Welcome to part one of rating viral skincare products on whether or not they’re suitable for acne prone, texture prone skin. This is my hot take on their formulas and any helpful takeaways I might spot. It’s important to remember that identifying ‘pore clogging’ ingredients and simply vetoing products based on the mere presence of them is a silly and ineffective practice, so I’ll try to take a balanced look at each of these and give my best suggestions.

Drunk Elephant D-Bronzi Drops and Rosi Drops

I’ve grouped these two together because, after having a quick look, it’s easy to see that the formulas are nearly identical.

What I like about them is that they’re both fragrance and essential oil free, which is always a good start and the first thing I look out for. Little education piece here that I always feel obliged to say: even if your skin isn’t sensitive, exposure to lots of essential oils and perfumed products can, over time, sensitise you and cause unwanted reactions, so if you can avoid them – do!

Overall, there isn’t anything majorly problematic about this product when it comes to the formula, there are no red flags. However, it’s become super popular on TikTok to mix these with any moisturiser people have to hand – and I think herein lies the problem. I resist any kind of ‘experimentation’ when it comes to skincare and things I put on my face, and I believe that people could easily see some breakouts or reactions when they’re creating rogue concoctions, using anything they can find that might mix well with the D Bronzi drops.

For this reason, I’d recommend only mixing with existing moisturisers that don’t break you out, and resist creating wild ‘potions’ with products for the body or that have been sitting under the sink for years (trust me, I speak from experience).

Soon Jung Barrier Intensive Cream

I’ll get straight to the point with this one, it’s most likely either going to work well for your skin, or it’s not. In my opinion, that’s because the shea butter that it contains can either be a love or hate ingredient for acne-prone skins.

I don’t usually like to demonise and call out singular ingredients in this way, because we know that comedogenicity is a much more complex subject. I recommend reading our post on ‘How Accurate Skincare Ingredient Checker Websites Are’ and also watching this video to understand more about why, but in general shea butter is like marmite, and you’ll either react fine and dandy or you won’t – i’m in the latter camp.

If you’re reading this and feeling like you have absolutely no idea, think about whether you’ve reacted well to thick, rich creams in the past? If not, it may be because most of them contain shea, so that’s something to think about.

CosRX Snail Mucin Power Essence

The fact that this has a mere twelve ingredients is a delight to my eye – when you expose your skin to less ingredients overall, you stand less of a chance of reacting to the formula (this is why I also recommend not swapping out your products all the time if they’re working fine for you). However, snail mucin is also a crowd divider. Some absolutely love it, and others find it triggers breakouts.

At the end of the day, snail mucin is a rather odd ingredient, and it’s completely possible that your skin takes a disliking to it, just like it might with anything else – food, drinks, allergens etc. I’d therefore recommend patch testing it before you commit to using it on your whole face. To do this, you can try it on just one area of your face. I usually go for the lower half of my cheek, daily for a week. If you break out there and usually don’t, you can know it’s most likely the mucin, and be glad you saved yourself the pain of dealing with breakouts all over your face.

There have also been some recent findings that people with dust mite allergies also seem to react poorly to snail mucin, so especially consider patch testing if this is you.

SOS Daily Rescue Hypochlorous Acid Facial Spray

Last but not least we’ve got a fairly recent TikTok viral beauty product, the Tower28 hypochlorous acid spray. Weirdly enough, I actually already use hypochlorous acid on my eyes for blepharitis and stye prevention. The ingredient itself is quite a multi-use product that is widely used within medicine, so it makes sense that it has some benefits to those suffering from acne. Most commonly people see a reduction of redness and inflammation, faster healing of acne and prevention of future breakouts. 

For me this product is an easy yes, it’s a super light spray with next to zero ingredients (just water, salt and hypochlorous acid) so it’s virtually guaranteed that this won’t cause you any clogged pores or texture. As always, there will be some people who don’t get along so well with it, but nothing is for everyone, and thus the frustrating struggle that is skincare continues for us all!