This is the miniature refrigerator that beauticians prefer since it keeps skincare products and cosmetics fresh and last longer.
It keeps skincare products and other beauty goods cold by maintaining a constant temperature of 35° F to 45° F.
It also provides anti-inflammatory and soothing benefits.
The beauty cooler can be used for storing topical creams, eye creams, facial tools, fragrances and nail polish.
Table of Contents
Is a Mini Skincare Fridge Worth Using?
Here we’re gonna address the mini refrigerator for skin care.
I get so many questions about this thing.
Whether it’s worth it, what you should keep in it, do you really need one.
So we’re gonna address all of those questions here.
For this review I decided to reach out to some of my favorite skincare experts and pros, so that they could also help answer some questions about that.
Hearing from all of them will give us a lot of perspective on whether you really need a mini refrigerator for cosmetics or not.
I avoided this topic for a while just because I didn’t want to push the idea of a skincare fridge on anybody.
It is a luxury item, it is definitely not a necessity.
Most skin care products are formulated to withstand different temperatures, really hot temperatures and really low temperatures. They are formulated to be stable and also used at room temperature.
That is the way to think about all of your skincare products. They should technically all be formulated like that.
In talking to experts for this article, it seemed like that was the consensus.
This is a luxury but not a necessity.
That said, after talking to the experts, I do feel like they gave some pretty compelling reasons why it would be nice to have a mini refrigerator for skin care and the types of products that you would want to keep in them.
What Products to Keep in a Mini Skincare Fridge?
So let’s go ahead and discuss those.
I was on a phone call with an expert, and I brought up the skincare fridge and how people are constantly asking about it. and she said: I love using my skincare fridge.
I was like, what?
We started talking about what it is that she loves to keep in her skincare fridge. She talked about how she loves to keep her antioxidants in her skincare fridge.
The reason for that, if you don’t know, is that antioxidants, like vitamin C, can be really unstable and they oxidize over time and that can sometimes be bad for your skin. But at the very least it can be very ineffective.
So your vitamin C isn’t as effective, you want it to be as stable as possible so that you’re really getting the full benefits from it.
Other ingredients are retinoids. They’re all derived from vitamin A, so they’re considered antioxidants as well. So if you can keep those in a skincare fridge, you’re prolonging the shelf life of these types of products.
When you think about the products that you want to keep in a skincare fridge, you want to think about what are the products that don’t last as long, because you can sort of preserve them or at least extend their shelf life just slightly by keeping it in the fridge.
Topical vitamin C and retinoids can be very unstable when exposed to heat and light. In a lot of ways the skincare fridge is also just protecting your products.
Other products you might want to keep in your skincare fridge are products that you want to have a cooling effect with.
Your toners, your sheet masks, your mists, even skin care tools, such as your jade rollers, the massagers. Any of the types of products that you want to have that extra refreshing feel to your skin. They can also be really soothing to the skin and even de-puffing to the skin when they have that cold feel to them.
You can keep those in a mini skincare fridge too and get an extra benefit from them.
A really good point is that you might want to have that cooling effect if you want to de-puff your skin and also if you have inflammatory acne, so that redness, that puffiness that you get from your acne and your breakouts, sometimes you might benefit from a cooling effect because it can help calm it down a little bit.
These experts really likes the idea of putting your skin care tools into a mini fridge and not in a freezer, because a freezer is a mistake for your skin, it’s too extreme of a cold temperature. That can even cause damage, like microscopic frostbite.
Products that are meant for your eye area are great in a skincare fridge for that soothing effect. The reason why it can also be really good for your eye area, especially your under eye area, is because it helps to temporarily constrict the blood vessels, so you’ll get that de-puffing, that soothing effect and it’s constricting the blood vessels.
People that have itchy skin or conditions like eczema or rosacea can really benefit from products being put into a skincare fridge.
This goes back to that soothing and cooling sensation that you get from cold products that you put on your skin.
Anybody that has itchy skin or is prone to eczema can use a chilled moisturizer or a body cream and that will help to take the itch away without the use of steroids.
It decreases the itch-scratch cycle.
Rosacea is exacerbated by heat so if you use any of these chilled products on your skin, it helps to really decrease that redness and flushing in your skin, because it’s also constricting the blood vessels.
There are also prescriptions that have to be kept in a fridge, not necessarily a skincare fridge, but in the fridge in general.
For example, the prescription Triluma has to be kept in a refrigerator.
I actually have had prescriptions and especially compounds that estheticians or dermatologists have recommended to me that they have said to keep in a refrigerator.
Also, the stem cell serum should be kept in the refrigerator.
So if the doctors say you have to keep your products in a refrigerator, obviously listen to them when they say that to you. You don’t need to have a skincare fridge, you can just use your regular refrigerator, but it’s also then nice to have a skincare fridge for those reasons.
For those of you that use benzoyl peroxide to treat your acne, that’s also an ingredient that can benefit from being stored in a skincare refrigerator.
It starts to denature at room temperature, but it’s really truly only a problem if you live in extremely hot temperatures.
It’s a similar concept with your antioxidants. You want to just make sure that you’re keeping them as stable as possible for a longer period of time.
The last type of product that you might want to keep in a skincare fridge are any DIY products. This can even go for the truly natural organic products, the ones that don’t have any preservatives in them. You definitely want to make sure that they don’t get any bacterial growth, so you would want to keep them in a skincare fridge.
That are all the reasons why you should have a skincare fridge and the types of products to use with it.
Cons of Using a Mini Refrigerator For Skin Care
But there are also some cons to consider before you go out and purchase a skincare fridge.
If you are going to store any of your products in your skincare fridge, you want to be very mindful of the fluctuating temperature.
You don’t want to take your product out and leave it out for a long period of time, because then it’s going from cold to hot.
You really want to be even more mindful of that if you are in extreme temperatures and you are leaving your products out of the fridge for extended periods of time.
Think about ice cream for instance.
If you take it out of the freezer and then you just let it sit and it starts to melt and then you put it back into the refrigerator, it changes the feel of it and the formulation.
You don’t want to have these fluctuating temperatures with your products because you might change the way that they feel and you might also change the stability of the ingredients, because you’re going between these two temperatures.
Another con of a skincare fridge is that it could change the consistency of some of your products.
Moisturizers, balms ointments, all those could become a little bit stiffer in a skincare fridge.
You could probably just warm them up with your fingers and then they do spread easily all over again.
But if they’re in droppers or they’re in pumps, then it might be really hard to get those out of the packaging.
These are just things that you want to keep in mind if you’re putting them in the fridge. You could make the packaging not work for them.
Another thing you should not to keep in your skincare fridge is anything that is oil-based. Your oil-based serums, your hair oils, your face oils, anything like that could really become a problem in your skincare fridge, because you could disrupt the emulsion and then all the ingredients could end up separating.
Another potential con of a skincare fridge and something that I’ve actually seen on social media is people saying that their products changed in consistency because they crystallized. The actual ingredients crystallized inside of the products when they put them in a mini skincare fridge.
That really shouldn’t happen. The manufacturer of the products should have already tested the products for extreme temperatures.
That said, ingredients like vitamin C or even UV filters could definitely crystallize, depending on the formulation. You want to be mindful of that. You could potentially put one of your products into the skincare fridge and then it could change the formulation completely.
That’s just something to be mindful too. You could end up ruining one of your products by putting it in the cosmetic fridge.
Chances are it’s not going to happen, but I guess at the end of the day you don’t really know.
A skincare fridge is not necessary.
Is it cute? Sure.
Can it help? For sure.
I was so surprised by how many of experts actually had really good things to say about a mini refrigerator for skin care.
It’s nice to have it, but you don’t need it.
Do I use one? Yeah, I got this one:
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.