Oily Sensitive
Oily and easily upset at once,
so it does best with less.
Skin that shines through the day and also reddens, stings or flares easily. Oily and sensitive is an awkward pairing, because the skin makes plenty of surface oil yet reacts to many of the things commonly used to manage it. It does best with light hydration and a simple routine.
Is this you?
Oily Sensitive skin shines by the middle of the day, with visible pores, and also reddens or goes blotchy easily, stings when you try something new, and flares more readily than settled oily skin. It's the combination that gives it away: plenty of oil, and plenty of reactivity alongside it.
If both of those sound like your skin, you're in the right place. If you're not certain, the skin type finder takes a couple of minutes.
What Oily Sensitive skin needs
Oily Sensitive skin pulls in two directions. It's oily, so it doesn't want anything heavy, and it's reactive, so it doesn't want anything harsh. These moisturisers use light oils led by mild pomegranate, with no added fragrance and nothing sharp or stripping that might set it off.
The more products you layer on reactive skin, the more there is for it to react to, so keep the routine short.
The oils in every Oily Sensitive moisturiser
Every Oily Sensitive moisturiser shares the same blend of four cold-pressed and organic plant oils, all from the light end.
Pomegranate and grape seed lead the blend. Pomegranate is unusual for its punicic acid, a fatty acid with antioxidant activity, and it is a mild oil. Grape seed is light, quick to absorb and high in linoleic acid, which the sebum in oily skin tends to run low in. Dragon fruit seed oil is light and linoleic-rich too. Argan, in a small amount, adds vitamin E and an emollient feel.
Every Biotaderm moisturiser also contains squalane, a barley ferment upcycled from gin distilling, the plant prebiotic inulin, allantoin, vitamin E and chlorella. Each one also carries bladderwrack, the same seaweed species that grows on the rocks below Welcombe, as a cold infusion in sunflower oil made in the UK.
Each product page lists every ingredient with its exact percentage, and links each one to its entry in our ingredient library.
Your three Oily Sensitive moisturisers
The same Oily Sensitive blend comes in three textures, so you can match the richness to where you use it. All three use the light oils of this blend.
Flow, over 9% plant oil, is made for the face. Core, over 14%, is the most versatile, for anywhere on the body and the face when it wants more than Flow. Deep, over 19%, is the richest, for hands, elbows and feet, which can run dry even when the face is oily.
If your skin reacts easily, patch test on the inside of your forearm before first use.
Looking after Oily Sensitive skin
This skin type does best on a short, gentle routine.
Cleanse gently rather than harshly, with lukewarm water, since stripping the skin's barrier tends to provoke more reaction. Keep the routine simple, and resist piling on strong actives, since reactive skin has less tolerance for them. Introduce new things one at a time, with a patch test, so that if something doesn't suit you, you know exactly what it was. And give any change a few weeks.
We never add synthetic fragrance, one of the more common triggers for reactive skin. The range contains one essential oil, vetiver, at a tenth of a percent, and the label shows exactly how much is there.
Your skin type can change
Oily Sensitive isn't a fixed label. Cared for gently and simply, the reactivity can calm over time, and for some people the skin settles toward the steadier Oily type, where there's less to tiptoe around. Any change is slow, and it comes from steady care more than from any one product. If your skin changes, the skin type finder will place you again.
Where to next
- See the three Oily Sensitive moisturisers: Flow, Core and Deep
- Not sure this is you? Find your skin type
- The other skin types: Dry Sensitive, Dry, Balanced, Oily
- How we choose our ingredients, and the science behind them