Is retinol right for my skin? This L’Oreal scanner gave me an answer
If you ever wondered if the miracle product retinol is right for you, you are not alone. I spent hours searching reddit for skin care to find out if it was something I should use and which version was right for me. And then when I used it, did it work as it should.
I’m one of the nine out of 10 women who feel frustrated with skincare and can’t decide which products are best for me, according to cosmetics giant L’Oreal. There’s “joy” in experimenting with makeup, but experimenting with skincare is “frustrating,” says Guive Baluch, the company’s global managing director of advanced beauty and open innovation.
“Part of the problem with this is the fact that we do a lot of auditioning without the facts and science behind what our individual skin actually needs,” Baluch says.
Last year I tried some of the Avant-garde technological products of L’Oreal at Vivatech in Paris, including Kiehl’s Derma-Reader, an imaging machine that can examine your skin and make product recommendations. The Derma-Reader was fascinating to experiment with, but the technology only looks at the top surface level of your skin and also only recommends Kiehl’s products as treatments, which may not be the best for you.
At CES 2025 this year the company introduced a new device, the Cell BioPrintcollaboration with Korean beauty technology company NanoEnTek. It can read from under our skin and read the biomarkers to tell us if we should react to certain ingredients – like retinol, for example – and then match our skin with the right products.
Watch this: I let L’Oréal let my cells know which products are good for my skin (and so should you!)
I was excited to try the technology as I’ve experimented with retinol a bit over the years and couldn’t figure out if it was for me. Retinol is a form of vitamin A – is affordable, over-the-counter, and promises to smooth fine lines and wrinkles, shrink enlarged pores, and treat acne. But it also has its drawbacks: namely, that it can take a long time for your skin to adjust to it, and in the meantime it can become dry and flaky, or it can cause acne breakouts.
Twice I’ve abandoned retinol during ongoing acne breakouts, often referred to as the ugly retinol. But as the L’Oreal imaging tech told me, my skin is three years older than my actual age, and if I can tolerate retinol, the anti-aging effects might be worth it.
What Cell BioPrint revealed to me
My Cell BioPrint experience started with tapping my skin a few times with a sticker to collect skin cells. The sticker went into a cartridge and took about 1 minute to remove all but the proteins from my skin. The liquid in the cartridge containing the proteins was then squeezed from a dropper onto a test strip and placed into the Cell BioPrint desktop machine, which took about 90 seconds to read my biomarkers.
The good news: The L’Oreal tech told me that my skin is highly sensitive to retinol, with a score of 75 out of 100. If I can tolerate it, I might be able to improve my pores, oiliness, and barrier function, all of which L’ Oreal identified as “needing attention”. Along with retinol, she recommended SkinCeuticals Salicylic Acid Serum and PCA IT Zinc Beauty Cream.
I really appreciated the scientific analysis of my skin, which made me firmly stick with retinol the next time I feel like giving it up, even though I may have to start with a lower concentration than what I was using before. I also liked that the service, which is designed to provide in-store skin analysis, was able to use L’Oreal’s vast library of skin care products, rather than solutions from just one brand.
“We have so many choices today, and what we need to understand is what are the right choices for our biology and our needs?” Baluch said. “Many of the products take time to work. So it’s really about seeing the unseen and taking the knowledge game out and giving you the most precise products.”
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