Recently, I found a large sale of products on Hautelook for the K-Beauty brand Sandawha. Naturally, I picked up quite a few of thier products to try for you all. Today, we are talking about the Sandawha Alpha-bisabolol Brightening Foaming Wash which I have been testing for a few months. Keep reading to find out what’s in the formula, my thoughts, the Koreans’ thoughts, and where you can find this yuorself.
Things to know about Sandawha Alpha-bisabolol Brightening Foaming Wash:
Sandawha was established in 2004, wanting to help people with skin related diseases. Quite literally, the brand name, Sandawha means camellia flower in Korean (산다화). They use the purity of this flower from Jeju island (off the shore of Korea). The pride themselves on the following:
- Using clean, raw ingredients
- Hazardous substance-free components
- Manufaturing and Researching their products from start to finish in one lab
- Being cruelty-free
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are good for your skin:
- Camellia Sinesis (Tea) Leaf Extract is an ingredient commonly used in K-Beauty. It is rich in antioxidants that will help repair and rejuvenate collagen. Additionally, it is incredibly moisturizing and research shows that it has anti-bacterial properties.
- Citrus Limon (Lemon) Fruit Extract is an extract that is high in antioxidants and Vitamin C. Lemon extract is also full of the AHA, citric acid, which helps increase cell turnover to brighten scarring, reduce the appearance of hyperpigmentation. It also has astringent properties that can help dry the skin out.
- Raphanus Sativus (Radish) Root Extract is an ingredient that is full of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals that can help protect the skin. Additionally, it contains natural antibacterial incredients to help those with acne prone skin.
- Alpha-bisabolol is an ingredient that is naturally found in plants like chamomile. It is an ingredient that can calm acne prone skin, and hel p prevent future breakouts.
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are “bad”* for your skin:
- Linalool and Limonene which are fragrant components that can cause skin sensitivity, irritation, or allergic reactions. One thing I will say though: I have very senstive, allergy- prone skin, and I haven’t had any bad reactions to this product yet
Who is this product good for?
- Oily skin
- Combination Skin
- Normal Skin
- Acne Prone skin
- I do not recommend this product for those with dry, dehydrated or sensitive skin in the winter
K-Points: 6/10
So, for beauty reviews, unlike my album unboxings, I will be much harsher on because this can directly impact your health, whereas 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, I fall into the category of people that I would not recommend this product for, as I have very dry sensitive skin. As such, for me, personally, I am ranking this product quite low. I did like the foam and the texture of the product. This product has been very stripping, especially now that the weather has gotten colder. When it was the summer, I didn’t feel it to be as stripping, but it did definitely take care of all of my face oils.
I, personally, will not be finishing my bottle of this. Instead, I will be passing it along to a friend who has oilier skin, as she is closer to the target audience for this product. For all of my dry skin girls out there, if you are considering this product, don’t consider trying it in winter. Only attempt to try it in the summer.
What are the Koreans saying?
I was digging through reviews on 화해 (Hwahae)**, a Korean skincare app that lists out the ingredients of products from many brands for people to look through as well as post reviews. On Hwahae, there are only 2 reviews of this product: both giving a 4 or 5-star review. They talked about how much they enjoyed the pump on the product and the texture of the foam. They also talked about how it helped with the texture of their skin. That being said, they were a bit disappointed because the foam absorbed into the skin relatively quickly, which a cleanser really shouldn’t do.
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 actually picked these products up on sale at Nordstrom Rack, during a flash sale. Plus with Nordstrom Rack, you can also use Rakuten for cash back off of your purchases on their site.
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!
Have there been any products you tried and didn’t enjoy, 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.
