8 vegan skin-care brands you should know, and the best products from each company

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When you abide by a vegan lifestyle, buying everything from groceries to stylish purses and skin-care products requires a bit of legwork and research.
To make it easier, I’ve rounded up eight vegan skin-care lines below, plus the hero products you may want to check out from each one.

No matter what the philosophy, it can be hard to implement any lifestyle change into your life wholly. This is especially true for the burgeoning number of vegans living in a world seemingly built on animal products.

Buying anything requires legwork and research, whether it’s groceries (down to the specific protein powder type), stylish purses, shoes, winter coats, or skin-care products.

Some skin-care lines have clear delineations that make it easy to shop for solely vegan products. Drunk Elephant, The Ordinary, Botanics, Josie Maran, Ole Henrikson, No B.S., Dr. Dennis Gross, Tatcha, and Yes To are mostly — but not entirely — vegan skin-care lines that are generally well-loved by vegan and unknowing shoppers alike. You can also shop the top-ranked vegan skin-care products on Sephora directly here.

A few smaller batch companies have committed to being 100% vegan, taking some of the pressure off the purchasing process, so you’re safe to browse without doing your homework. But, finding the vegan options can be enough effort to undo that very convenience. With that in mind, I’ve rounded up eight vegan skin-care lines and the products they’re best known for, so you can shop directly.

Below are eight 100% vegan skin-care brands to shop, plus where to find them — and which products you should consider getting from each:

Skyn Iceland

Shop Skyn Iceland at Skyn Iceland and Amazon

Hero product: Hydro Cool Firming Eye Gels, $30

Skyn Iceland is an Icelandic skin-care brand that was specifically engineered to address the effects of stress on the skin. The company came to be after its founder, Sarah Kugelman, found herself in the hospital due to chronic stress. Products include the "Icelandic Complex," a combination of pure natural resources sourced from Iceland: Icelandic glacial water, molecular oxygen to encourage cell metabolism, and arctic super fruits like Arctic cloudberry seed oil and arctic red cranberry seed oil rich in antioxidants, Omega-rich fatty acids, and vitamins A, C, and E. You can create your own custom-fit routine, as well as take various stress tests to see where you land.

PETA actually honored Kugelman with a Trail-Blazer Award for her compassion and commitment to using only vegan ingredients and to never testing on animals.

Nuria Beauty

Nuria Beauty Facebook

Shop Nuria at Nuria Beauty and Nordstrom

Hero product: Defend Gentle Exfoliator, $18

Nuria Beauty was founded by a 15-year Johnson & Johnson veteran who traveled the world brainstorming skin-care products. She noticed that each community had certain "Holy Grail ingredients" local to them that helped address the specific skin concerns their environment fostered — such as clogged pores in warm, lush climates. She rounded up all of these remote beauty secrets into one encyclopedic master line: Nuria, which also happens to be 100% vegan.

Nuria also donates a portion of its proceeds to She’s the First, a non-profit working to end gender inequality in education.

Acure

Shop Acure at Amazon, Target, and Thrive Market

Hero product: Brightening Facial Scrub, $8.49

Acure is making a name for itself as the 100% vegan and "0% pretentious" brand for skin, hair, and body products after replacing the few products in its line that relied upon beeswax with animal-free alternatives. You won’t find any parabens, sulfates, mineral oils, petrolatum, silicones, or animal testing with Acure’s products. The Brightening Facial Scrub works on all skin types and uses a chlorella growth factor to stimulate new cell growth. It has more than 1,600 five-star reviews on Amazon.

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