Innisfree is one of the biggest brands in Korea. I love trying products from them, as they have a huge line of products that address a variety of concerns. Today, we are going to be talking about the Innisfree Green Tea Seed Intensive Hydrating Eye Cream. Keep reading to find out more about the brand, the ingredients in the product, and where you can get it yourself!
Things to know about Innisfree Green Tea Seed Serum:
A couple of things to know about Innisfree:
- Innisfree is owned by K-Beauty giant AmorePacific (AP Group). This company owns:
- Amore Pacific
- Sulhwasoo
- Laneige
- Mamonde
- Etude (formerly Etude House)
- Hera
- Illiyoon
- Primera
- Espoir
- And more…
- Innisfree promotes healthy beauty, focusing on ingredients from Jeju Island, an island off the cost of mainland Korea that was created by volcanic activity
- They pledge the following:
- “promote healthy beauty through natural ingredients” – This is debatable in my eyes
- “Provide innovative and reasonably-priced skincare solutions” – I would agree with this, as all of their products I have tried were not exhorbitantly priced
- “Offer a sensorial escape through the wonders of Jeju Island” – I’m not sure if I truly feel like I’m in Jeju when I use their products
- “Preserve and protect nature’s vitality through eco-conscious initiatives” – They have launched the following initiatives related to this:
- Recycling Used Bottles Campaign allows customers to return their bottles to Innisfree in return for points that can later be used (this is only good if there is an innisfree near you)
- Play Green Campaign spreads education to consumers about how to make more ecoconscious choices with their purchasing power and in their daily lives
- Green Forest Campaign helps preserve and plant trees worldwide, through June 2019, they helped to plant 138,300 trees worldwide
- This brand is sold in China, as most AP group brands so there is a chance its products could be tested on animals (If you want to learn more about animal testing and Korea, I have a post on that).
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are good for your skin:
- Camelia Sinesis (Green Tea) Seed Oil & Extract 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.
- Caprylic Triglyceride is an ingredient that is made by combining coconut oil with glycerin. It is a fatty acid and emollient that can help hydrate the skin. Also, it is full of antioxidants and can help make ingredients like Vitamin E work better.
- Vitamin E is an antioxidant that seals in moisture and smoothes the skin. This ingredient can help heal the skin and protect it from the sun as well.
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are “bad”* for your skin:
- Fragrance and Fragrant Components, Linalool and Limolene although not necessarily bad for the skin, can cause irritation for those with sensitive skin. That being said, I have sensitive skin, and do not have an issue with this product, so those with sensitive skin may be okay.
Who is this product good for?
- All skin types, except those who have a high allergic reaction to fragrance.
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.
For me, this eye cream is simply “okay”. It is lightweight, doesn’t make the eyelids oily, and it definitely provides hydration. For me though, the formula doesn’t have the extra “oomph” that I like to look for in my skincare. When looking through the formula, it’s not incredibly star-studded with hydrating or ingredients that could help with wrinkles or anything like that. It’s relatively basic. That being said, its lightweight nature is perfect for the summer. In the winter, if you have dry skin, I would not go for this eye cream at all.
What I can say about this product though, is for a beginner in the skincare scene, this product is a great place to start. If you aren’t sure where to start with formulas, or what ingredients you need, while you learn what your skin likes, this product is great. It is hydrating and gives you a place to start figuring out what you like in your formulas.
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. So, the Koreans actually didn’t give this product the best rating. The things that people like the most were the scent of the product, and the fact that it didn’t cause any issues with their skin, like milia or any allergic reaction. Some people were reporting that this product caused them to produce more oil on their eyelids. They also agreed with me and didn’t think it was incredibly effective.
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 purchase products from Innisfree from multiple places. They are available at Sephora, and I think that is where I got this from. Plus, with Sephora, 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!
What is your favorite eye cream, 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.
