - only it can reveal the truth about a product’s quality!

 

So, more specifically, what are the mysterious things a facial cream consists of?

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The basis of a face cream formula: oil phase

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The oil phase has an emollient function, which means that it moisturises and nourishes the skin as well as gives you a nice feeling by leaving a protective film behind. Moisturisation and nourishment are naturally more important for dry skin, but even oily skin needs to be moisturised and nourished if you use make up or during the winter time. 

 

The main emollients used in the oil phase:

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• plant oils

• plant butters

• fatty alcohols (can be both natural and non-natural)

• mineral oils

• petrolatums

 

​Mineral oils and petrolatums: your skin will suffer

 

Mineral oils and petrolatums (an example of a petrolatum ingredient is paraffin oil) are derived from petroleum and thus are the worst (and the cheapest) emollients possible! Imagine an oil spill spreading on the sea surface after an oil tanker accident. Mineral oils and petrolatums behave similarly on your skin - they form a film which doesn’t allow your skin to breathe and clogs its pores. An oil spill in the sea leads to an ecological catastrophe by causing death of fishes and other sea creatures, and our skin feels no better than them when a facial cream containing mineral oils or petrolatums is applied to it!

 

Natural emollients: your skin will love them

 

Opposite to the ingredients derived from petroleum, natural emollients not only allow skin to breathe but also help it remain young and healthy. Many natural emollients are capable of improving your skin radically - in this case they are called “active ingredients”. Certainly, they are more expensive than mineral oils and petrolatums, have shorter shelf life, and cream production process involving natural emollients is much more complicated (and costly). That’s why you can rarely find a facial cream with a high concentration of a precious oil

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Creatura Libera skincare: only natural emollients!

 

The Creatura Libera principle is that all the components we use in our skincare are the best ones - that’s why we use wonderful oils from Africa, Amazonia and other world regions, irrespective of their costs. When choosing our emollients, we are guided only by their quality and potential for addressing your specific skin concerns, not by their price!I

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Other ingredients

 

Other ingredients that you can find in your facial cream can be divided into 3 groups.

 

1. Active ingredients

 

These are ingredients which can improve your skin dramatically. For example, they help prevent wrinkles, lift or regulate oiliness balance. The ideal cream should contain active components addressing your individual skin concerns as well as antioxidants.

 

Large concentration (= amount) of active ingredients is essential.

 

We will never get tired to repeat that concentration of active ingredients (it means their amount in the final product) should be large enough to bring the best out of them. A list of ingredients reveals everything - the further from the beginning of an ingredients list is the position of a component, the smaller is its amount in the product.

 

A trick of skincare producers

 

Their aim is to draw your attention to a certain “tasty” component, for example the argan oil, in the advertising. However, the amount of the argan oil in the advertised cream is tiny, and in the end it doesn’t produce any effect on your skin.

 

Have a look at the ingredients list to make sure an ingredient which, according to the advertisement, is the main component of your face cream, is really constituting a large part of it!

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2. Ingredients that improve the cream’s appearance

 

Ingredients whose aim is to improve the appearance of a cream and stabilize the emulsion (=cream) do not lead to an improvement of your skin, but solely make a cream look better and feel nicer on your skin. Examples of such ingredients are silicones, fragrances, and many others.

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3. Preservatives

 

It is impossible to produce a cream without them. If a skincare product contains water, preservatives are essential to keep it safe from bacteria and mold.

 

One of the advertisement lies

 

Do not believe advertisement saying that there are no preservatives in a cream - we have checked the content list of such creams many times, and they DO indeed contain ingredients playing a role of preservatives (producers simply exploit the fact that such ingredients have many functions, one of them is being a preservative, and do not underline that they have also a preservative function).

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Parabens: preservatives that might cause cancer

 

The question is about the kind of preservatives used. We are against all preservatives, whose name ends on “-paraben” since they might cause breast cancer. This has been a widely discussed issue in the recent years, however these preservatives still have not been forbidden.

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You will find only safe (and eco-certified) preservatives in the Creatura Libera skincare!

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Glycerine can harm your skin

 

You can often find glycerine in skincare products. However, if your facial cream contains a lot of glycerine, its effect on your skin is rather negative.

 

Why glycerine is that widely-used in moisturising creams?

 

Skincare producers like glycerine because of its ability to attract water. It would be nice if it attracted water only from the environment, but it also attracts all the moisture you have in the lower skin layers.

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Don’t buy products that contain a large amount of glycerine

 

When you apply a cream with a high glycerin concentration to your face, you immediately get a nice feeling of moisturised and smooth skin. Why? Because glycerine has an ability to hold moisture on the surface of your skin. However, lower skin layers remain dehydrated and, after a while, a nice feeling of moisturisation will turn into a very uncomfortable feeling of skin dryness - exactly because of glycerin.

 

Needless to say that in the long-run skin dehydration leads to wrinkles and other skin problems. Since it’s cheap and easy to use, glycerine is used as a moisturiser by many companies. Be aware of it - and don’t buy skincare with high glycerine concentration to avoid dehydratation!

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An easy way to find out whether there is a lot of glycerine in a cream

 

A rule of thumb - simply take a look at the ingredients list of a cream - if glycerin stands somewhere in its beginning, its concentration is high, if somewhere in the middle or in the end - its concentration is moderate or small.

 

Moderate or low glycerine concentration is OK

 

Glycerine is also used when active components are extracted from plants. In this case, glycerine doesn’t play a role of a “moisturiser”, its concentration (amount) in a cream is low. Glycerine is simply “carrying” active components with it. You’ll find only skin-friendly components in the Creatura Libera skincare. That’s why we don’t use glycerine as a moisturiser and its concentration in our products is low.

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Summing up: Your Ideal Face Cream Formula

 

1. addresses all of your individual skin concerns,

2. takes into account various environmental factors influencing your skin, for example the weather conditions,

3. contains a large amount of FRESH natural oils and other active ingredients,

4. doesn't include petrolatums, mineral oils, parabens, colourants and non-natural fragrances,

5. doesn't include glycerine in large amounts.

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