A few months ago, a friend and I were looking at a beauty blog together. It had a list of skin care product recommendations. Some of them were by well known professional brands. My friend dismissed the list, assuming they were bad brands since she had never heard of them.

Now that was an eye opener! Because she is someone who loves skin care and researches beauty products. That she didn’t know these professional brands means many other people probably don’t either.

So that’s why I’m writing this post today. There is another world of skin care that you may not know about if you don’t get spa facials or see a dermatologist.

And this world offers great, high quality, effective products!

So let’s talk about what professional skincare means. This post will be a basic and quick overview.

What Is Professional Skincare?

Professional skin care refers to skin care products that are used and sold in a day spa, medical spa, doctor’s office, or skin clinic. 

It also includes some lines developed by physicians (dermatologists and plastic surgeons) that are sold in doctor’s offices. Some physician-founded lines are sold in retail channels (and deliberately marketed for retail customers). These physician lines are not what I consider professional-strength products. In this post, I’ll be talking about the products that are sold in spas or medical offices.

How are professional products different from retail products, like the ones you find in Sephora or department stores?

Here are some ways they are different. This list does not mean that a professional line possesses all of these attributes. Within professional skincare, there is quite a bit of diversity too.

But the key attribute they all share is a focus on solving problems and offering effective solutions.

1. More potent ingredients

Active ingredients and performance ingredients are at a higher concentration. You get more of the good stuff.

Professional products, particularly the medical lines, are designed to deliver clinical-strength results. That goal is partly achieved by providing a higher amount of the key ingredients that are designed to solve a problem.

Professional products can offer more potent ingredients because they are recommended under the care of a trained skin care professional. In retail, there is no one to offer that level of guidance. So retail brands have to play it safer.

2. More advanced ingredients

The ingredients you find in professional skin care are often the latest and greatest. This is where you can find the most promising new ingredients, the latest generation of more established ingredients, or the most cutting edge developments.

3. Higher quality ingredients

The source, grade, purity, and effectiveness of the ingredients are better.

An example is Vitamin C. The best ester forms of Vitamin C are Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate (THDA) and Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate (MAP).

You are much more likely to find these two forms of Vitamin C in professional products. You definitely won’t find them in a drugstore brand. You sometimes see them in clinically-oriented retail brands.

Similarly, ascorbic acid, the acidic form of Vitamin C which is highly unstable in a solution, is more likely to be properly formulated (stabilized) in a professional product.

4. Better delivery of ingredients

Just because an ingredient is a “great” ingredient doesn’t mean the product will be great. What matters is getting that ingredient into skin and enabling it to reach its target destination. If it doesn’t penetrate far enough, it won’t do skin any good.

Skin is highly impermeable because it serves as a protective barrier from anything harmful that might come into contact with your skin, including chemical irritants, bugs, and the effects of harsh weather.

So ingredients, particularly age-fighting ingredients, need delivery systems (vehicles) to reach the lower depths of the epidermis and the dermis where they can actually have an effect. Professional products utilize the most current delivery systems, which are always being improved.

5. More sophisticated formulations

Professional products DO more. They perform more actions on skin. Instead of doing just one thing, they often do several.

It’s a more thorough approach to treating the root cause of a problem. A problem is solved from various angles.

For example, on a product made for oily skin, a professional product might contain oil-regulating ingredients, not just the standard oil-absorbing or pore-minimizing ingredients that you’d find in a retail product.

6. Better texture 

Because these products are used on clients in a spa, they have to feel good. The textures are cosmetically elegant. This means the texture is finer. It feels smoother and silkier. It glides on easily and absorbs better than an inexpensive retail product.

Have you noticed the difference between how a drugstore moisturizer feels versus a department store brand? Or a department store brand like Clinique compared with a luxury brand like Dior?

Making a product more cosmetically elegant costs more. That’s why drugstore creams don’t feel as nice.

Should You Use Professional Skin Care?

You don’t need to use professional skin care to have good skin. Ultimately, good skin care habits are more important than what brands you use.

But if you have problem skin or you’re very motivated to minimize the effects of aging, then you should definitely consider professional products. They offer more advanced solutions and incorporate the latest developments in skincare research than your average retail brand.

Within professional skincare, there are lines to suit every priority –  clinical, organic/natural, or luxury.

Professional products come in different price ranges too. Just because they’re professional doesn’t mean they’re more expensive. Some are comparably priced to brands you find at Sephora. Some cost more. Some are less.

The thing to know is this – while you may pay more for professional products, you are generally getting more value in return. There is a lot more ‘benefit’ contained in those products. That is not necessarily the case for retail. Quite often, when you pay a high premium for a retail product, you are paying for the brand name or some arbitrary premium set by the company. “You get what you pay for” does not apply in retail.

Where Can You Buy Professional Skin Care?

You can buy professional products at a day spa, medical spa, dermatologist or plastic surgeon’s office, or online.

Most spas work with just a few brands. So if you go to a spa, the selection will typically be limited to what the spa uses on its clients. Sometimes they also sell additional brands that are not used on client skin.

Doctor’s offices carry mostly medically-oriented lines and physician-founded lines.

You can also buy products directly from the brand’s website. Some sell directly to consumers on the web. (The ones who don’t sell online can only be purchased from an authorized provider.) You can also find professional products on speciality beauty websites, such as Dermstore, Skinstore, AskDerm, and SkincareRx.

If you want a spa brand, I recommend you buy the products from the spa. An esthetician can guide you to the right products after treating your skin. It can be hard to choose the products that are best for your skin. Professional lines typically offer multiple options for a particular type of product (e.g. based on different skin types or skin conditions). The advice of an esthetician who is very knowledgeable about a product line and who can see your skin while talking to you will save you a lot of time and effort.

But if you can’t or don’t want to get a facial at the spa, you can still buy products there. Products are on display for sale in the reception area. The reception staff is usually knowledgeable enough about the products to help.

 

Back Bar Products

Some professional products are never sold to consumers. These are known as ‘Back Bar’ products.

They are never sold for two reasons.

First, some are strong and potentially harmful if used incorrectly by consumers. These products, such as low pH exfoliants, require professional training.

Second, they’re the ‘secret sauce’ of the profession – the products that make it worth your while to visit a spa in the first place.

Remember my last post when I said professional-strength exfoliation is a major benefit of getting a spa facial? You can’t get that level of exfoliation at home because it’s done with back bar products and professional esthetics equipment.

Spa & Medical Brands

Here is a list of some well known professional brands sold in spas and medical offices. This is certainly not a comprehensive list, as there are many others.

  • Bioelements
  • Circadia by Dr. Pugliese
  • Dermalogica
  • DermaQuest
  • Elemis
  • Eminence Organic
  • Glymed Plus
  • iS Clinical
  • Jan Marini
  • Lira Clinical
  • M.A.D. Skincare
  • Mario Badescu
  • PCA Skin
  • Pevonia Botanica
  • pHformula
  • Repechage
  • Revision Skincare
  • Rhonda Allison
  • Sesha Skin Therapy
  • Sothys
  • Thalgo
  • Yon-Ka

…and many more!

 

That’s it for this week. I’ll be talking more about professional skin care later. There are many interesting professional treatments that can do a lot more than traditional skin care products. So stay tuned!

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