The Founders Of HoliFrog Want To Change The Way You Wash Your Face

Our skin’s pH is maintained by the acid mantle, which can be stripped if a cleanser is too harsh. The pH of healthy skin is between 4.5 and 5.5. Since the cleanser is the first step in your routine, I felt responsible for setting people’s canvas on a balanced path. The other reason pH was important to us is because there is a common misconception that if a cleanser is not foaming up, then it’s not working. Here’s the reality: the higher the foam, the more surfactant (surfactant is short for surface active agent. Surfactants degrease & emulsify oils and dissolve dirt, allowing them to be washed away.); the more surfactant in a cleanser, the more it’s stripping your skin. Surfactants, by nature, are very very high in pH. Most are around pH of 10 (with 14 being the highest end of the pH scale). The majority of cleansers on the market use 30-40% surfactant in their formula; we use 3-8% surfactant. So we wanted our customers to start learning that, with respect to cleansing, the level of foam or lather is linked to the pH of the formula and the pH is connected to healthy skin.

[Photo by Hannah Choi]