Ultimate List of Resources for Skincare Nerds

How do you shop for skincare? Do you see a shiny new product and just add it to your cart? Or do you check the ingredients? Do you postpone the purchase until you can look up some reviews and recommendations?

This is the difference between a regular shopper and a skincare nerd. Let us be clear - all of us at Ishtar HQ are skincare nerds, so no judgement here. With that mind we wanted to put together a list of resources that will make your skincare journey a little less time-consuming.

Reviews and recommendations

To be clear - we won't list any bloggers and/or Youtubers. Not that there aren't some wonderful ladies out there doing fantastic work (Caroline Hirons, British Beauty Blogger, Nadine Baggott, Ruth Crilly, Sali Hughes just to name a few). It's that they all have different skin types and recommend different products and you should always (always!) look for reviews based on your skin type. So you will have to find your favourite blogger/Youtuber on your own.

MakeupAlley

Don't let the name fool you. At MakeupAlley you can find product recommendations for just about anything, from skincare to haircare, palettes to various tools. MakeupAlley's search function is a delight - you can narrow down products by rating, brand, age group, number of reviews. It is easy to eliminate the stuff you are not interested in. Best of all, the community at MakeupAlley consists out of regular people who share their honest opinions on a product.

Reddit

Hear us out - reddit is home to some fantastic subreddits and skincare communities. Our favourites include:

Asian Beauty Advice (for people in all stages of their Asian Beauty journey. It is an excellent resource for product recommendation, if you have any questions or need help with your routine),

SkincareAddictionUK (for anything that relates to UK skincare, from best deals and products to routine help and recommendations),

Asian Beauty (again anything related to beauty brands, skincare and cosmetics from Asia),

Euroskincare (for anything related to European skincare and brands),

SkincareAddiction (for anything and everything skincare, although the emphasis is on American brands).

Instagram

If you love your skincare, you'll love Instagram skincare community. Obviously it can be a huge time suck (*cough*), but once you find great people and brands to follow, you'll love it.

RatzillaCosme

If you are into Japanese skincare (if you haven't tried Japanese sunscreens, you must, they are absolutely superb), haircare and makeup, RatzillaCosme should be your first destination. The site covers new releases, best picks and has tons of reviews.

Ingredients search

One thing that gives us the stabbies is when brands don't give ingredients lists on their websites. Come on! If you find yourself looking for an inci list, you can check out the following websites.

CosDNA

CosDNA is a wonderful resource if you want to look up the ingredient list for a specific product, if you want to check for ingredients that might break you out, analyse the ingredients for a product and learn what is the purpose of different ingredients. The focus is on Korean and Japanese skincare, but you can find just about any product on CosDNA.

Beautypedia

You might agree or disagree with Paula Begoun and her team on how they rate and review products. But Beautypedia is an excellent resource if you want to find ingredients lists for tons of brands.

Do you have any favourite websites that help you make your mind about a skincare product? Where do you look first?