I wouldn’t say it was rare that the beauty industry invents a whole new product category, but my own willingness to adopt another step certainly is. Ten years ago, I’d have told you not to bother with toner unless you particularly enjoyed using it, which is as good a reason as any in a world on fire. And yet over the past couple of years, the new “milky toners” have, to me at least, become so functional as to be indispensable.
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These are cloudy fluids, thicker than a toner but thinner than a moisturiser, usually containing gentle, universally skin-pleasing ingredients like glycerine, ceramides and peptides.
The idea is to apply straight after cleansing, to slightly damp skin, before the serum step, to increase hydration and comfort, and impart that glassy look popularised by Korean skincare (from where, it can fairly be said, milky toners first came). In practice, they do all of this and more.
If your schedule and priorities won’t tolerate another skincare step, you can still feel the benefits on an ad hoc basis by opting for a mist
Milky toners work very well at giving drier, wintery skins an additional opportunity to drink up, and can even be used by very oily skins in place of day cream. In either case, I recommend Rhode’s wildly popular Glazing Milk, from £20, a milky toner that I was almost determined not to like but is probably my most used.
As well as providing instant comfort, ungreasy moisture and an aesthetically pleasing dewiness to my makeup, it has the bonus benefit of being the perfect mixing medium for tanning drops (trust me – I’ve now converted several beauty editors to this method) and to sheer-out heavy foundation.
For nighttime, I step things up a gear to indulge my skin barrier function and buffer my somewhat feisty prescription retinoid. My weapons of choice are Dr Loretta’s very elegantly textured Barrier Enhancing Milky Essence, £50, made by one of the most no-nonsense and wise US dermatologists I’ve ever met, and Dr Jart’s thicker Ceramidin Skin Barrier Serum Toner, £35, a thicker, buttermilk-textured lotion that seemingly aggravates no one.
If your schedule and priorities won’t tolerate another skincare step, you can still feel the benefits on an ad hoc basis by opting for a mist that can be used quickly under or over makeup. For example, when I’m reluctantly about to join a Zoom call mid-afternoon, I now instinctively reach for Dr Althea’s super – and very nicely priced – 345 Relief Cream Mist, £12.50, a milky toner that instantly re-plumps and makes my skin look lively, not as though it is limping its way to bedtime.
