Love Your Skin: The Ordinary

I’m a skincare junkie. I’ll admit it.

I’m constantly researching skincare products celebrities name drop, beauty websites’ “Best of” lists and fellow bloggers recommendations to find new products to promise anti-aging, brightening, and clear skin boosting properties.

Also, I don’t want to spend over $100 for one beauty product. I know I’m asking a lot, right?

Lo and behold, along comes Deciem, the parent company of several brands focused on exceptional beauty products. Specifically, I’ll be focusing on their brand, The Ordinary.

The Ordinary may sound like an ironic name since Deciem is the self-proclaimed abnormal beauty company. However, their mission with “The Ordinary” is to bring time tested, proven and effective ingredients at reasonable price points.

How do they do that?

By keeping it simple with each serum containing 1 or 2 active ingredients at most. The most expensive product in this line is under $18.

I bought 6 products in total and that was pared down from what I originally had in my cart:

Matrixyl 10% + HA – reduces the look of static and dynamic wrinkles

Advanced retinol 2% – anti-aging treatment without irritation

Alpha Arbutin 2% + HA –  reduces hyperpigmentation

Buffet – targets multiple signs of aging

Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% – reducing skin blemishes and congestion

Azelaic Acid Suspension 10% – brightens skin tone, evens texture and reducing look of blemishes

Disclaimer: I have stubborn skin. It rarely gets red or irritated, so I just started using them every night. My 2 favorite products to use were the Advanced retinol 2% with the Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% together. These two products alone made my skin clearer, brighter and softer and gave an almost creamy quality to my skin sans makeup. Hooray!

I also liked using the Matrixyl 10% + HA to spot treat certain areas where my wrinkles were more prominent-mainly forehead and felt it helped soften the lines.

Honestly, I haven’t had the chance to try the other serums I bought just yet because these two are working so well for me! Although with the warmer weather coming up, I tend to lay off the retinol as it does make one more sensitive to the sun and at a higher risk of hyperpigmentation.

With the change in season, my skincare routine changes with it. I’ll save the routine change for a later blog post.

More products can be found at their website The Ordinary.

What products do you use to take care of your skin? What’s your routine? Let me know in the comments below! – Adrienne