Wow. After what’s felt like a lifetime, I’ve finally come to the end of the Fresh Sugar Strawberry Exfoliating Face Wash. When I first tried the face wash, I was confident it would become my new favourite Fresh product and cleanser. As I wasn’t a massive fan of the Soy Face Cleanser, I had high hopes for an exfoliating cleanser that resembled my beloved Sugar Face Polish. However, things didn’t exactly pan out as I had hoped, as I’ve spent the majority of the last couple of months going back and forth over my thoughts on the face wash. To find out my final thoughts, read on.
What I Liked
- You can customise your wash
- One of the more innovative things I loved about this face wash was the fact that you could customise your exfoliation experience to make it more or less intense. On days when I knew I’d also be using another exfoliating mask, it was great to have a lighter scrub so that my face didn’t feel over exfoliated.
- It left skin feeling soft and nourished
- You can’t even imagine how soft and nourished my face felt every morning and night after use. As someone who has dry skin and many steps in their skincare routine (that involves acids and physical exfoliators), it’s important to me that the products I use do not dry out my already dry face. I loved that even after rinsing, my face was very supple and felt nourished deep in the layers. It made layering on my other products even more effective and helped my skin resist dryness. It also left me with a very fresh face.
- Exfoliated and got rid of tiny whiteheads
- Like most girls, I get spots, particularly whiteheads, every now and again. In the past, I would rely on the Fresh Umbrian Clay Purifying Mask to help get rid of these, but more recently, this face wash has been able to remove them overnight. While this didn’t happen with every single spot (more on this below), whenever I had tiny whiteheads, this definitely worked.
- Basically a daily version of the Sugar Face Polish
- Like I mentioned, I’m a really big fan of the Sugar Face Polish, and always thought it’d make for a great daily face. I loved how I could massage and gently exfoliate my skin every day without leaving my skin feeling sore or irritated. And just like its predecessor, the smell was oh so heavenly and made washing my face such a dream.
- Removed makeup
- Towards the end of the bottle, I wanted to see how good it was at removing makeup, so I ditched a step in my evening skincare routine and started double-cleansing. I used this face wash as the second step in my double cleanse routine, and I loved how it managed to remove excess makeup and leave my face look clean and clear.
What I Disliked
- Customising was tricky to get the hang of
- As much as I loved being able to customise my washing experience, it took a while to get the hang of and I never really knew what kind of wash I would have. Sometimes there would be too much product, meaning it was too rough; but then other times there wouldn’t be enough product, meaning it was too soft and ineffective.
- Didn’t really exfoliate as much as I would’ve liked
- Although this face wash did exfoliate, it wasn’t as deep or as much as I thought it would be. That said though, because I was exfoliating with other products as well, this wasn’t that big of a deal.
- Granules dissolved too fast
- The sugar and strawberry seed granules that help exfoliate the skin, dissolved way too fast – especially when I didn’t put out that much product. I often found that right when I was getting into my groove, all the granules would have dissolved and I was essentially just massaging my face with a watered-down liquid.
- Bigger, cystic spots took longer to clear up compared to Clarins cleanser
- Above I talked about how small whiteheads would disappear overnight when I was using this face wash. While that was the case with tinier spots, I found that with bigger ones, it took a lot longer for them to go away than they did when I was using the Clarins cleanser, despite also still using mandelic acid. I think this is because the face wash didn’t have any active ingredients like glycolic or salicylic acid, which meant that the product was essentially staying on the surface instead of penetrating through the layers to help combat the root cause of the spots.
Anything Else?
Overall, while I did quite like this cleanser, and I would recommend trying it, I would rank other Fresh products above this face wash. There are also other face washes that I would recommend using before this one, like the Clarins One-Step Gentle Exfoliating Cleanser or the Clean & Clear Advantage Spot Control Daily Wash. If you are interested in trying this face wash, I would suggest either getting a sample first or buying one of the smaller tubes to see how you like it. I would also say that if like me, you are prone to spots, then you’ll want a face wash that offers more in terms of active ingredients, like the products I mentioned above.
Would I Buy Again?
This is kind of tricky. I can see myself rebuying this face wash at some point in the future, but that probably won’t be until late next year. And when I do rebuy, I’d probably buy the smaller size and leave it at my boyfriend’s house to use a couple of times a week.
Have you tried this face wash before? Let me know in the comments. Plus, make sure you check out my YouTube video where I show you how I use it.
alice
xo
