Beauty Week #1 Best Hot Cloth Cleansers

Starting my beauty week with the first building block of skincare - cleansing - and my favourite mode of cleansing - hot cloth. I've tried them all, cream, liquid, foaming, wipes and micellar waters, but I always go back to hot cloth cleansing. It's the only one that makes my skin feel completely clean and refreshed. Over the past couple of years, I've tried many different hot cloth cleansers so I wanted to share with you on this post, the ones I use most frequently.

I'm not featuring Liz Earle's Cleanse & Polish for two reasons. Firstly, I'm not a huge fan and secondly the company use parabens in too many of their other products and therefore I feel their 'natural' strap line is a little misleading. There's an interesting blog post about this here if you'd like to read more. So if you are a Liz Earle fan, I urge you to try my first option. It's far superior from an ingredients perspective and actually works out less expensive too.

Tropic Smoothing Cleanser - £16 for 120ml

The texture is not unlike Cleanse & Polish but it smells divine and the accompanying facecloth is a lovely texture. A couple of pumps is plenty for normal make-up removal and the ingredients are completely natural. I use this to take face paints etc off the kids skin too...it's so gentle.

The next few options are balm cleansers - so they have an oilier texture but don't be afraid of this. Oil attracts oil so they work really well on normal/dry skins. The first product is from Temple Spa and is my favourite of the balm options...it smells gorgeous:

In The Beginning - Deep Cleansing Melt - £28 for 60g
You only need a tiny amount of this so it does last well. It comes with a plastic spatula to prevent any bacteria getting into the tub from your hands. It has got tiny exfoliating beads in it that burst while you're using it - so there's a slight scrub effect from it. Very minimal though so it's fine for daily use.

The second balm cleanser I love is from Neal's Yard - another great option for the ingredient purists:

NYR Organic - Wild Rose Beauty Balm - £38 for 50g
A complete treat for rose lovers, this is more than a cleanser - it's a destressing treatment! It can be used to cleanse with a flannel as per the other products but it's also amazing for sore skin, dry patches and with the rose extracts, it's particularly good for skin with rosacea. I have a few samples at home so drop me a line if you'd like to try it. I am a (very unproductive) NYR consultant - I just don't have time for it at the moment but I still do orders a few times a year for my regular customers.

Finally, a few less expensive options for you. M&S have recently developed the PURE range and this cleanser is a great budget option:

Pure Daily Skincare Moisture Plus Miracle Balm - £9.50 for 85g
It's not got the grittiness of the Neal's Yard and Temple Spa so it's not my favourite for that reason - it definitely feels oilier to use. But it does the job and also doubles up nicely as a dry skin rescue cream. No cloth included in this one (the others all come with a muslin or flannel).

And the final one I've road-tested and can recommend is the Boots Botanics Cleansing Balm, which I've mentioned before on the blog a couple of times. It's on offer at the moment too!

Botanics 97% Organic Hot Cloth Cleansing Balm - £5.99 for 65ml (usually £8.99)
I use this one lots when I'm having a leaner month and the only thing I don't like about it is the smell. Personal choice there - it does the job at the end of the day!

There are tons of other options and the best bit about the oil balm textured products is that they are all paraben free (parabens are only used in creamy cleansers). Lisa Eldridge has a nice video featuring some of them on this link if you'd like to find out more - zip forward about 2 minutes 30 to get to the nitty gritty.

So I'm back tomorrow with the next stage of my skincare routine to include my foaming cleanser of choice and the anti-ageing creams I use daily.

Ax