I cannot believe that I haven’t posted about this product yet. Why, you may ask? Well, I have gone through multiple things of this serum, from start to finish. This tells you that I enjoyed it enough to repurchase it, despite all of the products I am trying at one time. If you want to find out the key ingredients in this product, as well as know why I enjoyed it so much, and where you can get it yourself, keep on reading.
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:
- Camellia Sinensis Seed Oil (Green Tea Seed Oil) 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.
- Squalane is a lighter form of squalene, which is one of the oils that is naturally found on human skin. Squalane is great for acne-prone skin, is a natural antioxidant and is a wrinkle fighter. It is great at reducing hyperpigmentation and UV damage.
- Lactobacillus Ferment Lysate is a probiotic that is found in many foods including yogurt and kimchi. In skincare, it is used as a natural preservative that can condition the skin, and some studies show that it can help prevent other skin conditions by promoting a healthy microbiome on the surface of the skin.
- Hyaluronic Acid (and Sodium Hyaluronate) are both different weights of Hyaluronic acid which is known for its moisturizing properties. Hyaluronic acid doesn’t just moisturize the skin, but it also draws water molecules in from the surrounding environment, allowing for continuous moisture throught the day.
- Lactic Acid is a skin exfoliator naturally found in spoiled milk that is great for anyone with acne-prone skin that can help firm the skin and fade hyperpigmentation. In comparison to other AHAs, Lactic acid is much more gentle than ingredients like glycolic acid, because it is a larger molecule, making it excellent for sensitive skin.
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are “bad”* for your skin:
- Fragrance is an ingredient that is known to cause inflammation in the skin. Although this ingredient is relatively high on the list, I have sensitive skin, and have not had issues with this product causing any irritation
- Linalool and Limolene are fragrant components that, yet again, can cause irritation in the skin. Even with these ingredients, I do find the formula incredibly gentle. Please only avoid this ingredient if you have allergies.
K-Points: 8/10
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.
If I am having a bad acne period, this is one of the formulas that I go for. It helps clear up problems quite quickly, while preventing the skin from drying out. Additionally it is quite gentle. That being said, if I am ever dealing with a bout of dryness or have a negative reaction on my skin, I do avoid this product until it clears up because I know that any amount of fragrance makes the problem worse and burns my skin. Overall, this is a really good formula, and I would greatly recommend it for those with acne-prone or oily skin.
What are the Koreans saying?
I was digging through reviews on 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. After reading online, many people were saying that Innisfree’s Green Tea line is their favorite line out of all of their products. They talked about how this formula was incredibly moisturizing and how it is great for sensitive skin. In the reviews, they couldn’t find many negative things to say about it, out of 220+ reviews, the product has 4.4 stars out of 5.
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 from Sephora and it’s normally priced 27$. Plus with Sephora, you can 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 you tried Innisfree before, K-Nuggets? What products did you like? 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.
