The basics
What Order Should You Apply Skincare In?
Thinnest to thickest, with sunscreen always last in the morning. The rest is detail, and the detail is worth knowing.
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Learn
Answers, checked against real labels.
Most skincare advice online repeats itself. These articles answer the questions people actually ask, and where a claim can be checked, we check it against the ingredient lists of the 24,517 products in Avina’s catalog.
Myths and evidence
Which Skincare Ingredients Should You Not Mix?
Far fewer than the internet claims. We checked every ingredient list in our catalog to see what formulators actually do.
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Reading labels
How to Read a Skincare Ingredients List
The list is ordered by quantity until it is not. Knowing where that changes is most of the skill.
6 minute readRead
Sun protection
Mineral or Chemical Sunscreen: How to Tell Which You Have
Two names on the label answer it. Here is how to find them, and what the difference does and does not mean.
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Reading labels
Retinol vs Retinal vs Retinyl Palmitate: What Is Actually in Your Bottle
They are all called retinol on the front. The back of the bottle tells you which one you actually bought.
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The basics
Do You Need a Toner?
Not the way your parents did. We read 894 toner labels to find out what the word means now.
5 minute readRead
Myths and evidence
Does Hyaluronic Acid Actually Do Anything?
Yes, and it is the most common active in our catalog. It is also the one people misjudge most from the label.
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