Every skincare product starts degrading once it’s opened. Too often we can find ourselves acting as if every bottle contains a perfect, unchanging supply.
And worse, some companies like for us to think this way. There are plenty of watered-down products that don’t deliver on real ingredients.
One culprit behind ineffective skincare products is time. There’s no fighting against the natural degradation of our products.
But there’s a way that we can learn to work with it. It comes down to understanding actives in skincare products and how to use them before we lose them.
What are actives in skincare?
In skincare, an ‘active’ ingredient is the most potent part of the formulation. It’s the element that’s meant to target a particular concern.
Some examples of active ingredients would be Vitamin A for anti-ageing, or ceramides for moisturising.
The word ‘ingredient’ is helpful to getting the most effective skincare products. Because as with food ingredients, skincare formulations can go bad too.
How to know if the actives in my skincare are working?
The most effective actives are as fresh as possible. However, many skincare products don’t come with a clear expiration date.
Some product containers will have a PAO (period after opening) label. This symbol will tell you how long you have to use up the product. For example, ‘12M’ would mean the product is good to use for 12 months.
Active ingredients are sensitive to light and heat, and will degrade over time without proper storage. Sometimes a smell or change in colour means that the active ingredients are no longer good.
Aside from that, there aren’t many ways to know that something’s ‘off’. But even before expiry, plenty of people aren’t getting the best use from their products.
Most skincare formulations expire faster than you might think. One study that examined retinoids found that almost all tested products had degraded by up to 80% within 6 months.
When you go to a restaurant, you’d trust that every ingredient was prepared carefully and immediately. With skincare, it’s a little more difficult since we can’t see the ‘kitchen.’
Even with the highest-quality skincare, it’s only a matter of time before it goes bad. Getting the best out of your products means taking expiry as seriously as you do with your food.
Ensuring peak potency in the Klira Special
At Klira, we have a plan to make sure you’re not putting weak, watered-down products into your routine.
The Klira Special has a formula to ensure potency: Ingredient x Dose x Base.
The ingredients are the Special’s powerful skincare actives. These are the parts of the formulation that directly address your skincare goals and concerns.
The dose is a carefully calibrated method to add more actives, bit by bit. As you continue with a new Klira Special each month, the right ingredients will be sprinkled in to customise your treatment.
And the base is the luxurious mixer that brings all the actives together. Just like an excellent chocolate seamlessly blends cocoa, milk, and sugar, the Klira Special’s base is the silky, lotion-like element that binds together the formulation’s different ingredients.
We don’t create formulations en masse, and we don’t intend them to be one-size-fits all. Instead, each Klira Special is unique and evolving. It’s individually packaged and shipped out while it’s fresh.
There’s no time (or money) to waste on ineffective, low-grade formulations. We don’t want you to spend on skincare that’s halfway to its expiration date.
The Klira Special is designed for skincare that’s specific, not general. It aims to promote health, not just surface looks.
What goes on your face should be fresh. At Klira, we’re creating those meticulous formulations for radiant results.
Exponent sources
- Retinoid stability and degradation kinetics in commercial cosmetic products
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jocd.13852?af=R
- dating of cosmetics
- https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-labeling/shelf-life-and-expiration-dating-cosmetics
- What are active ingredients?
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927776522003599
- For this purpose, cosmetic industries use active ingredients with multifunctional properties [4], [5], [6], [7] (antioxidant, anti-aging, photo-protective, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, …). However, these compounds are generally sensitive to various external factors such as light, temperature, oxygen and pH [5], which can lead to their degradation.
