Garnier Skinactive Soothing Facial Mist Review

Garnier Soothing Facial Mist with Rose Water is a new facial mist created with 96% Naturally-Derived ingredients. Garnier went to great lengths to make this vegan friendly, cruelty-free, and green friendly thanks to a bottle made from 30% post-consumer recycled plastic.

Not only does it sound wonderful for your skin but it’s also a great product all around for animals and the environment. I do find all of this a little ironic considering some of the ingredients aren’t exactly skin friendly.

Here’s the details.

Garnier Skinactive Soothing Facial Mist comes housed in a 4.4 oz bottle that runs around $8.99 depending where you purchase it. It’s one of several new 96% Naturally-Derived skincare products that Garnier is launching this month at drugstores. The formula is created with rose water and can be used to hydrate and refresh skin before or after makeup. This formula is apparently soothing and perfect fine for se

I’m a facial mist junkie! It’s part of my daily routine and I use it before any of my other skin care. It acts as a primer of sorts for my moisturizer by not only hydrating my skin but also allowing my moisturizer to absorb easily.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t too keen on Garnier’s formula. One of the third ingredients here is alcohol denat which is apparently naturally-derived from “sugar beet or other plant” as described in the back of the bottle. Hmm ok! I’m not very familiar with naturally-derived alcohol so I goggled but there isn’t a lot of info out there. I can only speak of my experience with this formula and I will say it does de-grease my face. I wouldn’t call it hydrating as promised. It sort of removed excess shine and oil from my skin but didn’t leave me tight. Almost within a few seconds of application my skin feels like all the excess moisture and oil is sucked out. Interestingly enough this wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. But it is one that deserves mentioning for those purchasing this in the hopes it’ll be a hydrating facial mist. It’s not.

It also contains some other drying ingredients like salicylic acid but this is lower on the list and and apparently is about 1% of the formula. Another ingredient lower on the list linalool and perfume/fragrance which can also cause issues with sensitive skin. It does have a very light fragrance (not rose but a fresher floral) which is abnormal for Garnier who tend to have rather overpoweringly scented products.

Garnier promotes this as a facial mist but also as a primer before makeup or after makeup to refresh skin or even in place of moisturizer to hydrate skin. I wouldn’t say it excelled at anything of these things. It does remove excess oil but if you have drier skin this isn’t a particular great pick for you and if you’re sensitive the fragrance and a few of the other ingreidents may be an issue for you.

I’m puzzled why they went to so much trouble to make this an overall, vegan and animal friendly product with as few as ingredients as possible yet includes ones that aren’t particularly great for your skin to begin with.

I was disappointed as there are so few facial mists at the drugstore I was hoping for something great.

Have you tried it?

Garnier Skinactive Soothing Facial Mist is launching now at drugstores or get it walgreens.com and ulta.com.