Is Waterless Skincare Better Than Skincare With Water?

When you look at the list of ingredients on skincare products (and you should be looking at them), you might notice that many products start with water. Ingredients are listed in the States from most prominent to least, which means that water makes up the greatest percentage of these products.

Waterless skincare products, on the other hand, don’t contain any additional water; they’re formulated, instead, with a base of potent botanical extracts. To clarify, these potent botanical extracts do contain water because water is a necessary part of the extraction process, but waterless skincare means that water itself is not an ingredient in a product. Naturally, you might assume that waterless skincare products are, therefore, stronger and more effective, with more active ingredients that work harder to get you that healthy, radiant skin you so desire.

Before you go switch out all your products with waterless skincare, though, let us explain.

There is no clear better or worse.

We’ll tell you right off the bat — there’s no right or wrong answer. Waterless skincare has its advantages, but there are also reasons that water makes up as much as 70% of a formula in a product. There’s no one way that’s the “right” way to go when it comes to skincare; it’s really about figuring out what your skin needs and finding the right products and formulations to make sure your skin gets the hydration and nutrients it needs to thrive.

That said, waterless ingredients do have the benefit of having potent active ingredients.

When you look at a list of ingredients, you might find that many of the active ingredients are at the end of list, making up maybe 25% of the total formulation. Naturally, you might wonder how effective a product is, but the thing is — you don’t necessarily need a high percentage of active ingredients to reap their benefits. In fact, for many active ingredients, after a certain percentage, they can be too harsh.

That said, sometimes, you do want the benefit of more potent active ingredients, and that’s where waterless skincare comes in. For example, if you have really dry or dehydrated skin, you might want an essence that has a base ingredient that is incredibly hydrating, so that it provides your skin that extra boost of hydration it so wants.

Waterless skincare can provide that kind of potency — after all, Ground Plan went viral because of the fast effectiveness of their 24-Hour Secret Mist. A waterless toner, the mist has a base of witch hazel extract, and consumers saw quick, dramatic results, particularly when it came to calming and soothing reddened, irritated skin. Impressed, they shared before-and-after photos on social media showed how effectively the 24-Hour Secret Mist worked, leading to 1 million units sold in just 24 months.

Sometimes, waterless ingredients can be absorbed more deeply and easily into skin.

It’s about molecules — specifically, it’s about molecular size.

Let’s take May Coop’s Raw Sauce, a waterless toner/essence that uses acer mono (maple’s cousin) sap as its base. Acer mono sap has the same molecular size as your skin particles, which means it sinks more easily into the deeper layers of skin, instead of just sitting on the surface level.

Water, on the other hand, has a molecular size that’s roughly 1.5 times bigger than your skin particles, so it can’t always sink as deeply. That’s not to say that that’s inherently bad — again, there is no clear right or wrong here. It’s simply that, when it comes to hydration, you want it to sink as deeply into skin as possible, and a waterless toner/essence like the Raw Sauce might be the best way for your skin to get that chok chok dewiness.

Water has a purpose, though; it acts as a solvent and/or an emulsifier — and it’s non-irritating.

All that said, let’s not write water off yet. Water is actually necessary for certain ingredients to be able to be absorbed into skin, particularly when it comes to a lot of plant-based extracts. These are called “hydrophilic” ingredients, which means that they love water and require water to be effective.

One of the most desirable traits about water is that it’s a solvent. A solvent basically breaks down a compound so it can be (in the case of skincare) absorbed, so it can work in skin. As an example, think about salt. When you mix a teaspoon of salt into a glass of water, as you stir it, the granules of salt start to disappear, dissolving into the water. The water, then, tastes salty. If you drink that water, you’re delivering salt to your body in a way that’s easier for you to absorb than if you were to eat salt granules on their own.

Water in skincare can work the same way, acting as the agent that takes a beneficial ingredient like tea tree extract, breaking it down, and delivering it into your skin in a way that allows your skin to absorb more of it easily. That’s not to say that water is the only solvent out there, but, because it’s non-irritating and non-sensitizing, suitable for pretty much all skin types, it’s one of the best solvents out there.

Water also works as an emulsifier, particularly in lotions and creams. An emulsifier keeps two disparate ingredients together, like oil and water, and prevents them from separating, and it’s what helps lipophilic (oil-loving) and hydrophilic (water-loving) ingredients work together in the same formula, preventing them from separating and helping give the product that creamy texture.

For example, take Lagom’s Cellus Deep Moisture Cream. This super-hydrating moisturizer contains both oils (jojoba oil, lemon seed oil) and humectants (glycerin) that would typically repel each other. However, the inclusion of water keeps them together and creates an emulsion that both delivers moisture into skin and seals it in.

Water in skincare won’t necessarily dry out your skin.

You might have heard this a lot, that water in skincare has the opposite effect and actually dries out skin because water evaporates into the air and takes moisture with it.

That is true … and it isn’t.

Pure water can easily have that effect. For instance, if you splash your face with water and don’t dry it off, that water will evaporate into air and take moisture from your skin with it, ultimately drying your skin out.

However, skincare products with water in them are boosted by hydrating ingredients like humectants, emollients, and occlusives. These ingredients (like hyaluronic acid, for one) sink into skin and help bind water in skin, providing hydration and maintaining moisture. Does it mean that these ingredients always 100% work that way? No. There are a lot of factors that affect the ways ingredients work, but it’s not as simple as “water will dry out your skin, so water in skincare is bad.”

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Too long, didn’t read?

The short answer is there is no hard and fast rule saying that waterless skincare is inherently superior to skincare containing water. Waterless skincare is just another option you have to address specific skin needs, so think about your skin concerns and determine what kinds of products, whether with water or without, will best help your skin glow.