Vibrate your way to truly clean skin

This one is a bit of an essay, but bear with me because it has a happy ending.

I am fortunate enough to have been trialling the Clarisonic for the last couple of months and I am being 100% honest when I say it has changed the way I clean my skin.

Just to back the bus up a minute, the Clarisonic is a ‘skin cleaning system’ (read: handheld device) that already has a cult following in the US. It is consistently one of the top 5 products sold at Sephora, which is kind of a big deal. You know how an electric toothbrush works, right? It uses ultrasonic waves to get in between teeth and take them to a new level of clean. Same deal here, but for your face. I have to admit I was a bit sceptical, but once I actually tried it I was hooked.

The Clarisonic is an electric brush with soft bristles that uses gentle sonic waves to cleanse far more deeply than you manually can with fingers or a wash cloth. It cleans out your pores without having to resort to using harsh chemicals, and their clinical results show that 6 times more makeup is removed than with manual cleaning.

Now I know from all my lessons over with the girls at Dermalogica that you should be cleaning your face for 2 minutes to really get the dirt and makeup out (especially if you use hardcore pore clogging primers). Let’s be honest though, I’m more like a 30 second girl. The Clarisonic forces you to spend at least a minute on your face because it’s on a timer. They call it the T-Zone timer...20 seconds on your forehead *beep*, 20 seconds on your nose and chin *beep*, 10 seconds on one cheek *beep*, then 10 seconds on the other. It beeps at you when it’s time to change ‘zones’ so there’s no cheating.

The Clarisonic comes with 3 different types cleansers, but it’s fine to use with your own cream, foam or gel cleanser. It’s not really ideal for an oil cleanser though, so you may want to skip it if you’re 100% dedicated to getting oily. Personally, I have been using my Decleor foaming cleanser and it is like a match made in skin-cleaning heaven (kind of like normal heaven but with gentler clouds and no pimples). As an aside, the Decleor foaming cleanser gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me – it’s gentle, smells good and cleans really well.

Best bit – it’s totally waterproof. Mine lives in the shower and, since it gets 2 weeks battery life, I only have to charge it once a fortnight. Very minimal effort required.

There are two different types of Clarisonic available in Myer and DJs, plus the professional version in certain clinics and salons for all those professional type people.

Price: Classic - $329; Plus - $369 – you can also buy replacement brush heads and cleansers (the brush heads last about 3 months)
From: Myer, David Jones
Why you need it: To give your skin a whole new level of clean , and cleaner skin means all your products will work a whole lot harder. If I had three thumbs, this would get three thumbs up.

Note: I was all ready to do a video about this amazing little device but, well, let’s just say I’m currently trialling a new pimple treatment. And yes, I am that vain.

Picture credit: clarisonic.com - This product was sent to me for consideration