Have you heard about the AHA Cleansing Research Wash (P725 /120g)? It’s a Japanese cleanser that is formulated to be multi-purpose: it aims to remove makeup, cleanse the skin, and exfoliate all at the same time. It claims to erase dullness for a complexion as fresh and glowing as if you had just had a beauty treatment, so let’s see if it delivered!

A little about my situation: I have dry and sensitive skin, as well as natural texture and acne marks.

I don’t rave about skincare lightly. As someone who develops skincare products for a living, it’s easy for me to filter out what works and what doesn’t. I like to say that a quick ingredients check should tell us everything we need to know if something works or not! Most of the time, how good a product is isn’t determined by fancy formulations, but the quality and concentration of the ingredients used.

There are so many products swimming in a sea of beauty aisles that it’s easy to get confused, or worse, make a mistake about their usage. Experiencing a bad reaction after combining multiple things in your routine is not unusual but it can be avoided. This is why it’s important to know how to use certain products together by understanding the effects of each one so you can identify what you really need.

We’ve talked about the proper way to layer skincare products before, and the general rule is to apply them on your skin from water-based solutions to oil-based solutions. This can also translate to using thinner skincare products first to thicker ones, or lightest to heaviest. With actives though, things get a little more tricky.