A fun fact about me: I absolutely hate makeup wipes. Rubbing them against my skin irritates the hell out of it, most of them have an overwhelming odor, and a lot of the times, they're still no match for my mascara.
But I've only ever used wipes from the drugstore, so I have to ask: Will splurging on high-end wipes finally change my life? Is cheaping out what I've been doing wrong this whole time?
So I tried them both. I compared the cheapest makeup wipes on the market to the most expensive ones to find out once and for all if expensive = better.
I'll start with my favorite, which happens to be the cheapest wipes at my drugstore: Simple Cleansing Facial Wipes.
The pack is easy to find at most drugstores, and it's usually priced around $5. For that, you get a plastic pack full of 25 wipes. The packaging doesn't have any bells and whistles, but it doesn't completely suck, either.
One of the best things about these wipes is that they have this bubble-like texture that helps demolish all your makeup with minimal effort.
They also have a fresh scent that isn't overwhelming and doesn't make me fear irritation from heavy perfumes.
It only takes a few swipes of these to rid yourself of all makeup with little irritation, odor, or residue.
Even super-matte eyeliner and waterproof mascara come off easily — a high feat for any makeup wipe. This is why these are my favorite drugstore wipes time and time again.
Next up: The most EXPENSIVE luxury wipes on the market. Meet Lancer Skincare Makeup Removing Wipes.
Unlike any makeup wipes I've encountered before, Lancer wipes come in individual packets like the sanitizing wipes you might find in a restaurant.
Which, I've got to hand it to them, makes these wipes impossible to dry out or contaminate. They put my neat-freak, Virgo soul at ease.
Although this wipe doesn't have any practical texture to it, I can tell right off the bat that Lancer uses a higher-quality fabric to make its wipes than drugstore brands.
Remember that time I tried out eight different drugstore wipes? Since then, I have a very keen sense for synthetic materials, and I can feel that these are just a little bit softer than pretty much every drugstore wipe out there.
Also, there is little to NO scent on this, another feature I adore as my skin is sensitive to fragrance.
But, when it came time to actually put that cloth on my face, I was let down.
The Lancer wipes got the job done, sure, but it took some time and effort to get there. Lipstick and foundation came off without a stitch, but my eyeliner and mascara required me to rub my eyes quite intensely. My contacts fogged up from the wipe's residue, and my skin immediately developed that tell-tale tingle I get from most makeup wipes.
Womp womp womp.
So I'm going to forego Lancer and stick to Simple for those rare circumstances where I actually need to use a makeup wipe.
Lancer's packaging might come with a lot of perks, but at the end of the day, I could care less about that if the product itself can't do the only thing it was created to do.
That being said, I don't think I'll ever understand why anyone would spend $40 on makeup wipes when they could buy themselves a quality cleansing balm for a few bucks less.
But hey, to each their own, I guess.
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