Beauty / Vol. IV Best Of 6 products · Updated September 14, 2026

THE6 BESTMOIST-URIZERS

I’ve tried hundreds. These are the ones I’d actually buy again.

Breakfast and a makeup bag spread on a desk facing dunes and the sea — The travelling shelf · Sri Lanka · Room with dunes

Beauty of Joseon serum and Anua 10+ held up against the hills

VT Reedle Shot and ZO Firming Serum in hand

the splurge that’s actually worth it ↑

Lauren tested

Words & testing · Lauren Fowler Open story ↓ Photograph · Lauren

Filed under
Beauty / Skin / Best Of

Tested over
14 months · 3 climates

Prices checked
09.14.2026

Published
March 2, 2026

Best by Lauren may earn a commission when you shop through certain links. Every product here was bought with my own money or tested for at least six weeks. No brand has paid to be included, and nothing is ranked higher because it pays more.

I have spent an unreasonable amount of my life with a moisturizer on one half of my face and a different one on the other. Bathroom in Malibu, hotel sink in Seoul, a hut in Lombok with no mirror at all. This list is what survived.

Everything below has been repurchased at least once. The ranking is honest — the cream at number one is the one I’d grab if the house were on fire. The one at the bottom is still better than most things at Sephora.

The ShortlistJump to a product

01 The Rich CreamBest overall $290 02 The Dewy Skin CreamThe one I pack everywhere $72 03 Cicaplast Baume B5The $16 fix $16 04 Cicapair Tiger Grass Colour Correcting Treatment $52 05 Black Rose Cream MaskThe splurge $142 06 The Body Lotion $25

Serums held up against the hills — Augustinus Bader

if the house were on fire →

Best overall✦ 2027 Winner · Best Moisturizer

Augustinus Bader

The Rich Cream

I resisted this for two years because of the price and the hype, in that order. Then a facialist in Seoul put it on half my face and I spent the flight home touching one cheek. It is thick without being greasy, and skin looks like it slept eight hours when it slept four.

Why I love it: Works under makeup, works over retinol, works at 30,000 feet.
Good for: Dry to normal · Winter · Long-haul · Post-treatment
The verdict: expensive, and I’ve bought it four times

Shop — $290AmazonBrandShips US · UK · EU

02The one I pack everywhere

Tatcha

The Dewy Skin Cream

The travel size lives in my carry-on permanently. It’s the cream I put on in the airport bathroom in Doha and again, gratefully, in the hotel. Lavender-tinted, faintly floral, forgiving.

Why I love it: The travel size has been in my carry-on for two years straight.
Good for: Dehydrated skin · Flights · Winter · Over actives
The verdict: winter face, saved

Shop — $72AmazonShips worldwide

Aestura Atobarrier cream on a hotel bathroom shelf — Tatcha

Celimax noni serum among the bathroom bottles — La Roche-Posay

the $16 one ↓

The $16 fix

La Roche-Posay

Cicaplast Baume B5

Not glamorous and not trying to be. This is the tube I reach for when I have overdone the actives, when the plane has dried me out, or when a new product has gone badly. It fixes things in a night.

Why I love it: Wind-burn, over-exfoliation, a bad reaction to hotel soap — all of it.
Good for: Irritation · Post-treatment · Flights · Anywhere dry
The verdict: the $16 fix for everything

Shop — $16Target

Dr. Jart+

Cicapair Tiger Grass Colour Correcting Treatment

Goes on green, turns skin-coloured, and takes ten years off a bad-sleep face. I keep one at home and one in the travel bag.

Why I love it: It corrects and treats at once, which almost nothing does.
Good for: Redness · Rosacea-prone · No-makeup days
The verdict: redness, gone by breakfast

Shop — $52Amazon

A haul of Korean skincare laid out on the bed — Dr. Jart+

Hair blown around in the humidity — Sisley

The splurge

Sisley

Black Rose Cream Mask

I bought it once as a mistake and have replaced it three times on purpose. Ten minutes and a face looks rested in a way that reads on camera.

Why I love it: Ten minutes before an event does what a facial does.
Good for: Before an event · Long-haul recovery · Dry skin
The verdict: the splurge that works

Shop — $142Brand

Nécessaire

The Body Lotion

The rare body lotion that does not announce itself. I layer it under everything and it has never once argued with a fragrance.

Why I love it: No fragrance to fight with a perfume, and it actually absorbs.
Good for: Daily · Sensitive skin · After sun
The verdict: smells like nothing. perfect.

Shop — $25Amazon

How I tested these

Half-face, for at least six weeks each. One new cream at a time, the rest of the routine unchanged, photographed in the same bathroom light on the same day of the week.

Three climates, because a moisturizer that works in Malibu can fail completely in Bangkok humidity, and the one that saved me in a Swiss winter turned greasy the moment I landed in Thailand. Where a cream only works in one climate, I have said so.

What I stopped buying

Anything that pills. A cream that rolls under sunscreen is a cream you will stop using by week three, no matter how good the ingredient list reads.

Anything in a jar I have to dig into with a finger on a plane. And anything with a fragrance strong enough that I can smell it an hour later — it is almost always the thing my skin reacts to.

The shelf8 frames · Fourteen months

The bathroom shelf in Malibu, skincare lined up — Everything out is in use

Questions

What is the best moisturizer for dry skin?

Augustinus Bader The Rich Cream if budget is not the question, and La Roche-Posay Cicaplast Baume B5 if it is. They do different jobs — one is a daily cream, one is a repair balm — and I own both at the same time.

Is an expensive moisturizer actually worth it?

Sometimes. Of the 6 here, three of the expensive ones earn the price and the rest do not. The $16 La Roche-Posay outperforms creams at ten times the price on irritated skin.

How long should I test a new moisturizer?

Six weeks, one product at a time. Most of the moisturizers I ended up loving did nothing visible in the first fortnight.

Which moisturizer works best under makeup?

Tatcha The Dewy Skin Cream, with fifteen minutes before foundation. It is also the one that survives a long-haul flight without pilling.