The best face moisturizers for less than $20

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Working in the Beauty industry for over a decade, my friends always ask me: which moisturizer do you use?

Behind that question is the real question: help me find a good, beauty-expert-approved moisturizer.

Their jaw usually drops when I tell them that I simply use...Grapeseed Oil

But not just any Grapeseed Oil, I make sure the one I get is ✔️ cold pressed and ✔️free of any other ingredient that may dilute it or turn it into a harmful product.

So now you’re probably wondering…why is Grapeseed Oil the best moisturizer?

Let me tell you why

🎯 The problem

I used to only wear Estee Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair, the one for the face and the one for the eye area. The eye one was particularly needed, I thought, because turning 32, I started noticing the maleficent crow’s feet around my eyes. Work and life were keeping me so busy that I wouldn’t have the time to go to the department store and replenish my skin care when I ran out. Every day that passed by, I felt like my skin was going to rip open because of how tight and dry it felt without my Estee Lauder creams.

As a quick solution, I grabbed a Bobbi Brown Face Oil that was sitting on my desk. It was mind blowing to realize how moisturizing it was and that it wasn’t causing me any breakouts. Though, my skin still felt different, as if something was missing. Yet, I didn’t have the time to go find my usual moisturizers. We were transitioning from Fall to Winter and the face oil was truly protecting my skin, especially against the biting wind tunnels you find in New York City.

🕙 The journey

A year or two later, I was in the office very late one evening. Chatting with one of my Product Development friends, she asked for my opinion on the new face oil we were still formulating to launch the following year. My first thought was, what is wrong with the current formula that I love so much? Why do we need to reformulate it?

In her fabulous french accent, she took me through her Self-Care Sunday routine. “Listen, on Sundays, I cover myself with Grapeseed oil and I just marinate for hours and hours and it is the best zing you can do for your skin. All we are doing is mixing the oil levels and adding more grapeseed oil.”

Baffled, I went back to my desk to look up the ingredients of the Bobbi Brown Face Oil and the Laura Mercier Rose Oil (unfortunately now discontinued). Three key ingredients kept popping up: grapeseed oil, rosehip oil, sweet almond oil…and sometimes jojoba, olive and castor oil. I launched my own research on what each one of these did - at least one of them was on my kitchen counter!

🏆 The Solution

As it turns out, I had been buying face moisturizers and face oils from these luxury brands for more than $70 and all they were doing was mixing a few oils, adding a few preservatives and fragrance (that are bad for us in large quantities, more on this on another post) and then packaging it in a pretty container - boom! The products cost $5 to make and I was buying them for 14 times as much - genius marketing!

But why Grapeseed Oil specifically?

All the oils are amazing! One thing that is interesting to think about - put on your chemistry hat - is molecular size and skin absorption. Think of coconut oil, when you apply it to your skin, does it sit there for a while before getting absorbed? What about Olive Oil?

As it turns out, coconut oil has molecules that are larger than Grapeseed Oil. So, while highly moisturizing, you end up with a layer on your skin that sits there for too long, putting at risk your clothes and likely your furniture.

Grapeseed Oil was the winner. It has the smallest molecules of them all so it gets absorbed by the skin quickly (helpful if you want to apply makeup quickly after), it is odorless and it is highly moisturizing - really, one of the best face moisturizers out there.

A quick comparison of the oils:

Oil Type	Skin Absorption	Moisturizing Level
Grapeseed Oil	Fast absorption Light weight	Higher Smaller molecules, less occlusive
Sweet Almond Oil	Slow to medium May leave a slick feel prior to full absorption	Higher A little thicker and more viscous
Jojoba Oil	Medium Mimics skin oils, integrates well	High
Castor Oil	Slow Takes time to penetrate	High Can feel greasy
Olive Oil	Slow May feel heavier	Higher Penetrates deep in the skin layer

I started using Grapeseed Oil morning and night.

Then! My crow’s feet went away! And my blackheads went away!

Why did this happen?

The ‘anti-wrinkle’ moisturizers are not really reversing our wrinkles. They stretch our skin when we apply them so the wrinkles ‘appear’ less visible, 'erasing' the wrinkles by stretching the skin. Think about that. Like an elastic band, you keep stretching it morning and night, eventually, that band loses elasticity and sags. I started doing this to my skin at the early age of 25, following Big Beauty’s advice to ‘start early to prevent wrinkles’.

With age, our skin naturally loses collagen and elasticity; that is normal and can be mitigated with sun care and the foods we eat. What is not normal is that we start stretching our beautiful skin before the needed time. But when what we need is a moisturizer, anti-wrinkle creams do more harm than good. My crow’s feet are back this year but I am now in my early forties not in my early 30’s 😉

The ugly blackheads were just signs that, as much as I washed my face morning and night, product (read unnecessary chemicals) from my moisturizer + serum + toner routine (a very expensive one!) were sitting in my pores and blocking them. I am not kidding when I say that I haven’t done extractions in years because my skin no longer needs them. I need them once or twice per year and maybe more in the summer but definitely not the 2x per month of those years.

So friends, save yourself some dollars, some pre-mature wrinkles, and some unnecessary harmful chemical exposure. When you finish your current moisturizer, try one of the oils or even better, start alternating between the oils and your moisturizer so it is not a shock to your skin. I one hundred percent recommend Grapeseed Oil and that is all I've been using since 2019.

How-To

I buy this bottle of Grapeseed Oil and pour the pure oil into these glass vials.

Then, morning and night, after washing my face, I put one drop each on my forehead, each cheek, and my chin and I softly press it it all over my face and now where my crow's feet have appeared. While the oils won't 'erase' wrinkles, they moisturize our skin, making it more supple.

Bonus credits:

I also softly press the oil on my lips so I go to bed with moisturized lips - no risk here since all these oils are edible. And, I rub over my cuticles the oil left over on my fingers.

It is also easy to travel with. The glass vials I recommended are all under 3oz. so you can keep your moisturizer in multiple places - on your vanity, in your travel toiletries bag, on your desk...

P.s., a note on fragrance

We’ve been trained to go for products that have fragrances. We pick up the lip balm because it smells like coconut or we pick up the moisturizer because it smells like lavender. We don’t need these synthetic fragrances on our skin.

They are composed of unknown chemicals with no performance purpose. Your moisturizer doesn’t moisturize more because of its lavender scent. So, when not needed, skip the fragrance.

Notice that a lot of moisturizers and beauty brand face oils include Linalool and Limonene, these serve the job of adding fragrance but are known skin irritants.

A post is coming soon on fragrances.

Drop any questions or comments on the comments box!

And if you want to send me a love note, I’m at Alexandria@alexandriacollective.com