Etude House Pink Vital Water Review

Hello everyone! This month’s Pink Bird review is once again on one of Etude House’s new skin care lines – Pink Vital Water! Etude House’s skin care reputation is not very good compared to other Korean road shop brands, but it seems they’re making an effort in 2016 to establish themselves as a trustworthy source of high quality skin care products. Let’s see if they succeeded with this line!

Unlike the Toning White C line, this time Etude House sent me every single product from the line which was exciting as I’ve never owned a full line of anything before!

The packaging is a very Etude-esque baby pink with hot pink accents.

You might recognize it as being similar to the product I previously reviewed, Toning White C (review here). It seems that this is their new style of packaging for their skin care! I quite like it because as I mentioned previously, it is quite sturdy and “clean” feeling.

The lids are also different, so if you were to own both you would be able to recognize them easily from the top.

This product claims that it contains 75.54% peach water and vitamins A, C, and E to give a long lasting moisturizing effect. It says this line is best for people who experience dry skin throughout the day, and who need a healthier, moisturized glow.

Now let’s get to the actual review of each individual product!

•○ Eye Serum ○•

As I am reviewing the products in the order of suggested use, the eye serum comes first!

Instructions and ingredients

The packaging is different from the rest of the line in that it is not transparent and has more of a hard plastic feel to it.

The product is dispensed in this pump tube. It is very easy to press lightly and control how much product you want to use.

I find this amount to be fine for both eyes as it spreads very well! Spreading it on lightly and patting it in makes it absorb quickly. I found that my eyes did feel more moisturized during the day however I didn’t find that it worked any better than my plain vitamin E oil either. Pairing them together before bed works alright and it is a decent fix for during the day as I only apply my oil at night. At 14,000 KRW I find this quite pricey compared with how unremarkable the effect was. If you don’t have an eye cream and can afford the price, you can definitely go for it as it did make some difference, however I did not find it made enough of a difference to make me feel like it was worth the price tag.

•○ Facial Toner ○•

Next step is the facial toner!

This bottle in particular is identical to the toner from the Toning White C line!

Instructions and ingredients

The dispenser? Opening? Is the same as the toner from the Toning White C line, and product comes out by shaking it into your hand. I find this one to not work as well as the Toning White C dispenser, as the toner in this line is of a thicker consistency and thus doesn’t come out as easily.

Impossible to tell in this photo, but while it looks like water, the toner is a bit thick and leaves a slight sticky texture on your skin. I can’t tell if this is actually moisturizing or if the sticky texture makes me think that it is moisturizing, but it’s not so bad at 13,000 KRW for 180mL.

•○ Serum ○•

The serum probably has the cutest packaging in the line as it’s not transparent like the others but it has a cute dark pink gradient.  I haven’t used enough of the serum to determine if the top part is transparent or not but that might be the case!

As you can see from all of the instructions, they state that the products don’t leave a sticky or shiny texture on the skin. I find this to be true for the eye cream, serum, and emulsion only.

Ingredients

The boxes all state that they contain fragrance, but I find that the scent is extremely faint. I imagined it to smell more peachy because of the “peach water” addition, but it smells more floral to me. It’s so faint it doesn’t bother me at all!

This product spreads very well so you only need about this much to cover your face.

When applying to the skin initially from the pump, it looks like a regular, semi-watery cream.

However when spreading it around it starts to look exactly like water! MAGIC??  (*ﾟﾛﾟ)

I guess this is what they meant when they called it “vital water” as it gets a water-like consistency and soaks easily into the skin. Unfortunately just like when applying water directly to your face, I find the moisturizing effect to not be very lasting. However this one has the best reviews so it might work better on other skin!

•○ Emulsion ○•

The 3rd product in the line is the emulsion.

Instructions & ingredients

As I forgot to “swatch” this one, I’ll just talk about it here. I felt like this one was probably my least favourite of the bunch. I didn’t find it to have much effect and it absorbed so fast into the skin that only 5 minutes later I would touch my skin and find it to not feel moisturized. It is also the cheapest of the line at 13,000 KRW for 180mL so that might explain it being the lowest quality.

•○ Cream ○•

The final step in the line, excluding the wash-off pack, is the product simply labeled as “cream.” I would consider this product to be a moisturizer; so it can be used throughout the day multiple times, I imagine, whereas I would only use the other products in the morning.

Instructions

Ingredients

This cream claims that it helps with tired, flaky skin, which I have A LOT of.

It looks like yogurt! It’s a very thick, moussey type cream.

It also comes with a small spatula for applying the cream. I always use my (clean!!) fingers to apply my face creams so I don’t really use these but it’s nice to have!

Take the cream out like this…

And spread it on your skin! As you can see it leaves a slight shiny cast, and when looking closely you can see some dust stuck to it. A little goes a LONG way with this cream as it is quite heavy, so you should use a small amount and keep adding to it instead of applying a lot at once. I find this one to take quite a while to absorb, and the skin feels moist for quite a while. However, once it soaks in, my skin is left just as dry and flaky as it was before. This is the most expensive in the line, at 17,000 KRW for only 60mL.

•○ Wash Off Pack ○•

The last item is the wash-off pack! At first I thought it was a sleeping pack as it has the same packaging as the Toning White C sleeping pack, but it’s just a regular face mask.

This pack can be done after applying the Pink Vital Water toner and left on for 10 minutes! After washing it off you can reapply all of the previous 5 steps for optimal moisture 🙂

Ingredients

This product also comes with a spatula! One end is the spreading end, and the other end is more of a spoon type.

The box says that it has a “peach pudding” type, which I thought was strange because looking at it it looks more like jello to me! However upon researching I found out that Koreans apparently call jello/jelly “pudding” too!

As you can see it has a very thick, solid texture.

Instead of coming out like a cream, it comes out in more of a thick, gel-like form. If you shake it it wiggles ヾ(｡･ω･)ｼ

This was probably my favourite of the whole line! I found that while using it I didn’t feel itchy at all (85% of face packs make my face itch…) and my skin indeed felt moisturized after! Would definitely use this more than once! At 12,000 KRW for 100mL it’s not a bad price considering you need very little to generously cover your whole face.

•○ Final Thoughts ○•

Honestly this line was a miss for me. I had high hopes after seeing the great results I got from the previous Toning White C line, but it fell flat. I have a lot of trouble with dry, flaky patches on my skin (especially my forehead, nose, and around my mouth), and I found this did little to help those at all. However, if I applied the whole line and applied my makeup straight after I found it went on much smoother than it usually does, so that’s a plus! One final thing is that I had some small pimples appear from time to time in the week and a half of daily use. I’m not the type to get pimples unless it’s that time of the month, and the only thing different in my life was this, so I’d have to say this line was probably the culprit of my little breakout 😦 I do have extremely sensitive skin and have bad reactions to most skin care products, so this could be a personal thing, but as I had no problem with the Toning White C line I’d say if you have to pick one, go with that! It is the pricier of the two, but you can see the results in my previous post that prove why I prefer it. I didn’t take before/after pictures from using these products because I didn’t really see a difference, so I apologize for that 😦

If you’re looking for these products on Etude House’s Korean website, they can be found here. If you’re overseas and want worldwide shipping, you can find them searching here*!

If I had to pick anything to get from this line I’d recommend the serum and wash-off pack as they had the most effect 🙂 I hope next month’s review is actual makeup and not skin care ㅠㅠ Until next time!! (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧