You Don't Need a Separate Eye Cream!
Recommended Eye-Area Products
What Paula's Choice Customers Are Saying
After four months of using Moisture Boost Hydrating Treatment Cream the little lines around and directly under my eyes are not truly visible anymore. -Tina
But What About All Those Eye Creams?
The only thing you get when you buy an eye cream is a container that is half the size of a container of facial moisturizer yet the eye-area product costs twice as much. Plus, the eye-area product will contain nothing that will help the supposed special needs of this area any more than a state-of-the-art moisturizer can.
You can save money and take superior care of your eye area by using your face product (assuming it is well formulated and appropriate for the skin type) around your eyes!
But Aren't Eye Creams Specially Formulated?
No, eye creams are not specially formulated. It takes only a quick look at the ingredient list of any eye cream to see that it doesn't differ in any significant way from facial moisturizers.
More to the point, there are no studies that identify any ingredients or combination of ingredients that the eye area needs (or should avoid) that are different from those that skin on other areas of the face needs or doesn't need. When it comes to moisturizing dry skin, reducing wrinkles, building collagen, and improving skin tone, your skin needs the same ingredients, whether it's around your eyes or elsewhere on your face. Likewise for oily skin.
But Aren't There Certain Ingredients that Improve Dark Circles & Puffy Eyes?
No, there aren't. There is no research and no studies showing that any skin-care ingredient can eliminate or even reduce genetically dictated dark circles, puffy eyes, or sagging skin around the eye area.
What causes age-related or genetic puffy eyes, dark circles, and sagging CANNOT be altered by skin-care ingredients, whether they're in eye creams or in any other products. The ingredients that CAN improve the appearance of skin around the eyes are the exact same ingredients that work for the face.
Skin everywhere on the face needs antioxidants, ingredients that help make healthier skin cells, ingredients that build collagen, ingredients that protect from the sun (which greatly improves dark circles), ingredients to lighten discolorations, and ingredients that repair the skin's barrier. There are no special ingredients just for the eye area.
But Isn't the Eye Area More Sensitive?
Skin everywhere on the face, including around the eyes, needs gentle ingredients that don't cause irritation or a sensitizing reaction. Irritation steadily damages your skin, leading to collagen breakdown and inflammation, all of which slowly reduce your skin's ability to heal and act younger.
Every part of the face needs stable, potent, and GENTLE state-of-the-art ingredients. It doesn't make any sense to use that the eye area should get the good, non-irritating ingredients yet the face gets the bad ones.
Ironically, it turns out that eye creams often contain extremely irritating ingredients, including fragrance, coloring agents, sensitizing plant extracts, and synthetic fragrance, all of which are terrible for the eye area and for the face!
But Isn't the Eye Area Skin Thinner?
It is true that the skin around the eye is thinner, but when you compare eye creams to most face products, the eye creams generally are thicker and heavier; they aren't lighter weight at all. Most face products actually have a lighter and thinner consistency than eye creams.
Using thick eye creams can make your foundation or concealer crease into lines around the eye, which makes your wrinkles look even worse!
But Aren't Eye Creams Safer for the Eye Area?
No. If anything, eye creams can actually be dangerous! One of the many drawbacks of most eye creams is that they rarely contain sunscreen, which means that daytime use is a serious problem for the health of your skin.
Using an eye cream might make you believe you are doing something special for the skin around your eyes, but if it does not contain sunscreen, then you actually are putting your skin at risk of sun damage. In turn, that means wrinkles, skin discolorations (including dark circles getting darker), sagging, and age-related puffiness--all signs of aging that most of us would rather avoid.
A daytime moisturizer with the mineral sunscreen ingredients titanium dioxide and/or zinc oxide will provide protection against wrinkles, dark circles, and swelling.
OK, So What Should I Use Around My Eyes?
If the face product you're using or considering is well formulated to fight dry skin and wrinkles, repair skin, create healthier skin cells, build collagen, improve dark circles (to some extent), and prevent sun damage, then use it, and you will be doing the most you can via skin care for the eye area. All of those benefits have nothing to do with the label on the product; it is all about finding brilliantly formulated products.
You can indeed buy a well-formulated eye cream, but why waste your money when a well-formulated face product can provide the same, if not better, results? There are lots of brilliant products labeled for the face that are perfect for use around the eye area as well. Check out our receommendations at Beautypedia.
