Is cheap or expensive skincare better?
It depends. Let’s investigate.
We love nothing better than a good dupe. The feeling to have beaten the system by getting high-end quality for less – that’s what millions of TikToks rely on. And dupe culture has truly been getting out of control lately: from dupes that only have a passing resemblance to the original to outright fakes.
I’ll offer you something better: a few easy questions to determine for yourself what skincare to go for. Because, I’m sorry to say, blanket statements like ‘all micellar waters are basically the same so go for the drugstore version!’ or ‘only buy expensive face serums because they have the best ingredients’ are simply – wrong.
Obviously, you won’t find any blanket statements here. I don’t think that expensive skincare is automatically better, nor do I think it’s automatically worse. I want you to figure out what skincare features are important for you.
The ‘I just read the ingredient list’-approach
It’s very difficult to outright impossible to determine how a product will perform on your skin from an ingredient list alone. Use them as a pointer: are there ingredients you are allergic to? Are there ingredients your skin usually likes? And that’s it. Imagine an ingredient list like a recipe: flour, eggs, sugar, milk and butter might give you a cake – or pancakes. There’s a difference in products, even if their ingredients are similar.
Point 1: Know thy skin!
As always, it’s absolutely invaluable to know your skin, its likes and dislikes and your needs. That’ll make you more independent from marketing claims and overbearing sales people. I could stop this post here, but it’s not that easy easy: when you think you’ve figured out that your skin loves BHAs, along comes brand A (super cheap) and brand B (super expensive) with their BHA products and both want to ensnare you. How to choose?!
Point 2: Packaging
How important is packaging for you, and are there products where it matters more? This includes not only a luxurious packaging that feels great in your hands and looks pleasing on a shelf. This also includes sustainability, if that’s important to you, and functionality. I absolutely love a $4 toner from the drugstore, but the cap is always wonky. Is that enough to turn you off?
There’re also produuct stability and hygienic aspects here: retinol and vitamin c should always be in airless packaging. End of story. Otherwise, you should be prepared to replace them often. I also have personal quirks: I’d never buy an eye cream in a pot. That’s just how it is. Obviously, state of the art or downright luxurious packaging costs more, but also be prepared to spend more on airless containers or products that can be refilled.
Point 3: The single-ingredient formula
With the advent of The Ordinary’s formulas, this was suddenly an approach loads of companies followed. Take a single active ingredient, throw it into a solvent, bottle it, sell it. It’s an approach that’s slightly old-fashioned today (even The Ordinary doesn’t di it in its newer formulations), and has its pros and cons. First, single-ingredient products tend to be cheaper, obviously. Second, if you’re allergic to a single ingredient, it’s easy to work around that. Say you’re sensitive to Vitamin C – easy to avoid that, because you won’t find formulas with 10 antioxidants in their portfolio.
Third, if you want a lot of actives in your routine, products, steps and prices will add up: I personally like to have a serum, for example, that includes ceramides, antioxidants and hyaluronic acid instead of buying three: a ceramide treatment, an AOX and hyaluronic acid one. Sensitive skin might benefit from a well-rounded formula with a lot of buffers and soothing ingredients when they use retinol, for example. That’ll never be a single-ingredient formula.
Nowadays, I actually like a product that offers lots of actives in one go – I’m no longer really willing to spend a lot of time on my skincare routine. That makes a product like the Allies of Skin Moisturizer pictured above worth its money.
Point 4: Luxurious texture
It’s not impossible to find incredibly pleasant formulas in cheaper skincare products. It’s more likely, though, to find them in more expensive ones. If you’re only concerned with results in your skincare, that likely won’t bother you. If you want products which offer a sensory experience, you’ll likely find that in high-end skincare.
Point 5: corporations vs indies
Huge corporations (think Lauder, L’Oreal or Unilever) have the money to actually fund research and development. They will likely come up with cutting edge technologies that they’ll use in their prestige brands that’ll trickle down into their drugstore brands after a few years. They have the power to make a real difference, be that sustainability or even human rights. Examples: Lauder has pledged their support for communities impacted by mica harvesting, while L’Oreal is the leader in developing artificial human skin that will make animal testing completely obsolete. They have the weight to actually implement change – and often don’t use it, or interpret customer demands completely wrong.
That’s where indies and small businesses shine. They often burst into the market due one specific need they address, and will often be very rooted in their specific community. You can directly support feminist, queer, Black communities by shopping these. Smaller batches will always mean higher prices, though, and very likely more expensive shipping fees.
And now?
My skincare needs have changed over the years. While in the past, the only thing I wanted was skincare that worked, I now want my skincare to feel good, as well. And while I really don’t care about how products look in their packaging, it’s still important to me that their packaging is functional. There’s a lot of leeway around those points – you’ll have seen in my latest skincare routine post that I’m using everything from drugstore to really high-end products. The thing is that price isn’t really a quality marker in skincare. It might tell you some things, but not the whole story.
Please note that this post is not sponsored in any way! Twindly is an independent blog, and our reviews reflect that. Sometimes we’ll use affiliate links that will be clearly marked. Affiliate links mean that if you choose to buy a product through this link, I’ll earn a small commission at no extra cost for you. If you decide to do that, thank you for helping to keep the blog afloat! (No matter if the link is affiliate or not, the reviews will always truthfully reflect how any product performed when I tested it.)
