One item that I have been using for years, now: this is the
La Roche-Posay Effaclar Duo (+).
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I have been using this cream since... 2015? I think? It was
the only thing I used, at one point. This cream is part of the Effaclar range
of products, which are targeted at blemish-prone, problematic skin. That’s
exactly the kind of skin I have, so it should work great on my skin, right? I
must have been using it for such a long time for a reason, surely it is a good
cream! Well, let’s see!
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Packaging: outside, it’s a white cardboard packaging with
all the necessary info about this cream. Pretty basic. It looks like a medical
product with the white and light blue colours. Inside is the cream itself. It
comes in a soft plastic tube that continues with the medical design like on the
outer packaging. It looks like an expensive cream when you look at the tube,
I’ll admit. The cap closes very tightly. I like this design, it’s quite
elegant! And the soft plastic makes it easy to dispense just the right amount
of cream. This tube ends with a thin nozzle applicator. It’s very good! It can
dispense a very small amount of cream, the tiniest little bead, or a lot! It’s
super precise, which helps prevent wasting too much cream in one application.
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Ingredients: glycerine, niacinamide/vitamin B3, zinc, salicylic
acid, Vitreoscilla ferment for nourishment. No parabens. It’s interesting that
salicylic acid is present both as capryloyl salicylic acid and as pure
salicylic acid. So, theoretically, it should work wonders with acne-prone skin.
Also, the water is supposedly their “special” thermal spring water. There’s
also mannose, which stimulates skin regeneration. And something they
patented, called ”Procerad”. Nowhere in the ingredients list will you find
ceramide, so... yeah, it’s easy to say that your expensive cream contains oooh
this special thing, but you have to corroborate it in the ingredients list. The
scent is barely there, smelling a bit chemical, or like thermal water. A bit
zincy, too. The expiration date is 12 months after opening.
This is a white cream. This cream isn’t greasy at all, but
it’s also not watery. It’s got a very pleasant consistency, feeling silky and
totally smooth. It is slightly thinner than a lot of other creams, though. I
really like this formula, it feels so nice on skin! And it feels incredibly
hydrating, too, like, you can feel the cream drawing in moisture! It gives you
a very nice calming sensation as well, like, it’s gently cooling, as if you
stepped into a hot spring and felt the thermal water restoring your skin.
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It’s not at all heavy on the skin, although it can sometimes
feel like a very thin cast over your skin. It’s still plenty comfortable! This
cream absorbs very quickly, and it doesn’t leave a greasy or tacky residue
after it dries. However, there is something horrible with this cream. At first
I thought it was the serums underneath the cream, but this happened even when I
used the cream at night, on bare skin. It pills insanely! Like, most of the cream
will be gone if you try to touch the skin after it has dried from all the pilling! That also makes it so much more frustrating to apply makeup on top of
the cream, as then the foundation will pill too, making it impossible to make
it truly even. This has been going on for years and yet I still kept using the
cream like it’s no biggie. When’s it’s actually a very big deal, a
deal-breaker, in fact!
And it also feels so nice knowing that an expensive
cream is literally rolling off your face as soon as it dries, before your skin
has had any chance of absorbing it. Not wasteful at all! It’s definitely not
mattifying, no matter what they claim. Also, excellent make up base? My foot!
No way, with such pilling!
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Well, for something that I have been using for almost a
decade, you’d think it would have outstanding results. But it doesn’t. I
honestly don’t know why I have been so faithful to this cream and it alone,
like it’s the holy grail. I must have convinced myself it works, if only to
justify the high price. You see, it doesn’t actually do much at all. Before I
started using special cleansers and serums I used only this cream. And my skin
was horribly oily and had a craggy, uneven surface and suffered daily
breakouts, made even worse by PMS. So obviously this cream didn’t help. At
best, it manages the symptoms without actually preventing them. Like, the
niacinamide and salicylic acid should have helped normalise the amount of sebum
my skin produced, and it definitely should’ve prevented breakouts. But somehow
it doesn’t do anything really, especially if you apply it on already ongoing
acne. The only effect is that it can calm down itchiness, whether it’s from
small, annoying blemishes or from any other source.
But besides that, it
doesn’t heal acne, it doesn’t make them appear less often, it doesn’t make the
surface of the skin smooth, nothing. All those things they say on the
packaging, yeah, bunch of total lies. And those photos, where people have
extreme acne and acne scarring, suddenly developing skin as smooth as a baby’s
bum after only a month of using this cream? I highly doubt it, honestly. My skin
is the perfect candidate for this cream, yet it is useless. It’s hydrating, at
least, so your skin won’t dry out or feel dry. Good value for your money, eh?
All in all, I have no idea why I kept thinking that this is
the holy grail of moisturisers all these years. It’s actually pretty useless on
my skin, and my skin is precisely the type this cream was made for! So if it’s
useless on my oily, problematic, acne-prone skin, then who is it made for? I’ll
start with the things I like. The formula is very silky and comfortable and
absorbs in seconds, which is really nice. I like that there isn’t any
overpowering scent, the faint thermal-water-like scent is pretty nice. And I
guess it hydrates the skin, if only mildly? That’s about it, really. What I
really dislike is how utterly useless it is for me! All those fancy claims on
the side of the packaging? Yeah, a bunch of lies! Not a single claim there is
true in my experience. It doesn’t rapidly clear blemishes, or maybe it does if
you count 2 weeks of battling it as “rapid”. The texture of the skin isn’t
improved at all, it is still damaged and uneven and rough. I also don’t see any
incredible effects with acne marks, they don’t appear to heal any faster when I
am using this cream. Oh yeah it definitely reduces the likelihood of future
breakouts! Sure! That’s why I had 24/7 inflamed skin with a ton of acne! I
thought it was just my skin being impossibly finicky, but it seems that it was
just the fact that this, supposedly anti-acne, cream did absolutely nothing to
help my skin. So I had the skin of a 14-year-old in my 20s, all while using an
expensive cream that should do wonders, judging by those photos of even the
most severe acne and acne scarring disappearing completely! And this is
definitely an excellent makeup base, oh yeah! The extreme pilling really sells
it! What better kind of base than one that is pilling so much that you cannot
apply anything on top of it? You know, I had creams that cost 1/10 the cost of
this cream and they had visible positive results. This thing is expensive only
because it is La Roche-Posay, not because it is spectacularly good. I am just
so disheartened by it. I wish it was as good as I tricked myself into believing
it was. Hey, at least it hydrates the skin, right? Sadly, despite using for the
better part of a decade, I will not be recommending it. It’s overpriced, with
minimal results. So I guess this is farewell, Effaclar Duo (+). It was nice
knowing you, but it will be even nicer finally having a cream that actually
does something to help (glances at Eucerin...). Sigh...
Rating: 4.5/10
Would buy again? After so many years buying it, the answer
is finally NO
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