Oily Sensitive
Oily and easily upset at once,
which asks for doing less, not more.
Oily Sensitive
Oily and easily upset at once,
which asks for doing less, not more.
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. The answer is restraint: light hydration, kept simple, and that's what this part of the range is built to give it.
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 this skin type 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. The sensible answer to both is to do less. Light hydration from oils chosen to suit oily skin, a deliberately simple formula with a short supporting cast, and nothing sharp or stripping that might set it off.
The more you put on reactive skin, the more there is for it to react to, so restraint is the whole strategy here. Support, not control, and with a lighter hand than anywhere else in the range.
The oils we chose for it
Every Oily Sensitive moisturiser shares the same blend of four cold-pressed organic oils, chosen for this skin type and kept light.
Grape seed is a light, fast-absorbing oil high in linoleic acid, the essential fatty acid the skin uses to keep its barrier in order, and a good fit for oily skin. Pomegranate brings punicic acid and antioxidant polyphenols. Argan sits at a modest level as a conditioning note, described for its fatty acids and vitamin E rather than the marketing that tends to surround it. And dragon fruit seed oil adds a light, well-balanced profile.
Around those four sits a supporting cast shared across the whole range. Squalane, a lightweight oil close to one the skin makes for itself. Soothing allantoin. A prebiotic and postbiotic pairing chosen to support the skin's own microbiome, where the evidence is still emerging and we would rather say so than overstate it. And our signature bladderwrack, the same Atlantic seaweed species we know from the rocks below Welcombe, though the extract itself is produced in France from that species. The coast is the kinship here, not the supply chain.
Every ingredient, and the exact amount of each, is published on each product page. That's the whole point of how we work, and each one links through to its own page if you want to read further.
Your three moisturisers
The same Oily Sensitive blend comes in three textures, so you can match the richness to where you're using it. All three stay light and simple, since that's what this skin type is after.
Flow is the lightest, made for the face. Core is a touch richer, for the body. Deep is the richest of the three, for the areas that turn dry even on oily skin, the hands, elbows and feet.
Same blend throughout. More or less of it, depending on what the skin is asking for.
As with any new product on reactive skin, it's worth patch testing first.
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 tends to provoke both more oil and 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. With this skin type, less really is more.
You'll have noticed we never use synthetic fragrance, which is one of the more common triggers for skin like this. There's a single essential oil in the range, vetiver, at a low level and chosen on purpose, and it appears on every label so you can see exactly how much is there.
Your skin can settle over time
Oily Sensitive isn't a fixed label. Cared for gently and simply, the reactivity often calms over time, and for some people the skin gradually settles toward the steadier Oily type, where there's less to tiptoe around. It's gradual, it comes from a kind, consistent, uncomplicated routine rather than any single product working magic, and it's a good reason to treat where your skin is today as a starting point. If it changes, the skin type finder is always there to place yourself again.
Where to next