The Only Five Grooming Products Worth Owning

The grooming aisle is now forty products deep for a routine that needs five. We tested across a panel of 24 men with a mix of oily, dry and reactive skin, then eliminated anything that caused irritation or needed a second product to work properly.

The five

• A gentle foaming cleanser with no fragrance and no sulphates. Twice daily, thirty seconds, lukewarm water.
• A broad-spectrum SPF 30+ moisturiser. This is the single product with the strongest evidence behind it for visible ageing.
• A retinoid at 0.3 percent, introduced twice a week at night. Twelve weeks to see it, and worth every week.
• A salicylic acid body wash for the back and chest. The most common blind spot for men who train hard.
• A simple mineral SPF stick for the face on days you are outdoors for hours.

Everything else — toners, serums with fifteen ingredients, eye creams promising to reverse crow’s feet — either duplicated one of the five or had no measurable effect on our panel over six weeks.