Palmer’s Coconut Monoi Facial Cleansing Balm Review & Swatches

Palmer’s Coconut Monoi Facial Cleansing Balm ($7.99) is a new, natural oil-based solid cleansing balm that’s launching now at drugstores. I picked this up at Harmon’s and I was quite excited to try it as I really love Palmer’s Skin Therapy Cleansing Oil.

Palmer’s actually been pretty busy launching a slew of different facial skincare including a new hydrating facial mask, scrub, and other goodies. I was a little worried about the fact this contained coconut oil. For some reason coconut is hit or miss with my skin. Sometimes I’m fine with it other times it matches me itchy! Thankfully enough I experience no issues using it but it does contain quite few different oils which may or may not be a hit for oily skin types! There’s coconut oil here as well as monoi, almond, and extra virgin olive oil. It’s a lot of oil 🙂 And even though it rinses clean away I think it would work best for drier skin.

Palmer’s Coconut Monoï Facial Cleansing Balm comes in a 2.25 oz plastic tube for around $8 (I paid $7 at Harmon’s). It’s a bit smaller than other drugstore cleansing balms like Pond�s Cleansing Balm which is $9.99 and 3.38 oz in size.

This is interesting but doesn’t quite cut it for me. If you’re going for a more budget friendly cleansing balm, one that’s accessible and easy to get at the drugstore I would recommend the Pond’s Cleansing Balm all the way as it is one of the best ones I’ve tried that’s budget friendly and available so easily. I think the Palmer’s one is nice and I’m happy to have tried it but I don’t think I’d repurchase it and didn’t feel it was as good as the cleansing oil that they have available.

This is a solid balm with a soft texture that’s meant to be applied on dry skin, worked into skin, and a little water is used to emulsify and break it down before rinsing it completely away. There are several hundred things I like about it but two things I didn’t which were pretty important.

First off, the texture is lovely. It’s soft and has a sorbet-like consistency. It feels very moisturizing and quite oily on my skin but it does break down easily when water is added and rinses clean away. It didn’t strip my skin nor make it drier and I felt like I just washed away some sort of cream mask after using it because my skin felt so nicely hydrated after use! Almost as if I had patted a little facial oil onto my skin. It has a very strong tropical coconut and monoi fragrance that I enjoyed but might be an issue for sensitive users.

Here’s my problem….

It feels a bit grainy and chunky. I had to massage and work it into my skin to get it to break down as it just felt very chunky. I’m not really sure where the graininess is coming. As I massage it does disappear but during the initial application it’s there and made me wary of using it around my eyes a tiny bit. This ruined the formula quite a bit for me. I just wasn’t digging that graininess.

The second issue I had was the fact it didn’t quite leave my skin completely clean. Here’s the thing…it does a great job breaking down my makeup, removing eye makeup, and particularly it did a fab job with waterproof mascara but when I did my little test at the end of my cleansing I did notice makeup residue was left behind. This wasn’t visible after I rinsed but I typically use a cotton pad soaked in micellar water after I test a new cleanser to see how it does. I noticed that the pad came away with a light, subtle hint of my foundation on it. It wasn’t a lot of makeup but hey, I want my skin to be clean ya know? I tested this of the course of about a week half and I did the micellar water test after each cleanse and each time the cotton pad came away with traces of my makeup. Oddly, no eye makeup remained but traces of my foundation did!

Palmer’s Coconut Monoï Facial Cleansing Balm has a lot going for it. The texture is soft, the formula hydrating, it rinses clean away! But sadly, the bit of graininess I experienced threw me for a curve ball and the fact that it left traces of my makeup behind made it a little bit of a fail for me.

Oh well!

Palmer’s Coconut Monoï Facial Cleansing Balm is launching now at drugstores.

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