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What’s your night time skin care routine? Does it take a good twenty minutes of prep time before you are actually ready for bed? Well unless you are hip to the K-Beauty skincare regimen, you ain’t seen nothing yet! This may be your first time even hearing that there is such a thing as K-Beauty – matter-of-fact, what in the hell is K-Beauty, you may ask?
Just like with K-Pop, the K in K-Beauty stands for Korean. It the well kept secret to the clear, baby soft skin that Korean women are known for achieving. How do they do it? They have a facial skincare treatment that is beyond, beyond! You may have to set aside a half hour or more to get through the 10 step K-Beauty skincare regimen that results in luscious, youthful skin that lasts well into old age.
Using a series of cleansers, moisturizing treatments, and serums, you too can achieve K-Beautiful skin. No skin damaging foundations and powders are needed when you master the 10 step K-Beauty skin treatment. It started out as a teenage fad, but now you can find sophisticated K-Beauty products for grown ass women like you!
We’re talking nearly $10 billion dollars in value for an industry that before now, most outside of Asia had never heard of. In fact, the vast majority of skincare products on the market come from somewhere in Asia – something like 80% of the global revenue! And the ingredients can sound very strange; pig collagen, snail mucin, snail slime, and bee venom just to name a few. The regimen includes:
- Double cleansing
- Sheet Masks
- Sleep Masks
- Deep Moisturizing Creams
- Toners
- Essences
- Serums
- Sunscreen
Apparently, these things have been giving Korean women that glassy clear and bright skin for centuries. Well now the rest of the world is jumping on the bandwagon. So we thought, why not get a head-start on this year’s Christmas list? We’ve given you a sweet selection of 15 of the best K-Beauty Christmas gifts to choose from!
THE TOP 10 BEST KOREAN BEAUTY CHRISTMAS GIFTS
Healthy skin is beautiful skin; that’s the K-Beauty philosophy. One of the most important elements necessary for extraordinarily beautiful skin is hydration. On this list we provided everything that you need to complete every step of the traditional 10 step K-Beauty night time skincare regimen.
The first step in a standard K-Beauty night routine is to use a good makeup remover. Pros recommend using a makeup remover that is gentle around the eyes. However, this step is only for those who wear makeup. Besides a specific makeup remover, this gift set has everything else.
That’s why we think that the very best gift you can give the K-Beauty lover in your life is the Complete 5 Step Bundle from Saranghae. This complete set comes with everything you need to create the natural glow of Korean skin.
You get a top quality deep cleanser, essence with serum, eye cream, rejuvenating cream, and toner. With this kit you can cut the time it takes for you to wash your face before getting into bed in half!
Once you’ve removed your makeup, you have to deep cleanse your face without drying it out. That takes a special cleanser and K-Beauty pros recommend a double cleansing. You’ll need one that rids your skin of dirty oil and then a foaming cleanser to pull the impurities out of your pores.
We love the Rice Water Bright Set from The Face Shop. This K-Beauty cleansing treatment comes with both a cleanser to remove oil as well as a foaming cleanser. Not only does it deep clean, it nourishes using rice water to brighten the skin and inject vitamins and minerals.
A bonus to using this kit is that the oil based cleanser is also a makeup remover. With this kit, your first two steps of your K-Beauty night time skin care regimen are complete!
Compared to traditional Korean skin care, westerners go way overboard on the exfoliation thing. While this is a crucial step in the K-Beauty regimen, it is one that is only to be done a couple of times a week at most. So we found the best, most traditional exfoliant.
The Snail Repairing Foam Cleanser from Mizon is one of those traditional K-Beauty products that we told you about; the kind with some unusual ingredients. Case in point, this K-Beauty face wash uses snail mucous to help clean and exfoliate the skin. The snail mucous is what makes the bubbles so firm – true story!
The fourth step in the K-Beauty regimen is supposed to soften up the skin after the cleansing phase and prepare it for the serums and moisturizers in the following steps. We found a fantastic option for this step using a serum that removes any of the debris left from cleaning and gets the skin ripe for treatment!
We recommend adding the Amore Pacific Vital Extra Moisturizing set from IOPE. This five part toning treatment emulsifies the skin, includes an eye cream to treat the soft skin around your eyes, serum to coat your skin and a moisturizing cream. Now you’re ready for step 5!
Now that your skin is supple and soft, you need to hydrate it with a water-based essence, as it is called. Basically it is water infused with different herbs, minerals, and extracts aimed at hydrating your skin deep below the surface.
We really dig the Essence Korean Skin Care toner from SeoulCeuticals. This toner blends several natural essences that help you balance your pH and brighten your skin, including: aloe vera, cucumber and tamarind extracts, Japanese green tea, and “marine” minerals. The best part about this thing is that you can carry it around and mist your face all day to keep your skin hydrated.
This next step is where you kick the treatment up a notch. Here, you are going to cover your face with a thick serum aimed at adding more moisture and then smoothing out your skin. Lucky for you, we found the perfect product for this step in your regimen!
The Snail Repair Intensive Ampoule from Mizon is made specifically for this step in your K-Beauty routine. After gently getting to this point, this treatment is supposed to really get in there and start repairing damage. Made of 80% snail filtrate extract, this is a must-have.
Unless you are already familiar with this 10 step K-Beauty treatment, you probably don’t know a thing about sheet masks. That’s because they are generally made and used by Asian women who have long used snail jelly to make their skin more supple and youthful.
This treatment is only supposed to be done once each week as part of your nightly skin routine, say Saturday night. On top of all of the other moisture you’ve injected into your skin, this one pushes it even deeper into your pores. We actually found two different sheet masks for you to try.
You can try the Snail Jelly Face Mask from Skederm that comes with 10 sheets in a pack. These sheet masks are super absorbent and will adhere really nicely to your face. The other we found for the K-Pop fans out there. For you we found the X BTS Facial Mask Sheet Set from Mediheal – even BTS has gotten in on the K-Beauty game!
Our eyes tend to get short shrift when we are caring for our faces. But that soft patch of skin under your eyes needs care and hydration too. Without it, you get those saggy dark bags under your eyes and nobody wants that. We found an excellent eye cream for you.
The Korean Moisturizer Night Cream from SeoulCeuticals is made for your whole face but specifically for the skin around your eyes. It is made almost entirely of snail mucin extract where the higher concentration results in a more noticeable effect. The rest is a combo of jajoba oil, shea butter, and aloe.
How long have you been washing your face? Never fear, this is the last step of the night – the cherry on top if you will. You’ll round out your night time K-Beauty routine with what is known as a sleep pack; basically a sleep mask.
You’ll notice the cute panda packaging. That’s a throwback to the K-Beauty movement’s beginnings as a teenaged fad. You’ll find lots of K-Beauty products packaged in quirky little bottles like this. More importantly, this sleep pack is top of the line!
Everybody in the K-Beauty industry knows all about Tonymoly. It’s a top name brand in K-Beauty and makes the best sleep pack – the Panda’s Dream White Sleeping Pack. Lavender, bamboo sap and extracts, along with berry and rosemary extracts, combine to create the ultimate moisturizing sleeping mask.
When you wake up in the morning after going through all of those steps, you should see a dramatic difference in the brightness and smoothness of your skin. But as soon as you shower and walk out the door, you’ll lose that dewy glow won’t you? Not if you include the final step in this 10 step process – the morning moisturizer!
It doesn’t get any better than the Morning Recovery Snail Serum that we found from Cos De BAHA to do just that. When you wake up in the morning you want to moisturize with a product that includes sunscreen that you use daily.
Another option for your morning moisturizer that we felt we had to include is the Face Moisturizer from Mizon. This contains 92% Snail mucin extract and includes blemish care.
5 Best K-Beauty Christmas Gift Sets
Before you go, we promised 15 K-Beauty Christmas gifts! While these gifts are not specifically K-Beauty, we think each one of these make an excellent complement to any of the K-Beauty products we’ve reviewed!
Lavender and chamomile are some of the most relaxing aromatherapy fragrances you can find. We thought, while you are already getting your night time regimen on point, wouldn’t it be even better after a long hot bubble bath? Hell yes it would and the 9 piece Relaxing Spa Gift Basket for Women from Douce Nuit has it all:
Bath Bombs
Bubble Bath
Bath Salts
Body Scrub
Body Lotion
Handmade Basket
And Shower Gel
Say you want to get the woman in your life started with the K-Beauty regimen she’s been talking about. This complete kit is a great start! It comes with the toner, cream, serum, mask sheet, and morning cream that you need to do a quickie version of the 10 step treatment. The Peptaronic Complete Korean Skin Care Set from SNP Prep uses six different peptides to get moisture deep into the skin.
If lavender and chamomile isn’t your bag, you can hardly go wrong with the Rose Spa Gift Basket from Spa Luxetique. Rose just smells so pretty, especially when you use a rose infused bath bomb, pamper yourself with rose massage oil (and a massage, hint, hint), and smooth over your skin with a beautiful smelling body lotion. Then you can keep the box as a keepsake or perfume holder!
Women aren’t the only ones who like to smell good! That’s what we love the most about the Bath and Body Gift Basket for Women and Men from Lovery. This versatile basket is infused with scents that work well with a woman’s chemistry as well as a man’s. That’s great when you plan on taking that bubble bath together…ahem. On top of the smell goods, this basket comes with super soft bath towels too!
Think cotton linens when you think of the scents that come with the Bath Gift Set for Women from Green Canyon Spa. This set is the biggest on the list with 10 pieces that include shower gel, bubble bath, bath salts, a reed diffuser, flower soap, hand cream, and a pretty tote to boot! Plus, the soaps and lotions are full of vitamins and oils that are designed to leave your skin soft and moisturized.
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