In the beauty world, there are popular products, and then there are products which have earned icon status. Elizabeth Arden’s Eight Hour Cream is one, along with CoverGirl mascara, and Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser. Another iconic beauty product is the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum, or as it is now officially called, Advanced Night Repair Synchronized Recovery Complex II.
This serum became an instant success when it was first introduced in the early 1980s, and it remains the brand’s most popular anti-aging serum. Estée Lauder has even formulated complementary products to go with this serum, thereby creating a line of five different Advanced Night Repair products.
But keep in mind that just because a product is popular doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to give you results. So how do you know if Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair can give you the results you’re looking for? All you have to do is keep scrolling to read our in-depth review of this serum and the rest of the products in the Advanced Night Repair collection.
We’ll discuss the key ingredients in Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair, as well as the research that supports (or doesn’t support) their use in skincare. We’ll also share Estée Lauder reviews so that you can get an idea of what customers really think of these products.
What Are The Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Products?
While the Advanced Night Repair Serum is the most popular product in this line, there are four additional products that accompany it, including three eye care products and one face mask. Here’s a breakdown of the products in the Advanced Night Repair line.
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum
First introduced in 1982, Advanced Night Repair Serum — also referred to as “The Little Brown Bottle” — was the first night serum in the industry. Today, nearly eight bottles are sold every minute!
What’s so special about Advanced Night Repair Serum? Well, the concept behind this product is actually really simple: the best time to repair and heal the skin is while you sleep. Giving your skin what it needs to repair overnight helps to reduce signs of aging caused by the environmental assaults of modern life — like pollution, blue light, and environmental toxins.
While this sounds great in theory, we noticed that the formulation isn’t as impressive as the brand makes it seem. Don’t get us wrong, there’s a good mix of ingredients in the formula, including humectants, emollients, probiotics, soothing botanicals, and a peptide.
So it’s a decent formula that should help to increase skin’s hydration and may help to reduce fine lines, but we wish there were more antioxidants and evidence-based anti-aging ingredients in the formula.
Bottom Line: A night serum that contains a mixture of hydrating and soothing ingredients that help to moisturize skin and reduce signs of aging.
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye Supercharged Complex
This Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair eye cream has a lightweight, silky texture due to high concentrations of several different silicones in the formula. There’s also a high concentration of petrolatum, also known as petroleum jelly or Vaseline, which functions as an occlusive and helps to lock in moisture.
Similar to the Advanced Night Repair Serum, this formula contains probiotics, a peptide, soothing botanicals, and hydrating ingredients, such as water-binding algae extract and plenty of humectants.
The hydrating ingredients in this eye cream not only relieve dryness but also help to temporarily reduce signs of aging like crow’s feet. How? Well, the extra hydration is the extra volume, which effectively plumps out the skin and makes lines and wrinkles less noticeable. However, this effect is transient -— as soon as the moisture content in the skin decreases, lines and wrinkles will return to normal size.
Bottom Line: A silky eye cream that contains plenty of hydrating ingredients to lock in moisture, thereby reducing dryness and signs of aging.
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye Serum
Another eye care product in the Advanced Night Repair line is the eye serum, which comes in a tube and is applied with a wand. It goes on very smoothly, helping skin to look and feel dewy, soft, and glowing.
Like the rest of the products in the Advanced Night Repair line, this eye serum includes probiotics, emollients, silicones, humectants, and algae extract. All of these ingredients work together to promote soft, smooth skin. The formula also includes ingredients to help improve skin tone, such as extracts from mulberry root, skullcap, and birch.
And you can thank mica and titanium dioxide for the instant dose of radiance created by Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye Serum. Mica and titanium dioxide are minerals that add a shimmering effect and reflect light from the face, creating the illusion of a smoother, softer, and more radiant skin tone
Bottom Line: A soothing eye serum that helps to increase skin’s hydration and even out skin tone while instantly improving radiance around the eyes.
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye Mask
These single-use eye masks can be used once per week to refresh, hydrate, and soothe the eye area. They are infused with plenty of hydrating ingredients, like humectants and algae extract, as well as soothing botanicals, such as chamomile and coneflower.
The eye masks also contain caffeine and coffee seed extract. As a natural stimulant, caffeine causes constriction of the blood vessels when applied to the skin. This aids in reducing the amount of blood that accumulates under the eyes (a major factor that contributes to dark circles). Additionally, vasoconstriction can firm the skin due to the removal of excess fluids and possible stimulation of the lymphatic drainage system.
Bottom Line: Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye Masks include ingredients to help hydrate and soothe the delicate eye area, while also firming and tightening thanks to the effects of caffeine and coffee seed extract.
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Concentrated Recovery Powerfoil Mask
These foil-backed sheet masks create a protective barrier, thereby allowing the ingredients to penetrate fast and deep within the skin’s surface while also helping to lock in moisture.
These sheet masks are infused with many of the same ingredients as the Advanced Night Repair Eye Masks, including humectants, algae, chamomile, coneflower, caffeine, and coffee seed extract.
Bottom Line: Foil-backed facial sheet masks that help to hydrate and soothe the skin, while also firming and tightening thanks to the effects of caffeine and coffee seed extract.
What Are The Key Ingredients in Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair?
The key ingredients that you’ll find in the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair products include bifida ferment lysate, tripeptide-32, and sodium hyaluronate. If you’ve never heard of these ingredients, don’t worry. Below we’ll explain exactly what they are, what the research shows about their use in skincare, and how they may benefit your skin.
After water, the highest concentration ingredient in the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum is bifida ferment lysate. You’ll also find this ingredient in the eye cream and eye serum in this line.
Bifida ferment lysate is a probiotic strain that’s obtained from the fermentation of Bifidobacteria (a gram-positive anaerobic bacteria). Probiotics include various strains of helpful bacteria that collaborate with your skin to restore the skin’s microbiome. The microbiome is a population of many types of bacteria (over 10,000 different species) that are both good and bad.
When there are more bad bacteria than good, skin conditions like acne, sensitive skin, and bumpy, uneven skin texture can develop. Thus, keeping the microbiome balanced is critical in maintaining healthy skin.
One study published in the journal Experimental Dermatology found that bifida ferment lysate has a beneficial effect on reactive skin. Specifically, this probiotic improves barrier function and decreases skin sensitivity. Therefore, those with sensitive skin may benefit from the high concentration of bifida ferment lysate in Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair products.
Several of the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair products contain tripeptide-32, a type of synthetic peptide. When applied to the skin before sleep, tripeptide-32 is theorized to activate the clock gene PER-1, which regulates the circadian rhythm (the sleep-wake cycle). In turn, this will activate your keratinocyte genes at a time when they would normally be less active or inactive in the normal sleep cycle. However, there is no independent research that proves this theory.
Despite this, tripeptide-32 will likely help to increase skin hydration due to its ability to bind moisture to the skin. Increased skin hydration may also lead to temporary anti-aging benefits because the extra hydration is extra volume, which effectively plumps out the skin and makes lines and wrinkles less noticeable.
The final key ingredient that you’ll find in all of the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair products is sodium hyaluronate, the sodium salt form of hyaluronic acid. Sodium hyaluronate and hyaluronic acid are basically the same, and the two names are used interchangeably in the skincare industry.
The main differences are that sodium hyaluronate is more stable, easier to formulate, and cheaper. Once applied to the skin, sodium hyaluronate provides the same benefits of hyaluronic acid.
Hyaluronic acid is an excellent ingredient to use for increasing skin hydration. That’s because hyaluronic acid is able to absorb and hold more water than any other natural substance — up to 1,000 times its weight in water!
Furthermore, according to the scholarly journal DermatoEndocrinology, hyaluronic acid helps to reduce signs of aging by protecting collagen and decreasing epidermal water loss associated with sun exposure, low humidity, and other external factors associated with skin dryness.
How to Use Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum?
Using just one dropper, apply Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum on clean skin before your moisturizer, in the morning and in the evening. Gently smooth the serum all over your face and neck.
Where to Buy Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair?
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair products are sold on the brand’s website, as well as third-party online retailers such as Amazon, Ebay, Sephora, Ulta, and more. Estée Lauder skincare products are also sold at physical retail locations, such as the Estée Lauder counter at department stores like Macy’s and Nordstrom.
What is The Estée Lauder Return Policy?
The Estée Lauder return policy allows customers to return or exchange a product for free within one year of purchase date if purchased online.
Is Estée Lauder Cruelty Free?
Estée Lauder is not cruelty-free. While Estée Lauder does not conduct animal testing on their products or ingredients, they do test on animals when required to do so by law (such as in China).
Is Estée Lauder Vegan?
Estée Lauder may offer some products that are suitable for vegans, but this is not a 100% vegan brand.
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Reviews
Estée Lauder reviews on the brand’s website are overall very positive. Not surprisingly, the product with the most reviews is Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Serum, which has earned an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars after nearly 15,000 customer reviews.
There are many positive Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair reviews from customers who saw noticeable improvements in their skin after using this product.
However, there are some negative Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair reviews that you should consider before purchasing this product. We noticed that these one-star reviews were from customers who experienced reactions like dryness, redness, and irritation after using this serum.
Our Verdict
Overall, we think that the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair products are formulated well with hydrating ingredients and soothing botanicals, but the formulations lack anti-aging ingredients that are proven to correct signs of aging (such as retinol, peptides, vitamin C, etc).
Pros
- Formulations contain many hydrating and soothing ingredients
- Products are fragrance-free
- Many positive Estée Lauder reviews for the Advanced Night Repair products
Cons
- Formulations lack anti-aging ingredients that are proven to correct signs of aging
- Estée Lauder is not cruelty-free
- Jar packaging will lead to the degradation of delicate ingredients like antioxidants and botanical extracts
References:
Exp Dermatol 2010 Aug;19(8):e1-8.
Dermatoendocrinol. 2012 Jul 1; 4(3): 253–258
