LUSH Life: Herbalism & Fresh Farmacy

I love LUSH.  This obsession is real, I’m in two years deep and I still haven’t tried everything!  I’ve made my way through trying most of their delectable bath-bombs, body washes and creams, but out of all their products it took me longest to try out their skincare stuff.  I’m really picky and they have so many choices so that’s not the best combo for me.  Luckily I love trying new things so hopefully this review will help shed some light on these cleansers and help you decide which LUSH cleanser is right for you.

One of the first facial cleansers I tried from LUSH was “Herbalism” which is said to be geared for oily, problematic skin.  That’s me!  Sort of…see I’ve got combination skin, it’s oily in the T-zone area, but dry near my jaw.  I figured this would be a good one to start with so I purchased about $10 worth at my local LUSH storefront.  At the store I asked the employee how to use this cleanser (it comes in a thick doughy/pasty consistency).  The lady told me to take a small marble size amount and mix it with a tiny bit of warm water in my hands and to create a more liquid consistency before massaging it into my face in circular motions.

LUSH.com describes their cleanser as,

“…best suited to those who have tried everything under the sun to clear up their oily and blemish prone skin. Here’s our fresh facial cleanser to convert you into a believer of the power of herbs! The antibacterial blend of rosemary, nettle and chamomile help clear up problematic skin. Ground rice bran acts as an effective exfoliant, while kaolin clay deep cleanses pores.”

My experience with Herbalism was overall good, but it lacked the wow factor I was looking for.  Here are the things I did like about it though: I liked that the ground almonds in it did a good job exfoliating my skin, I liked that I was able to create little ready to go portions (seen in picture above), and I liked how my skin felt smooth and moisturized afterwards.

Now, since my encounter with Herbalism left some things to be desired I figured it was time to find another face wash to try.  So second to having combination skin, I also have extremely sensitive skin.  The mildest things can irritate the skin on my face so I was excited to read about the Fresh Farmacy facial cleansing bar on the LUSH website.  This bar is meant for folks like myself with sensitive faces with ingredients like soothing calamine and chamomile extracts.

LUSH’s description,

“Feel like you have the world’s most sensitive skin? Allow us to prescribe you a bar of Fresh Farmacy, our calamine-based cleansing bar. Fresh Farmacy contains chamomile extract to calm, rose and lavender to soothe dry patches and tea tree to clear up any blemishes.”

This is the cleanser I’ve been looking for all my life.  Hands down, my skin never looked and felt so fresh.  My face feels fresh for hours when I wash with Fresh Farmacy.  After a couple uses I could already see an improvement in the tone of my skin.  Out of curiosity I’ve tried other cleansers, but this is still by far the best one I’ve ever used.