I am always on the hunt for a good essence. They are probably one of my favorite parts of my skincare routine, and when formulated well, are incredibly hydrating and can help with the layers of your skin that are underneath the surface. If you want to know what are the key ingredients in the Primera Miracle Seed Essence, my thoughts, the Koreans’ thoughts, and where you can find this product yourself, keep on reading.
Things to know about the Primera Miracle Seed Essence:
Primera claims to be a plant-based, vegan Korean skincare brand. They formulate without parabens and synthetic fragrances. Most of their formulas include some kind of seed extract because they are the most nutrient dense part of the plant. They also focus on eco-friendly packaging and they donate part of their proceeds to green causes, such as wetland preservation, and community gardens. They are owned by AP Group who also owns Amore Pacific, Innisfree, Etude, LaNeige, Mamonde, and many more brands.
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are good for your skin:
- Nelumbo Nucifera Germ Extract (Lotus Seed Extract), although not incredibly well researched, is said to have anti-aging benefits, as well as brightening effects on the skin. It is also known to have soothing properties. This is the very first ingredient on the list, so it’s good that the ingredient they highlight is the first ingredient.
- Niacinamide is a well-tested and proven ingredient known for it’s brightening and sebum controlled properties. It can help reduce acne and reduce signs of aging. This ingredient also goes by another name: Vitamin B3.
- Adenosine is an antioxidant that has anti-irritant and anti-inflammation properties. Also, this ingredient may also have some antiaging properties that can prevent wrinkles, although there has only been one study on it.
- Sodium Hyaluronate is an ingredient that is incredibly similar to hyaluronic acid. The difference is that this form can penetrate deeper into the skin and is more stable than its chemical cousin. It improves dryness and helps revive the skin.
- Saccharomyces Ferment is a fermented ingredient that comes from yeast. It doesn’t seem to be incredibly well researched, but you will find it in most formulas that say they have something fermented in it. It is said to be full of vitamins and minerals that are good for the skin, plus it is hydrating.
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are “bad”* for your skin:
- There are no harmful or “bad” ingredients in this formula. In fact, there are only 11 ingredients in this formula.
Who is this product good for?
- All skin types
- Those who have sensitive skin
- Those who have allergy-prone skin
K-Points: 7/10
So, for beauty reviews, unlike my album unboxings, I will be much harsher on because this can directly impact your health, where buying K-Pop albums does not. It just impacts your wallet. As such, all of my beauty reviews will be out of 10 points. I will not be going over that number.
So, this is a relatively pricey essence for the benefits that my skin felt it got. Overall, its just nice. I didn’t notice any drastic improvement in my skin. It wasn’t overly hydrating, and overall, I don’t think it is worth the 58$ price tag. Also, I never use cotton pads with my essences, as I consider it to be a waste of product, so those are sitting under my sink to be used with my makeup remover. This will probably not be an essence I repurchase again, and while using it, I kept wishing I was using my Pyunkang Yul Essence Toner.
What are the Koreans saying?
I was digging through reviews on Hwahae (화해**), a Korean skincare app that lists out the ingredients of products from many brands for people to look through as well as post reviews. For this particular product, there aren’t many reviews. When writing this post, there were only 11, and although all were positive, it isn’t one of the brands highest ranking products. They mentioned how you can apply it lightly and still get a decent bit of moisture, but the price is a huge deterrent for them to keep rebuying this product.
Where Can I Buy It?
Whenever I buy K-Beauty, I do shop at a couple of different places. If you want to see all of the places that I shop at, you can check them all out here. I picked this up at Sephora, initially, as they do occasionally have Primera products. This isn’t currently on there, but they do have a few other Primera products. Plus, with Sephora, you can also use Rakuten for cash back off of your purchases on their site. You can also get it on the Primera website.
What is Rakuten?
Rakuten is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Rakuten, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over $80 back from them for purchases I was going to make anyway. That’s about 3 more albums I can buy!
If you’ve never used Rakuten before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using Rakuten. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from. Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Ulta typically has 3%. These are just some of the companies on the website, but there are other major retailers on there as well!
Rakuten also has a Google Chrome extension that will tell you as soon as you log onto a site that has cashback with a little pop-up in the corner so that you can ensure you are saving money!
What essence is your favorite, K-Nuggets? Let me know in the comments down below!
사랑합니다!
–Rachel
*I put bad in quotes here because everything is subjective. Just because an ingredient that may have some amount of research on it that it can cause issues in the skin exists in a product says nothing about how it is processed and refined when making the product. It also says nothing about where that particular ingredient came from and the quality of that ingredient. It’s just like with cooking you can have all the same ingredients to start, but depending on what you do with those ingredients, you can get two completely different end products. Liah Yoo, Youtuber and now the owner of the brand Krave Beauty, made an excellent video talking about this. You can watch that here.
**Note: 화해 still only exists in Korean, but some of the products can be searched for in English.
