Skincare Editing and Proofreading Services

A customer applies a new retinol serum for the first time, all over her face, at full strength, the same night it arrives. Two days later she has red, peeling skin and a message to customer service asking whether the product is defective. It is not defective. It is a genuinely potent active ingredient that most people need to introduce gradually, on alternate nights, in small amounts, ideally after a patch test — none of which was on the product page, because the page was written to sell the serum's benefits and the instructions for actually using it safely were treated as an afterthought printed in small type on the box.

We edit what skincare brands produce to help customers use active ingredients safely — patch test protocols and reaction guidance, introduction schedules for potent actives, ingredient interaction and layering warnings, irritation and purging explanations, and the customer service responses to a reported reaction. Our editors work on the instructions that stand between a genuinely effective product and a genuinely bad first experience with it.

The introduction protocol is what prevents a potent active from being mistaken for a defective or dangerous product, and its failure is a page that markets the ingredient's benefits at length and treats how to actually start using it as a footnote. A retinol serum sold on its benefits alone invites a customer to use it like a moisturiser, and it is not one. We work through these so a specific introduction schedule is given prominently — patch test 48 hours before first use, apply every third night for two weeks, then gradually increase frequency — rather than a general instruction to "use as directed" with the detail buried elsewhere, since a customer's first application is the moment this information is actually needed, not sometime after they have already had a reaction; so expected, temporary effects are distinguished clearly from a genuine adverse reaction, given that mild flaking or a tingling sensation in the first two weeks is a known and different thing from redness, swelling or pain that indicates the product should be stopped; so ingredient interactions and what not to combine a product with are stated specifically — not alongside vitamin C, not alongside another exfoliating acid on the same night — because these combinations are a common and preventable cause of irritation; so sun sensitivity warnings appear with the specific precaution required, such as daily SPF, rather than a generic caution that a customer may not connect to their actual routine; so a reported reaction is met with specific troubleshooting based on how the product was actually used, rather than a general reassurance that irritation can be normal; and so "purging" — a temporary worsening some actives cause before improvement — is distinguished explicitly from a reaction that means the product should be stopped, since customers cannot tell these apart without being told how. Instructions written this way turn a first bad experience into a manageable introduction.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including formulations, customer reports and reaction data. We are editors rather than dermatologists, cosmetic chemists or estheticians, and we offer no view on formulation, safety or treatment of a reaction. What we can do is make sure the instructions are as prominent as the marketing.