Bed Skincare + Cosrx One Step Green Hero Calming Pad Review

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Bed Skincare

I side-eye most skincare trends, but let me give you one totally made up one that actually solves more problems than it creates: bed skincare. No, it’s not about looking hot while banging or layering products like sheets in order to get fluffy skin but about rolling over, sticking one arm out of your hopefully toasty nest, and grabbing a few products that you can apply without leaving the blankets. It is lazy, minimalist, and pretty much the only way to live when you have winter skin + a dead cheap apartment thanks to a good relationship with the landlady [who controls and pays for the heat].

Is bed skincare going to make you feel like shit due to failing to measure up to some arbitrary beauty standard? Nope. Is bed skincare going to require all new products? Probably not. Is bed skincare going to get something on your face while staying warm? Hell yes.

This fake trend explanation was inspired by the anchor in my bed skincare routine: Cosrx Green Hero pads, which have the distinction of being the product I worked through and repurchased fastest in the last few years. I managed to get something on my face while rocking a loud af pneumonia death rattle thanks to these pads, which wins them the coveted Best Bed Skincare of 2018 prize.

Cosrx One Step Green Hero Calming Pad Review

About the brand: CosRx is a no-nonsense Korean skincare brand that focuses on proven ingredients, good formulations, and affordable prices.

What it is: a toner-soaked pad.

Where to put it in your routine: replacing toner. In the morning, I stay in bed and do a morning cleanse/tone with these pads. In the evening, I wipe on a pad after cleansing and follow with a cream.

Need a basic outline of when to use your products? Here you go:

Ingredients: Camellia Sinensis Leaf Water, Butylene Glycol, Taraxacum Officinale (Dandelion) Leaf Extract, Centella Asiatica Extract, Hamamelis Virginiana (Witch Hazel) Leaf Extract, Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree) Leaf Extract, Artemisia Princeps Extract, 1,2-Hexanediol, Cassia Obtusifolia Seed Extract, Lactobionic Acid, Maltodextrin, Panthenol, Polyglyceryl-10 Laurate, Polyglyceryl-10 Myristate, Glycerine, Arginine, Allantoin, Asiaticoside, Asiatic acid, Madecassic acid, Sodium Hyaluronate, Gardenia Florida Fruit Extract, Citrus Aurantium Bergamia (Bergamot) Fruit Oil, Menthyl Lactate, Mentha Haplocalix Extract. CosDNA analysis.

Ingredient breakdown: aside from Butylene Glycol, which ranks 1 out of 5 as a potential acne trigger, this product contains no common skin trigger ingredients. Having gone through a whole jar of 70 pads on skin ranging from nicely maintained to absolutely wrecked, I find these pads to be pretty neutral. They add some moisture, don’t irritate my skin, and that’s about it: I didn’t notice any exceptional calming benefits, but they’ve also never irritated even broken, angry skin.

What type of skin might like this: pretty much any skin that benefits from watery moisture and doesn’t have a sensitivity to one of the ingredients. I’m usually a bit sensitive to witch hazel, but I didn’t find it to be a problem in this formulation.

I use the pads to tone my face and then tone/lightly exfoliate behind my ears (I had some painful eczema that Green Hero cleared up) and tone the tops of my hands (Accutane unleashed some gnarly hand eczema, and watery moisture like this clears it right up).

What sort of people might like this: those that, like me, are lazy and want to do more of the routine while mostly under the blankies. Now that it’s cold, I not only do my evening routine in bed, I also do half of my morning routine there, too. It’s nice to have a few more minutes to just let the day be born less traumatically.

Packaging: the pads come in a hard plastic jar with a screw-on lid. There’s a peel-off seal on the jar that holds in the moisture during shipping. This iteration of Mr Rx on the lid is very cute.

Smell: there’s a faint scent of…I dunno, botanical extracts? Bergamot? Unplaceable skincare ingredients? The scent is mostly in the background and fades fast.

Price: about $20, depending on where you buy them and the cost of shipping.

Value: at $20 for 70 pads, these work out to about $0.29 per pad. Although the pads aren’t soaking wet, I’m able to do my whole face, behind the ears, and the tops of my hands with one.

What’s good: Green Hero is low-effort skincare that delivers some useful watery moisture using a minimally irritating formula. Green Hero pads are already a hit in Korea after launching in the second half of 2018. So far, they’re ranked second out of all Cosrx products on the Hwahae beauty app, earning a rating of 4.18 out of 5 (I consider anything over 4.0 a hit) after more than 350 reviews. I mention this because it’s a good indicator of whether a product can work for many different skin types: I only have one skin to test on, but the Hwahae ranking suggests that the Green Hero formula is working across the skin type and sensitivity spectrum.

What’s not good: if you’re looking to reduce the packaging involved in your beauty routine, a box plus a plastic jar may not be as optimal for you as a bottle of toner and stack of dry cotton pads (or just hands). I was able to justify the purchase because the packaging is recyclable and I’d prefer to pare my routine down to a few products I actually use rather than the usual array of stuff gathering dust, but we’re all coming to skincare from different directions and you know your philosophy.

Will I repurchase it: I already have! Green Hero pads are the anchor of my Bed Skincare routine, so I panic bought a new jar on Amazon once I saw that I was running low. Winter is long and I’m lazy as hell, so Green Hero is here to stay.

Where to buy it: Amazon | eBay | Dermstore | SweetCorea | TesterKorea |
YesStyle (get 5% off your first order and 2% off each subsequent order with referral code MY8MUY)

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