In this review, I’m going to be sharing with you my top 10 favorites from the brand Avene.
I will group the products by cleanser, moisturizer, sunscreen and then active ingredients.
Table of Contents
1. Oil-free Gel Cleanser
It’s number one Avene product in the realm of cleansers.
It’s super gentle and effective for cleansing. It’s good for people with oily skin and it’s also good for people who tend to be more dry and sensitive. Overall it favors a more oily to normal skin type.
It’s formulated with zinc gluconate, which is anti-inflammatory and can help facilitate a little bit of skin cell turnover and encourage sloughing off of dead skin cells.
What I really like about it is that, because it’s a gel cleanser, it’s less drying on the skin barrier, in comparison to a foaming cleanser.
2. XeraCalm A.D. Lipid-Replenishing Cleansing Oil
This is the second cleanser. This product is really good if you have dry skin or mature skin or particularly sensitive skin. Maybe you’re coping with a lot of irritation.
It’s an oil, but it’s also got emulsifiers polyethylene glycol. It works up into a creamy lather and then rinses off, but it’s not stripping whatsoever.
If you wear a lot of heavy makeup, you’re definitely going to need to use a dedicated makeup remover or cleansing balm beforehand. But this is actually pretty good at cleansing the skin in general so. If you don’t wear much of makeup, I think this is just just fine.
This is particularly good for very mature skin. It’s super gentle. As we get older, our skin doesn’t make as many lipids and we’re more sensitive to the surfactants and cleansers that can strip away our lipid barrier. So this is a really good one for those folks in particular.
Let’s move into the next category of products – moisturizers.
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3. Cicalfate Post Procedure
I love this moisturizer! it’s really wonderful if you have oily skin, acne prone skin, sensitive skin or rosacea. It’s not heavy, it’s not greasy.
This product is really good after a procedure or your skin is healing. But you can use it as an everyday moisturizer.
It’s got an ingredient in it called aluminum sucrose octasulfate. This facilitates healing. It’s actually used to treat ulcers in the gut and when applied to the skin, it can promote wound healing. It also has zinc sulfate, which is anti-inflammatory and very soothing.
This particular moisturizer is also fantastic now that we’re wearing masks and suffering a lot of irritation. You’ve got moisture being trapped, you’ve got irritation from rubbing. You really need something that’s going to facilitate repair and healing.
The emulsion is really lightweight and people with oily skin like it. People who have rosacea tolerate it well. But if you have really dry skin and you’re looking for a more richer cream check out
4. Xeracalm AD Lipid Replenishing Cream
I adore this product for dry dermatitic eczema prone skin. It’s an airless pump, fragrance-free, fantastic for people with eczema.
This particular product has evening primrose oil in it which is anti-inflammatory and has been shown to be helpful in the skin of people with eczema. It’s a source of omega fatty acids.
But this product also has an interesting ingredient that is derived from aquaphilus dolomiae. This is basically a bacteria that is in the spring water.
It is know that thermal spring water is rich in prebiotics and postbiotics that can help in cultivating your skin microbiome.
This particular bacteria is present in the thermal spring water and is thought to be a major component of the benefits that are observed when treating people with eczema.
This particular bacteria has a compound called l-modulia and this particular compound has been shown in lab studies to influence the inflammatory mediator profile.
The ingredient list overall is minimal, which I like and is wonderful for people who have irritation-prone skin.
So this is a really good moisturizer and honestly if you have oily skin, don’t be afraid of putting something like this on your face.
The third product in the moisturizing category is a lip balm.
5. Cicalfate Restorative Lip Cream
I really like this for acutely irritated lips, where you’ve got a lot of cracking and fissuring. It really can facilitate healing. This is something you actually want to use at night.
It’s got that sucralfate in it, which facilitates healing. You can imagine how that’s going to be helpful for healing the fissures of the lips and dry, irritated lips. It’s also got zinc in it, which is anti-inflammatory.
It really keeps that seal on there for a long time. It seems like the seal is more withstanding than just petrolatum. This formula holds up better under exposure to water, either from saliva or drinking beverages. It’s really more resistant to wearing off in comparison to just using vaseline on your lips.
It’s not perfect, it’s not like it’s a permanent seal or a permanent band-aid, you do still need to reapply it. But I find that it holds up a lot longer than petrolatum.
No fragrance in this or flavorants, which can aggravate the skin of the lips and cause even more kelitis and dryness.
It’s really good, highly recommend it if you’re looking for a healing lip balm. If you have cracked, uncomfortably painful lips, this is something that you might want to use to treat that, to help improve that.
Moving on to sunscreen.
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6. Mineral Sunscreen Fluid SPF 50+
This is a mineral sunscreen that is pretty matte. I’ve always liked this. This particular tint is more helpful for people with medium to deep skin tone.
Another option you can try is
High Protection Tinted Compact
It’s really good if you’ve got sensitive skin. It’s not going to burn or sting. The finish on this particular product is very matte. But I do find that a lot of people, especially people who wear makeup, appreciate that.
I have to say the coverage on this is pretty good and so much so that many people who wear makeup and are used to wearing foundation, they find that this gives more coverage than like a typical tinted sunscreen. They might actually be okay with skipping their foundation in favor of just this.
It goes on well underneath makeup, without any pilling or balling because it does have that matte finish.
What i like most about this is that we have now learned that iron oxides are really helpful in protecting against those pro-pigmenting wavelengths of visible light.
It comes in beige and honey. Honey is probably better for medium to deep skin tones.
So those of you who wear makeup and struggle with the issue about putting on sunscreen over makeup, try this. It is quite good. It’s not as good as using a sunscreen because you are still going to get skip areas and areas that you’re going to miss with applying the compact on, but it definitely gives good coverage and good sun protection in the areas that you hit.
Moving on to active ingredients products.
7. Akerat Smoothing Exfoliating Cream
This particular moisturizer has urea salicylic acid and lactic acid.
It’s going to exfoliate and it’s particularly good if you have dry, dull skin with rough patches. It’s also good if you have some areas either on the body or the face where you’ve got post inflammatory hyperpigmentation and you’re looking to accelerate the rate of clearance of that.
You can use this on the face, it’s fine to do so, but because it has salicylic acid, lactic acid and urea, it can be irritating and it can sting and burn. You have to figure out a) if you tolerate this okay without irritation and b) the frequency with which you can tolerate using it without too much irritation.
But it’s ultimately a very good moisturizer for people who have dry, dull-appearing skin that they’re looking to rejuvenate the appearance of. It’s good for people who have a lot of photo aging that they’re looking to improve. It’s good for mature skin where you have a little bit of a delay in skin cell turnover due to age related changes.
But if you have super sensitive skin, this can cause a lot of burning and stinging.
This product is also good though if you have acne prone skin because a salicylic acid can help give a little bit of acne control. It’s also very good for pores.
The urea in this is going to soften dry patches as well and it also facilitates natural moisturizing factor production and maintenance of the moisture barrier.
Moving along to the next set of active ingredients.
To me, Avene’s strength has always been the fact that they have a line of retinaldehyde products.
Retinaldehyde is a form of topical vitamin A that is effective for improving the look of wrinkles and fine lines. Unlike retinol where your skin has to do two things to get it to its active state, in case of retinaldehyde, your skin only has to do one thing to it.
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8. Retrinal 0.1% Intensive Cream
This has a retinaldehyde and it also has pro elastin peptide, which basically can help boost that moisture and help promote elasticity.
But always be a little suspicious of the claims of efficacy of peptides in skin care products. Most of them haven’t been robustly substantiated, but they are good humectants, so basically this is moisturizing and it has a retinaldehyde.
Retinaldehyde is less irritating than retinoic acid aka tretinoin, but it is effective. You just have to use it consistently.
Avene has the 0.1, which is what I show here and then they have basically the same product at 0.05 percent.
Don’t fuss over the percentage strength. The 0.05 is probably a little less irritating than 0.1% but this is so gentle, it’s like splitting hairs between the two. There isn’t really substantial difference in terms of the outcome between the different percentages.
The main thing is that lower percentages are less irritating and take a little bit longer to start working. Higher percentages are more irritating and work more quickly.
9. Retrinal Advanced Wrinkle Corrector
This is another good retinaldehyde product. Unlike the intensive cream, it does not have the pro-elastin peptide. Instead it has brown algae, which will add hydration to the skin and it also has hyaluronic acid.
Both of these ingredients are humectants. They add a lot of hydration. Because of that, with the advanced wrinkle corrector, you will see improvement in fine lines more quickly, almost right away. It really amps up the hydration to smooth out those, but it doesn’t mean that the retinaldehyde is working faster. It’s really just the effect of those humectants plumping up the skin cells.
Mini Refrigerator For Skin Care & Cosmetics
10. RetrinAL Eyes
Retinol or any form of topical vitamin A can be super irritating around the eyes. If you want to use vitamin A around the eyes to improve the look of wrinkles and fine lines, I actually recommend using a dedicated eye cream with whatever form of vitamin A you want to go with.
But if you want to use retinaldehyde instead of retinol, because your skin only has to do one thing to retinaldehyde to get it to its active state, then I do recommend the RetrinAL product for eyes.
This one’s got the brown algae and it’s got hyaluronic acid. Those two ingredients alone are going to improve the look of fine wrinkles around the eyes just through hydration.
This product also has dextran sulfate that helps with hydration and imparting moisture retention.
It’s a really good eye cream.
Those are my top 10 products from Avene. They have a lot of great products, but these are my top ten.
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Rebecca is a licensed aesthetician and certified laser technician with almost 15 years experience in the dermatology. Her life-long passion is making people look good and happy.