K-Beauty: Everything You Wanted To Know About Korean Beauty, Explained

Based on my experience as an esthetician who trained in Korea (also licensed in the United States), founder of and curator of Peach & Lily, and a K-beauty expert, I’ll share everything I know about the background, beginnings, and story behind Korean beauty below.

At a fundamental and basic level, Korean beauty products are ones that originate and are made in Korea. The products are typically created with the Korean beauty philosophy in mind. Here's what that entails.

What does this mean as far as products go? There are products like essences, serums, ampoules, and all kinds of masks to choose from so that hydration and nourishment can be absorbed one gentle, thin layer at a time.

Some products are designed to be flexible and buildable, because not everyone will need or want the same amount of hydration. Essences are a great example, which are meant to be used after cleansing and toning. If your skin needs only one sip of refreshing hydration, apply one layer of the essence onto clean skin. Just got off a flight or you’re fighting off a cold and your skin is needing extra love? Layer on as many layers of essence as you need—even a dozen layers is good. Staying on top of your skin care game means understanding what works for you and understanding what your skin is craving each day. It can go such a long way toward helping your skin be at its best.

Whether it’s a serum incorporating ingredients like snail mucin to ampoules that include microneedles made of marine solids, Korean beauty innovates with unique ingredients you often won't find in other skin care.

I remember as a toddler living in Korea, my mother would teach me how to brush my teeth...and how to pat on moisturizer! Just like brushing my teeth is a way of taking care of my health, I always grew up thinking that skin care was a form of self-care, too.

Contrary to what the media might have you believe, the Korean routine isn’t necessarily 10 steps long. It can be five steps long or even 15 steps long. The 10-step routine really indicates the multilayered nature of the routine going back to the gentle and long-term focus. Here's how this multilayered routine typically goes, and if you want a more in-depth explanation, please see our full 10-step skin care routine guide.

This multilayered approach to skin care has been popular in Korea since around the 1960s. It’s actually changing a bit now as beauty brands are another leap forward with multitasking products that are just as effective as two separate steps, like combining a serum and moisturizer in one.

A couple of key steps come to mind. First, essences! I’m a huge believer in essences. While toners have the main job in helping to balance pH, essences are really for delivering hydration to skin with humectant-rich (water-binding) ingredients that are formulated to deeply hydrate. Other watery products like micellar waters and hydrosols are different from essences—the former is a cleansing water, and the latter is a water produced as a by-product of distilling botanicals and is a "flower water" of sorts. K-beauty essences come in a wide range of watery to more viscous textures. They’re used directly after cleansing and toning, and the primary job of an essence is to truly drench skin with hydration, which helps keep it healthy.

The second unique step is sheet masks and rubber masks! After cleansing and toning, apply a sheet mask, then pat in remaining essence and seal it all in with a moisturizer. This is like an easy mini-facial at home and can really help create that dewy, glowy skin relatively quickly. It’s also an easy way to see if you like new ingredients, as sheet masks are usually affordable and give you a way to sample different formulas/ingredients. Sheet mask in the mornings, on flights, in cars, when jet-lagged: I find sheet masks to be like multivitamin-boosters that give your skin this extra "oomph" whenever you need it. It works every time, it’s easy, and it’s soothing. A fun tip? If you want a glow fast, try sheet masking daily for just five days straight. You might be surprised what just five days of intense hydration can do for your skin! And now sheet masks come in all kinds of natural and organic varieties.

I personally have more than 10 steps in my routine, but I've got it down pat, so it takes only a few minutes each morning and evening. So a multilayered routine doesn’t have to take a long time and/or be disruptive to your day! It’s my "me time" and a soothing moment for me to bookend each day. Other than keeping my skin healthy, it’s a part of my day I love and look forward to.

This is totally false! Skin is skin. Like any other skin care product, look for products for your skin type (dry, sensitive, acne-prone, oily, etc.), and you’ll be all set when it comes to Korean skin care products. Koreans deal with all the same issues as people from all backgrounds when it comes to skin—acne, oily skin, dehydrated skin, redness, wrinkles, etc.—so the skin care products are formulated to help keep skin healthy and address these universal skin care concerns.

This isn’t true, at all. It’s true that using ingredients that are too harsh can be more damaging than helpful to skin, but this truth isn’t relegated to just anti-aging products. This could be true of acne products made for teens, for example. As long as you’re not using products that are too harsh for your skin type, starting a skin care routine early that is about preventing premature aging and UV damage goes far in keeping skin at its best. It’s so much easier to keep skin healthy than to reverse damage.

Good news—Korean skin care products are for everybody, no matter your gender! Skin type is more of a factor than anything. My husband has dry skin like mine, and we definitely have products that overlap, and we both love and see amazing results from those same products.

Korean skin care is really seen as a form of self-care, protecting the skin, an organ, from damage and keeping it healthy. At its core, Korean beauty is less about looking pretty and more about taking care of your skin as a way of taking care of yourself, overall.

Not only are there K-beauty skin care methods, K-beauty has also introduced several types of aesthetics that are something of a makeup-skin care hybrid.

This is the most well-known and refers to skin so smooth and clear, it has a near transparent affect. This is due to the delicate mix of spot treating concealer and mega-watt highlight, which gives the illusion of a plane of glass. Learn how to do it, here, with mbg's guide to glass skin.

Dumpling skin focuses on supple, moist skin rather than looking luminous and reflective. Learn to recreate it with mbg's guide to dumpling skin.

Think of the supple texture of honey rather than the radiance of glass or the three-dimensional feel of a dumpling. It's one that emphasizes the sheen of a dollop of honey, not necessarily the golden color of the nectar. Again, a hydrated texture is the goal here. Achieve it with mbg's guide to honey skin.