When is water not water? When it’s micellar water!

So I got a little tired of hearing how *wonderful* Bioderma’s Micellar Water was and thought it to be very likely that the other brands of micellar (mees-el-air) water were just as effective!  Particularly since you can’t buy Bioderma easily in the UK – it’s become somewhat of a cult product based on no actual research  – just the chatterings of various MUA and bloggers.

So here’s my experiment – are all micellar waters created equal?

The science bit;

Micelle (pronounced /maɪˈsɛl/ or /maɪˈsiːl/, plural micelles, micella, or micellae) Micellar technology groups the cleansing agent in micelles. These micelles trap impurities and any excess of make-up to perfectly cleanse without rubbing or irritating.  In France it is called micellaire and is pronounced mees-el-air.

Most pharmacies stock several brands- mainly Avene, Nuxe – Bioderma I found quite hard to track down in my region of the Haute-Savoie and had to go into about 10 different pharmacies to find it.  A small bottle of 250mls is €12 and the bigger one is €17.95.

To create this experiment I took 7 micellar water products, created a “face” on my hand consisting of;

BB cream – Gold Caviar BB Cream (like concrete)

Dark Bronzer – Helen E Cosmetics

Liquid eyeliner – MeMeMe cosmetics

Brown eyeshadow – ArtDeco

The task was to see if the micellar water used would remove in one clean sweep as claimed by users of Bioderma.

In all cases – the eyeliner needed a further sweep as it didn’t come off right away – and I wouldn’t expect it to – I would chuck the eyeliner it in the bin if it came off that easily!

Otherwise – every single micellar water removed the makeup perfectly, cleanly, no scrubbing involved.   I’ve nominated the various waters based on their features below the images.  (ps the reason the La Roche-Posay pad is darker is because I was more than a little heavy handed with the eyeliner!)

Summary – don’t knock your pan in trying to find Bioderma – it’s a waste of time as all of these other waters do exactly the same job and can be found in Boots (Vichy/LaRoche Posay) or online (Caudalie, Institit, Melvita)

Best Organic Micellar Water – Caudalie and Melvita

Most Accessible Micellar Water – La Roche-Posay £11.50 from Boots or Vichy £11 from Boots

Ps just as a final note – here’s a little experiment – Bioderma vs The Eyeliners.  It took three clean sweeps to get most of them off 🙂  My M.A.C eye make up remover does it in two.

Sweep 1

Sweep 2