Hydrogel masks

The short read

• Carob gum is on most of these lists and on nothing else in the catalogue - the clearest single-ingredient fingerprint any format on this site has. Potassium chloride and cellulose gum follow the same pattern less absolutely.

• The longest lists in the catalogue, and length here is the gel rather than the actives. A hydrogel sheet has to hold its own shape wet, and the names that do that are what the extra entries are.

• Alone among the formats with a page here, every mask in this one is free of both an essential oil and a drying alcohol, and barely any of them name a declared allergen. The table below gives all three against the catalogue.

• Every per-use figure here is counted off a sheet count rather than estimated, so the price comparison on this page is the firmest on the site - and it is still the dearest of them.

What these lists print that others do not

Not the most common ingredients - water is on nearly every list ever written and tells you nothing about a format. These are the entries that appear far more often here than across the 219 masks as a whole, counted by encyclopaedia entry rather than by printed name.

• Ceratonia Siliqua (Carob) Gum17 of 24 here·17 of 219 overall
• Glucomannan9 of 24 here·9 of 219 overall
• Potassium Chloride20 of 24 here·21 of 219 overall
• Chondrus Crispus Powder18 of 24 here·20 of 219 overall
• Acrylates Copolymer8 of 24 here·9 of 219 overall
• Sucrose9 of 24 here·11 of 219 overall
• Cellulose Gum11 of 24 here·15 of 219 overall
• Collagen Extract9 of 24 here·13 of 219 overall

Names without a link have no encyclopaedia entry yet, so we make no claim about them beyond the count.

What these labels print

Seven readings of the ingredient list, each counted the same way across this format and across the whole catalogue, so the second column is the baseline the first is worth reading against. Every one of them is a statement about what is printed on a pack - not about what a mask does, and not a verdict on any of them. The pregnancy flag in particular is a reason to read a list rather than a warning: it marks a mask carrying something the encyclopaedia says to check, which is a different thing from a mask being unsafe.

Vegan status is unrecorded for 18 of the 24 masks here, so that row counts only the packs where we found it stated - unrecorded is not the same as not vegan. How far into a list we can read is its own reading: the encyclopaedia has an entry for a median of 83% of each list here, against 82% across the catalogue. The rest is printed in names the site cannot yet decode, and an undecoded name is one we make no claim about either way - what we do not know.

Every format side by side

5 of the 10 formats in the catalogue clear 13 masks, which is the floor at which a page says something a filter could not. The rest stay in the catalogue and out of the pages, because a median over one or two products is not a median - and they are exactly what an unscoped superlative loses to, which is why they are in this table rather than left out of it. Every figure here is counted across all of them, so the claims above are scoped to something you can check.

Formats without a link have no page of their own. A median marked ≈ is one where every per-use figure behind it was worked out from pack size rather than counted.

All 24 hydrogel masks

Cheapest use first. Every one is on sale in the EU and has a published ingredient list we could source and check.

• 

  Balea

  Gesichtsmaske Beauty Hyaluron Hydrogel

  28ingredients

  !3 ingredients we would look at twice

  €1.95 per use

• 

  Balea

  Glass Skin Collagen Maske

  17ingredients

  !1 ingredient we would look at twice

  €1.95 per use

• 

  Yeauty

  Glass-Skin Hydrogel Maske Kollagen & NAD+

  15ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €1.95 per use

• 

  Yeauty

  Glass-Skin Hydrogel Maske Kollagen & PDRN

  16ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €1.95 per use

• 

  Schaebens

  Gesichtsmaske Hyaluron Hydrogel

  19ingredients

  !3 ingredients we would look at twice

  €2.75 per use

• 

  Schaebens

  Tuchmaske Kollagen Hydrogel

  27ingredients

  €2.75 per use

• 

  Balea

  Gesichtsmaske Glass Skin Hyaluronic Be You

  30ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €2.95 per use

• 

  Petitfee

  Black Pearl & Gold Hydrogel Mask Pack

  33ingredients

  !4 ingredients we would look at twice

  €3.84 per use

• 

  COSRX

  The Peptide Collagen Lifting Glow Hydrogel Mask

  49ingredients

  €3.94 per use

• 

  Svenja Walberg

  Glass Skin Mask Pink PDRN [DNA]

  26ingredients

  €3.95 per use

• 

  Medicube

  Collagen Lifting Mask

  39ingredients

  !1 ingredient we would look at twice

  €3.99 per use

• 

  Medicube

  PDRN Pink Collagen Gel Mask

  43ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €4.41 per use

• 

  Abib

  Collagen Gel Mask Heartleaf Jelly

  43ingredients

  €4.45 per use

• 

  Abib

  Collagen Gel Mask Jericho Rose Jelly

  43ingredients

  €4.45 per use

• 

  Abib

  Collagen Gel Mask Sedum Jelly

  41ingredients

  !1 ingredient we would look at twice

  €4.45 per use

• 

  Medicube

  Kojic Acid Turmeric Brightening Gel Mask

  35ingredients

  !4 ingredients we would look at twice

  €4.73 per use

• 

  Biodance

  Refreshing Sea Kelp Real Deep Mask

  43ingredients

  €5.00 per use

• 

  COSRX

  The Alpha-Arbutin Discoloration Care Hydrogel Mask

  44ingredients

  !1 ingredient we would look at twice

  €5.06 per use

• 

  Anua

  Rice 70 Glow Collagen Mask

  42ingredients

  €5.54 per use

• 

  Biodance

  Bio-Collagen Real Deep Mask

  34ingredients

  €5.95 per use

• 

  Biodance

  Hydro Cera-nol Real Deep Mask

  65ingredients

  €5.95 per use

• 

  L'Oréal Paris

  Revitalift Filler Glass Skin Hydrogel Glow Mask

  32ingredients

  €5.95 per use

• 

  Anua

  Peach 70 Niacin Brightening Collagen Mask

  44ingredients

  €6.52 per use

• 

  Anua

  Heartleaf 70 Soothing Collagen Mask

  35ingredients

  €7.94 per use