The Best Squalane for Men

The pick is Timeless 100% Pure Squalane: one ingredient, no fragrance, no shine once it has absorbed, and 60 ml in the bottle — which is the part that matters, because this is the rare skincare product you will also use on your jaw after shaving, on cracked hands in February and on shins that flake all winter. It costs very little per ounce, it replaces three or four things you might otherwise buy, and there is nothing in it to react to. If you would rather have a cleanser than an oil as your one new product, skip to The Ordinary Squalane Cleanser, second on this page.

Why squalane specifically, and why a page about men. Most grooming products aimed at men are sold on scent and on packaging, which is exactly backwards: added fragrance is the most common cause of allergic contact dermatitis from cosmetics, and it is also the thing most likely to sting a face that has just been dragged over with a razor. Squalane in its pure form has no scent at all. It is a close relative of squalene, one of the lipids your own sebum already contains, which is why it absorbs without the tacky film heavier oils leave. And it is commonly rated 0 to 1 on the comedogenic scale, so it is one of the very few oils that is a sensible idea on skin that still breaks out.

So here is the criterion this page is ranked on, and it is different from every other buying guide we publish. Not purity, which our oils roundup already covers. Not the shortest ingredient list, which the sensitive-skin page covers. Here it is three things in order: is it unscented on the published list; does it leave skin matte rather than glossy once absorbed; and is there enough product in the pack to use it below the neck without rationing. A 15 ml bottle that only ever touches your face fails the third test however good the oil inside it is.

Four of the five picks below are fragrance-free on their published ingredient lists, which is unusually good for this category and is the main reason these five and not others. We say on every card which, rather than leaving you to read the back of the box. Two of them are cleansers, because for a lot of men the honest first upgrade is not adding a moisturiser — it is stopping the bar soap or the mint-and-menthol face wash that is making skin tight and flaky in the first place.

A word on the post-shave use, because it is the single best reason on this page to own a bottle of squalane. A blade removes the top layer of dead cells along with the hair, which is why aftershave with alcohol in it burns: you are putting a solvent on freshly abraded skin. Two drops of plain squalane pressed on while your face is still damp from rinsing does the opposite — it seals in the water that is already there and leaves no scent in a room. It is not a medicine and it will not fix razor bumps, which are an ingrown-hair problem that needs technique and sometimes a dermatologist, but as a replacement for a stinging splash it is a straight upgrade.

On shine, which is the thing most men are actually worried about when they refuse to use an oil. Squalane goes on looking like an oil and then stops looking like one, typically inside a minute, because it is a light hydrocarbon rather than a heavy triglyceride. The way to get a greasy forehead out of it is to use too much — four or five drops on a face rather than two — or to apply it to completely dry skin, where it sits on the surface with nothing to seal. Two drops, damp skin, pressed rather than rubbed. That is the whole method, and our absorption guide covers the timings if you want them.

What none of this will do. Squalane is an emollient, not an active: it does not clear acne, it does not fade a scar, it does nothing to a wrinkle, and it will not grow a beard or thicken hair. It makes the surface of skin softer, smoother and less prone to losing water, which in practice means a face that stops feeling tight by mid-afternoon and legs that stop flaking. If you want a product that changes skin rather than conditioning it, the two with real evidence behind them are a daily sunscreen and a retinoid, and squalane's most useful job in that routine is making the retinoid tolerable enough to keep using.