Over the last years there’s been an explosion of micellar waters on the market and now this micellar trends seems to take over other beauty products as well. For example, Nivea has release micellar creams and now a micellar shampoo. Honestly, that’s a little too much.

Anyway, getting back to our business. I didn’t use a whole lot of micellar waters but I did make my mind about the ones that are worth buying and the ones that don’t. It all started with a travel size micellar water I got in an advent calendar from L’Oreal. I can’t remember the name, but it was supposed to be used to remove makeup and to be great even for sensitive skin and so on. I didn’t notice the product doing anything special for my skin and it didn’t remove my mascara, so I did have to use another makeup remover as well.

Now, I have – well, it’s almost gone – the Garnier Pure Active Micellar Water for oily skin. Everybody is raving about it here in Romania because it’s supposed to remove makeup while cleansing the skin delicately and you can buy a huge 400 ml bottle with just about 3-4 euros. Listen, it’s all good an nice, but this thing doesn’t remove my eye makeup, it just smears it around. As for my face makeup, I don’t usually have a cakey face, just some light foundation and powder, or only a powder, so I could remove that with a cotton pad and some plain water.

And of course, it’s cheap. I’m not a chemist or something but even I can see that it contains water, glycerin and 3-4 types of alcohol and alcohol-based substances. So how exactly is this supposed to be a miraculous product for the skin? That’s why I won’t be buying this again and I’m sticking with my usual makeup removers that actually do their job.

Now, there are some micellar waters that are worth buying in my opinion, not only to cleanse the face, but also to be used as toners, because they refresh the skin and help keep it nice an smooth. One example of micellar water that I like, but I don’t currently own is the Sebo Vegetal Puryfing Micellar Water 2 in 1 from Yves Rocher. Yes, but it’s not just water and glycerin, it also contains Baikal powder and cornflower flower water. I’m not into all-natural cosmetics because I think now we have so many techniques and progresses were made in the beauty industry to develop excellent products, but I do like to see that some natural ingredients are used in a product because they have their own benefits.

So yeah, if you’re like me and you think that micellar water doesn’t do anything for you, try a product that doesn’t contain only water, glycerin and alcohol. You might be surprised.