HOW TO GET GLASS SKIN WITH THE PEACH & LILY GLASS SKIN REFINING SERUM – BEST BRIGHTENING SERUM, BEST NIACINAMIDE SERUM
Glass skin? That doesn’t seem like a very pleasant experience, does it? If the concept sounds bizarre to you, well, it was to me once, too.
I first heard of the concept of “glass skin” about five years ago when I discovered the extensive and exciting world of K-beauty.
I had recently returned from a trip to Seoul, South Korea, and was obsessed with skincare products I had never seen made with ingredients I’d never imagined.
In those K-beauty stores in Seoul, I felt like I was dreaming. Like I had suddenly been transported to an alien world. It was surreal. And I was mesmerized as I hopped from beauty shop to beauty shop in the city’s famed Gangnam neighborhood. It was my first real experience with Korean skincare and I returned home with a suitcase packed with all kinds of wild face creams, serums, lotions and potions whose names I could barely pronounce.
In the year or so after that seminal trip, I immersed myself in Korean skincare innovations. US-based brand incubators like Glow Recipe and Peach & Lily were my go-to’s for nearly all of it. Suddenly iconic K-beauty products like the Whamisa Organic Flowers Toner Deep Rich and Dr. Jart’s Ceramidin Liquid were staples of my skincare regimen.
And both Glow Recipe and Peach & Lily were early pioneers in introducing American consumers like me to the concepts of the 7-Skin Method and “glass skin.” I quickly learned that healthy hydration means healthy skin and glass skin is the holy grail!
What Is Glass Skin and How Do You Get Glass Skin?
Glass skin most obviously alludes to hyper-reflectivity – the brightest, smoothest and most radiant your skin can ever be. Glass skin also means skin that is optimally moisturized and dewy. And glass skin is what you should aspire to if you’re putting the time, money and effort into a comprehensive skincare routine.
There’s a superb article on how to get glass skin on the Healthline website titled, Your Complete Guide to Getting ‘Glass Skin’. You can catch the full piece here. Following is an excerpt.
If you’re a fan of the 10-step skin care regimen that Korean beauty is known for, chances are you’re familiar with the term “glass skin”: a smooth, clear, and intensely hydrated complexion that makes “dewy skin” seem dull.
“Glass skin is when your skin is at its very healthiest,” explains Alicia Yoon, founder of Peach & Lily. “In order for skin to appear poreless, luminous, and translucent, so many things have to happen. You can’t just be hydrated and look that way. Your skin really needs to be its healthiest in all aspects. Babies have ‘see-through skin’ and that’s because their skin is still so healthy.”
While the desire for “glass skin” initially originated in Korea, Yoon recalls when it first rose to popularity in the United States.
“What’s actually funny is glass skin wasn’t really a thing in the U.S. and in Korea, where English isn’t the primary language, the term ‘glass’ wasn’t being used by Koreans. What they say is a lot of words that describe glass. They’ll say ‘see-through.’ They’ll say ‘bouncy skin,’ ‘clear skin,’ or ‘luminous skin.’ There are just so many different ways to describe it,” she says.
Yoon was one of the first Korean beauty experts in the United States (aside from Ellie Choi, who went viral after sharing a glassy selfie on Instagram) who helped popularize the term. “It just clicked for me. All this time when I was trying to explain to people what your skin at its healthiest looks like, glass skin was the way to describe it the fastest.”
Glass skin and the quest to retain a luminous, translucent skin glow has been a popular trend ever since, but Yoon explains that the luminous appearance of glass skin really comes from within.
Achieving this look requires a healthy and balanced lifestyle, as well as a dedication to a skin care regimen. These certainly aren’t the kind of skin results you can just get overnight — even if you were blessed with incredible genes.
What the Koreans refer to as yuri pibu, the coveted “glass skin” effect is so appealing (and attainable!) that Peach & Lily introduced an entire collection of skincare called, well, Glass Skin.
The range comprises the brand’s cult favorite Peach & Lily Glass Skin Refining Serum, an effective brightening serum infused with fruit extracts, peptides and Niacinamide – one of the most efficient skin brightening actives. Niacinamide is indispensable in any pro-skin health routine and a separate Niacinamide serum is essential. The Glass Skin Refining Serum is one of the best Niacinamide serums I’ve come across in my travels.
The Peach & Lily Glass Skin Water-Gel Moisturizer is new but feels like a classic K-beauty moisturizer. It has an unusually lightweight gel texture that drenches skin in hydrating botanical extracts that do double duty as antioxidants to defend skin against skin-aging environmental aggressors. That’s not particularly noteworthy; but the formula’s vegan prebiotic and probiotic complex that strengthens the surface microbiome is.
The Best Brightening Serums
And, of course, no complexion refining “glass skin” routine would be complete without an acid-powered treatment toner. Peach & Lily’s The Good Acids Pore Toner is a more mild acid toner than most. It’s no where near the potency of the most popular treatment toners, ones like The Ordinary’s Glycolic Acid 7% Toning Solution and the Paula’s Choice Skin Perfecting 2% BHA Liquid Exfoliant.
The Peach & Lily The Good Acids Pore Toner combines lower levels of Glycolic Acid and Salicylic Acid with high concentrations of soothing botanical extracts for a gentle daily exfoliating effect. I’m so obsessed with this toner!
Used together, Peach & Lily’s 3-step glass skin routine offers a gentle, effective means of achieving a clear, bright and balanced complexion. In fact, you may just see the best skin of your life. And that’s actually the point of glass skin!
Let’s take a look at one of my favorite Peach & Lily products in more detail…
Peach & Lily | Glass Skin Refining Serum
An antioxidant-powered brightening serum is essential for all pro-skin health routines – and especially if your objective is a healthy, reflective, glass skin complexion. Niacinamide, in particular, is mandatory and I never skip it in my own daily skincare regimens. In fact, I credit Niacinamide, or Vitamin B3, with optimizing my own skin health and keeping my skin bright, fresh and clear.
There are dozens of well-formulated Niacinamide serums and creams. Among my favorites are the Paula’s Choice 10% Niacinamide Booster, the Topicals Faded Serum For Dark Spots & Discoloration and Algenists Algae Niacinamide Moisture Veil — the best Niacinamide serum for oily skin. You can catch my top picks of the best Niacinamide serums and treatments on the blog here.
As with most effective actives, there is no set, recommended concentration of Niacinamide in a skincare product. The minimum recommendation is a level of two percent. At a two-percent concentration, Niacinamide delivers effective antioxidant protection, brightening and pore-clearing.
Used at higher levels and consistently, Niacinamide helps even out skin tone, strengthen the skin barrier and can even retexturize the skin surface. With the highest concentration of Niacinamide in any serum I’ve seen, the Paula’s Choice Niacinamide 20% Treatment claims to do all of this.
The Best Niacinamide Serums and Treatments
What Is Niacinamide and What Does Niacinamide Do for the Skin?
I found a comprehensive article on Niacinamide by the experts on the Paula’s Choice Research Team, titled simply, How Niacinamide Helps Skin. It doesn’t do it justice! They should have titled the article, Niacinamide is the Game Changer You Need to Defend Against Skin Damage and Maintain Optimal Skin Health.
An in-depth excerpt from the piece…
How Niacinamide Helps Skin
Niacinamide is a skin care ingredient worthy of your attention and your skin will love you for using it. Among a handful of other amazing skin care ingredients such as retinol and vitamin C, niacinamide is a standout because of its versatility for almost any skin care concern and skin type.
As many of you know about us, but for those who don’t, the conclusions we make about any ingredient are always based on what the published research has shown to be true—and the research about niacinamide unanimously demonstrates how special it is. New research keeps showing it’s one of the most exciting skin care ingredients around.
What is Niacinamide?
Also known as vitamin B3 and nicotinamide, niacinamide is a water-soluble vitamin that works with the natural substances in your skin to help visibly minimize enlarged pores, tighten lax pores, improve uneven skin tone, soften fine lines and wrinkles, diminish dullness, and strengthen a weakened surface.
Niacinamide also reduces the impact of environmental damage because of its ability to improve skin’s barrier (its first line of defense), plus it also plays a role in helping skin to repair signs of past damage. Left unchecked, this type of daily assault makes skin appear older, dull, and less radiant.
Why You Should Use Niacinamide
As you might have gathered, we’re very impressed with all that niacinamide can do for skin when applied via skin care products like toners, serums, and highly concentrated leave-on treatments. Niacinamide is uniquely compatible with any of the products in your skin care routine, including those that contain retinol, peptides, hyaluronic acid, AHAs, BHA, vitamin C, and all types of antioxidants.
You can use multiple niacinamide-containing products in your routine, and it will still be non-sensitizing as this ingenious B vitamin is well tolerated by all skin types. It’s even suitable for use by those with sensitive or rosacea-prone skin.
Other helpful benefits of niacinamide are that it helps renew and restore the surface of skin against moisture loss and dehydration by helping skin improve its natural production of skin-strengthening ceramides. When ceramides become depleted over time, skin is left vulnerable to all sorts of problems, from persistent patches of dry, flaky skin to increasingly becoming extra-sensitive.
If you struggle with dry skin, topical application of niacinamide has been shown to boost the hydrating ability of moisturizers so skin’s surface can better resist the moisture loss that leads to recurrent dry, tight, flaky skin. Niacinamide works brilliantly with common moisturizer ingredients like glycerin, non-fragrant plant oils, cholesterol, sodium PCA, and sodium hyaluronate.
How does niacinamide help pores? Great question, although the answer here isn’t certain. Simply put, research hasn’t come to a full understanding about how this B vitamin works its pore-reducing magic, but it does! It seems that niacinamide has a normalizing ability on the pore lining, and that this influence plays a role in keeping debris from getting backed up, which leads to clogs and rough, bumpy skin. As the clog forms and worsens, the pores stretch to compensate, and what you’ll see is enlarged pores. By helping things get back to normal, niacinamide use helps pores return to their normal size. Sun damage can cause pores to become stretched, too, leading to what some describe as "orange peel skin". Higher concentrations of niacinamide can help visibly tighten pores by shoring up skin’s supportive elements.
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The Peach & Lily Glass Skin Refining Serum is a powerhouse of pro-skin health ingredients. By my estimation, the brand’s Glass Skin Refining Serum contains an approximate 5% concentration of Niacinamide — a solid level that can effectively deliver a brightening and antioxidant benefit.
For skin to be truly healthy and protected from damage, you need a combination of antioxidants and UV filters in your routine. Both help to prevent signs of skin aging, including lines, wrinkles, spots and, over time, loss of skin firmness.
Five percent Niacinamide in a twice-daily serum will help clarify pores and fortify skin barrier function against environmental skin aging. Used consistently, it will also help minimize the appearance of dark spots to even out the complexion and, yes, achieve a glass skin appearance.
But skin needs more than one beneficial active, even multi-benefit Niacinamide.
Beyond its efficient level of Niacinamide, Peach & Lily’s Glass Skin Refining Serum is infused with a cocktail of antioxidant and nutrient-dense botanical extracts that feed and protect the skin throughout the day. Among the most noteworthy is what the brand claims to be one of the formula’s key ingredients, Prunus Persica (Peach) Fruit Extract.
According to Peach & Lily, Peach Fruit Extract is “a powerhouse chock full of vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids known to help keep skin visibly firm, radiant and resilient.” As with so many fruit extracts, I’m confident that it has superb antioxidant properties for the skin to help prevent dark spots and hyperpigmentation — the antithesis of a glass skin complexion.
The Glass Skin Refining Serum also makes an excellent hydrating serum with multiple effective humectants, including Butylene Glycol and both Sodium Hyaluronate and Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate — two salt forms of Hylauronic Acid that are more skin-compatible.
It has a super lightweight, pulpy texture that makes it easy to layer into any skincare routine — and is an ideal product for helping to achieve that coveted glass skin effect we all crave.
What I like about it: The Peach & Lily Glass Skin Refining Serum is a well-rounded face serum infused with a cocktail of beneficial antioxidants that help to improve overall skin health and prevent dark spots and hyperpigmentation in the complexion. I love its 5% concentration of Niacinamide, a healthy dose – especially ideal for twice daily use.
What I don’t like about it: I like everything about it.
Who it’s for: All skin types.
SHOP THE BLOG: Purchase the Peach & Lily Glass Skin Refining Serum for $39 here.
The Ingredient List of the Peach & Lily Glass Skin Refining Serum:
cci|sb|aacne|h, 1,2-Hexanediol solv, Prunus Persica (Peach) Fruit Extract abrasive/scrub|h, Dioscorea Japonica Root Extract, Sodium Hyaluronate 
sii|h 0 0, Adenosine cci, Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate h, Madecassoside aox|so, Hydrolyzed Hyaluronic Acid h, Sodium Acetylated Hyaluronate h, Acetyl Octapeptide-3 cci|h, Ethylhexylglycerin pres, Hydrolyzed Corn Starch h|vc, Sodium Carbomer vc, Beta-Glucan so|h, Saccharide Isomerate h, Phytic Acid chel, Sucrose h|so, Asiaticoside aox|perf, Caprylyl Glycol h|emo
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