While some skincare brands opt to name their line after the founder, such as Colleen Rothschild and Fenty Skin, Oak Essentials chose to symbolize longevity, strength, and power by naming their brand after the oak tree.
As a luxury beauty lifestyle brand, Oak Essentials believes that caring for your body, skin, home, and self revolves around a collection of essentials curated by you. For this reason, the brand offers everything from candles to perfumes to body care and more.
In this review, we’ll focus on the best-selling Oak Essentials skincare products, including the key ingredients in Oak Essentials skincare products and the research that supports (or doesn’t support) their use in skincare.
We’ll also share some Oak Essentials reviews so that you can get an idea of what customers really think of these products.
What Are The Top 5 Best Oak Essentials Skincare Products?
Oak Essentials offers everything that you would need to create a complete skincare routine, including cleansers, toners, moisturizers, serums, masks, and more. Here’s a breakdown of the top 5 best Oak Essentials skincare products.
Oak Essentials Moisture Rich Balm
Finding the ideal facial moisturizer can be a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack – tricky, but oh-so rewarding when you finally discover the perfect match. Based on the Oak Essentials reviews we read for the brand’s best-selling Moisture Rich Balm, this moisturizer provides just the right amount of hydration without feeling greasy or heavy.
You can thank the base of safflower oil for this balm’s lovely texture. Safflower oil is known for its lightweight and non-greasy texture, making it feel smooth and easily absorbable on the skin. It leaves the skin feeling soft and moisturized without a heavy or sticky residue.
There’s also organic coconut oil, a rich source of lauric acid, which provides strong anti-microbial properties to help kill bacteria and reduce inflammation. Organic cocoa seed butter and sea buckthorn fruit oil deliver important nutrients and antioxidants to the skin, aiding in cellular repair and rejuvenation.
The only problem we see with the Oak Essentials Moisture Rich Balm is the inclusion of fragrant essential oils, such as lavender, and fragrance ingredients like citronellol and linalool. These ingredients have the potential to cause skin sensitivity reactions and irritation.
Oak Essentials Daily Vitamin C Serum
We love that the Oak Essentials Vitamin C Serum contains 3-O-ethyl ascorbic acid, a stable derivative of vitamin C. It remains in the skin longer without oxidizing to more effectively brighten skin, fade hyperpigmentation, and stimulate collagen synthesis.
Vitamin C is combined with the emollient squalane that’s rich in antioxidants to fight free radicals known to cause aging. The serum also includes Plankton extract, which is packed with natural minerals that support optimal moisture absorption for supple and soft skin.
Oak Essentials Nightly Retinol Serum
Rather than using pure retinol, this serum includes retinyl linoleate, an ester of a retinoid and linoleic acid. While retinol is a beneficial key ingredient, retinyl linoleate is three steps removed from the bioactive form, retinoic acid. This means it’s not going to be as effective as using pure retinol, but this also reduces the risk of side effects like peeling and irritation. Overall, this could be a good choice if you have very sensitive skin and still want to use a retinol product.
Oak Essentials Hydra Eye Balm
The base of shea butter in the Oak Essential Eye Balm hydrates and smooths while also delivering vitamins and antioxidants. The balm also includes coconut oil, a rich source of saturated fatty acids like caprylic acid, capric acid, lauric acid, and myristic acid. These medium-chain fatty acids help reduce inflammation, moisturize skin, and also possess antimicrobial properties.
Oak Essentials Luminous Body Lotion
A base of skin-nourishing coconut oil, jojoba seed oil, and shea butter not only give this lotion a luxurious texture, but also help to hydrate, smooth, and soften the skin.
Plus, this Oak Essentials Body Lotion goes above and body your average lotion with ingredients like turmeric extract to reduce inflammation and fight free radicals. There’s also blue tansy oil, a rich source of azulene, which is known to help soothe dry irritated skin, reduce the appearance of redness, and balance oily skin.
What Are The Key Ingredients in Oak Essentials Skincare Products?
Jojoba Oil
When you use jojoba oil on your skin, it basically fools your skin into thinking it’s got its oil game together. This “trickery” helps in balancing oil production, and here’s why: jojoba oil mimics the skin’s natural sebum more closely than any other oil!
This mimicry is gold for those aiming to fend off aging signs because, as we age, our skin produces less and less sebum over time. Jojoba oil can mimic sebum, which nourishes skin to prevent it from becoming dry, cracked, and wrinkled.
Now, for those dealing with too much oil production, jojoba oil can help, too. It normalizes sebum levels and clears out those pores, making sure an acne breakout doesn’t arrive just before your next date!
So, whether your skin is acting too dry or too oily, jojoba oil is like the chill mediator, making sure everyone’s happy and glowing. You’ll find jojoba oil used throughout the Oak Essentials skincare line.
We love that it’s included in our favorite face cream, Carrot & Stick The Moisturizer, along with plenty of plant proteins, vitamins, peptides and amino-collagen to rejuvenate your complexion.
Shea Butter
It’s well known that shea butter is an effective moisturizer due to its rich supply of triglycerides and fatty acids, which replenish the skin’s moisture barrier after topical application. In fact, shea butter has been shown to be superior to mineral oil at preventing transepidermal water loss (TEWL).
Additionally, shea butter has been shown to have some anti-aging properties. In two studies it was determined to help regenerate thinning skin, lessen wrinkles from sun damage, improve complexion, and promote healing.
Fragrant Essential Oils
One thing to keep in mind is that many of the Oak Essentials skincare products contain fragrant essential oils, which can be a problem due to the potential to cause contact allergies, skin irritation, and even skin damage.
In fact, according to a 2016 publication in the scholarly journal Dermatitis, nearly 80 essential oils have caused contact allergy. This is because all fragrance ingredients (whether natural or synthetic) impart scent through a volatile reaction, and this natural reaction almost always causes a sensitizing reaction on skin.
Even if you don’t have a full blown reaction to the ingredient, the damage may still be occurring every day. Ultimately, this can cause mild problems for your skin in the short term and worse problems in the long term.
How Much Do Oak Essentials Skincare Products Cost?
Oak Essentials skincare products are on the pricey side, for example, the best-selling Oak Essentials Moisture Rich Balm costs $88 USD for a 1.4 oz jar, while the Daily Vitamin C Serum costs $92 USD for 1 fl oz (30 mL).
Where to Buy Oak Essentials Skincare Products?
Oak Essentials skincare products are sold on the brand’s website (oakessentials.com).
Is Oak Essentials Cruelty Free?
Yes, Oak Essentials is cruelty free.
Our Verdict
Overall, we like that Oak Essentials uses high-quality, natural ingredients in their products, but we wish they’d leave the fragrant essential oils out of the formulations.
Pros
- Formulas contain high-quality ingredients (vitamin C, shea butter, jojoba oil, etc.)
- Oak Essentials is cruelty free
- Many positive Oak Essentials reviews
Cons
- Products contain fragrant essential oils
- Expensive
References:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ptr.2650070716
