Kiehl's Ultra Facial Cream

Kiehl's Ultra Facial Cream is probably the most recognizable squalane cream there is, and the brand's history with the ingredient runs further back than almost anything else on this site. Kiehl's says it first put squalane into its formulas in the 1970s, in its Ultra Facial Moisturizer and Creme de Corps, and that before then it sold 100% squalane in apothecary bottles from its old store in New York's East Village. Today the front of the jar says 4.5% squalane, which makes this a squalane cream that tells you how much squalane is inside. That is the question this site always asks, so this review answers it the way we answer everything: from the published ingredient list, from the brand's claims read footnote-first, and from the live listing. We did not test it, and we will say plainly where we are relying on people who did.

Here is the order, because the order is most of the story. Water, glycerin, dimethicone, squalane, bis-PEG-18 methyl ether dimethyl silane, sucrose stearate, stearyl alcohol, PEG-8 stearate, myristyl myristate, apricot kernel oil, phenoxyethanol, avocado oil, glyceryl stearate, cetyl alcohol, rice bran oil, olive fruit oil, chlorphenesin, stearic acid, palmitic acid, carbomer, an acrylates crosspolymer, trisodium ethylenediamine disuccinate, sweet almond oil, xanthan gum, ethylhexylglycerin, sodium hydroxide, tocopherol, soybean oil, pseudoalteromonas ferment extract, myristic acid, hydroxypalmitoyl sphinganine, salicylic acid, sunflower seed oil, rosemary leaf extract, citric acid. Thirty-five ingredients. We took the ordered list from Ulta's product page and checked it against the National Eczema Association's directory entry and the SkinSAFE database; all three contain the same thirty-five, with nothing added and nothing missing.

Squalane is fourth, and that is a genuinely good result. It is the highest position squalane holds in any face cream we cover — Paula's Choice RESIST Barrier Repair Advanced puts it sixth of thirty-five, and The Outset seventh of forty-five. Because Kiehl's prints the percentage, the list also lets you do a little arithmetic. US labeling rules require ingredients present above 1% to be declared in descending order of predominance, so the two ingredients listed ahead of squalane, glycerin and dimethicone, must each be present at 4.5% or more, and everything after it at 4.5% or less. That is a meaningful amount of squalane for a cream. It is also a reminder that 95.5% of the jar is something else.

The two ingredients ahead of it deserve more credit than the one in the name. Glycerin, second, is the humectant: it draws water into the surface of the skin and holds it there, and it is the ingredient doing most of the hydrating. Squalane is an emollient. It softens and slows water loss, but it cannot add water to anything by itself, which is exactly why it works best next to a humectant like this one. Dimethicone, third, is a silicone that forms a thin, breathable film and gives creams their silky slip, and bis-PEG-18 methyl ether dimethyl silane at fifth is another silicone-based ingredient doing similar textural work. None of that is a flaw — dimethicone is well tolerated and very good at reducing water loss. But it does mean the jar holds at least as much silicone as squalane, and if you avoid silicones for any reason, this is not your cream. Our squalane vs dimethicone guide explains how the two differ.

Then there is the point on the list where the ranking stops meaning much. Phenoxyethanol, eleventh, is a preservative, and EU cosmetics rules cap it at 1% of a finished product. The US labeling rule has a second half that matters here: ingredients present at 1% or less may be listed after the rest in any order at all. So from roughly the eleventh ingredient down, position is no longer a ranking, just a roll call of things present at around 1% or less. That is where both of the other headline ingredients on the jar live.

Take the glacial glycoprotein first. Kiehl's describes it as originally sourced from Antarctic sea glaciers. On the ingredient list it is pseudoalteromonas ferment extract, twenty-ninth of thirty-five. The trade description of that ingredient, as published by a US ingredient distributor, is more specific and more interesting: a bacterial strain, Pseudoalteromonas antarctica, was isolated from mud samples collected in Admiralty Bay on King George Island during a Spanish expedition in 1988, and the ingredient is the glycoprotein material that bacterium produces as it grows — which, as the INCI name says, means it is made by fermentation. "Originally sourced" is doing honest but heavy work; nobody is scooping this out of a glacier. The same distributor lists the trade version of the ingredient as water, pseudoalteromonas ferment extract, salicylic acid and sodium hydroxide, with the salicylic acid there as its preservative. Salicylic acid and sodium hydroxide are both on this list too, which is the likeliest reason a trace of salicylic acid turns up in a moisturizer at all. Kiehl's does not name its supplier, so treat that as an informed reading of the list rather than a confirmed fact.

The pro-ceramide is hydroxypalmitoyl sphinganine, thirty-first. Paula's Choice's ingredient dictionary describes it as a ceramide precursor that nudges the skin's upper layers to make more of their own ceramides, and there is nothing fake about it. But it sits deep in the at-or-below-1% zone of a cream that contains no ceramides as such, and that is the clearest difference between this jar and the one we rank first on our moisturizer roundup. The Paula's Choice barrier cream lists five actual ceramides plus cholesterol. If barrier repair is the job — skin that is cracked, stinging, or recovering from over-exfoliation — that is the cream built for it. Kiehl's has the higher squalane position; Paula's Choice has the barrier formula.

Behind the squalane sit seven plant oils: apricot kernel tenth, avocado twelfth, rice bran fifteenth, olive fruit sixteenth, sweet almond twenty-third, soybean twenty-eighth and sunflower thirty-third, most of them at or below the preservative's level. The ingredient worth knowing about is ninth. Myristyl myristate is an ester that gives creams a smooth, cushioned feel, and in a 1984 paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Fulton and colleagues named it among the "ingredient offenders" for comedogenicity in the rabbit ear assay. The same paper calls that assay "not an ideal animal model but is the best we have," and a raw ingredient tested on a rabbit's ear is a very different exposure from a few percent of it in a finished cream on a face. It does not mean this cream will break you out. It does mean that if your skin clogs easily, this is the ingredient on the list to watch — not the squalane, which rates 0 to 1.

On fragrance, the list and the label agree. There is no fragrance, parfum or essential oil anywhere in the thirty-five ingredients, and Kiehl's markets the cream as fragrance free. It also carries the National Eczema Association's Seal of Acceptance, and we checked that at the source rather than taking the brand's word for it: the cream is in NEA's own product directory, with the same thirty-five ingredients. NEA explains that brands voluntarily apply for the Seal with required testing results, that submissions are reviewed by independent physician reviewers against criteria set by its Scientific Oversight Committee, and that a changed formula has to go through review again. It also says, fairly, that the Seal is not an endorsement. One small oddity: the directory's description still says 24-hour hydration, the older wording, while the current retail copy says 72. The ingredient lists match, so it reads as dated copy rather than a different formula.

A second screening system gives a less tidy answer, and we would rather show you both. SkinSAFE rates this cream 91, which it defines as 91% free of the top 11 most common allergens as determined by Mayo Clinic research, and it does not award the product its fragrance-free badge. The product page lists fragrance under what the cream contains without naming an ingredient, and SkinSAFE's fragrance category covers both fragrances and allergy-causing botanicals. There are several botanicals on this list — the plant oils, and a rosemary leaf extract near the end — but SkinSAFE does not say which one it flagged, so we will not guess. For comparison, the Biossance body cream we reviewed holds a SkinSAFE 100. If you have a known botanical allergy, that 91 deserves more of your attention than the words fragrance free.

The brand's headline claims are worth reading footnote-first. Kiehl's says the cream provides 72-hour hydration, hydrates up to 15 surface layers deep, and repairs the skin barrier in just one hour. The footnotes on the US retail copy say the 72-hour figure comes from an instrumental study; the 15-layers claim is "in the stratum corneum" and measured against untreated skin; and the one-hour barrier result comes from an instrumental study on tape-stripped skin. Instrumental is better than a perception panel, because a device measured something rather than testers reporting a feeling. But these are brand-run studies whose subject numbers are not given in that copy, the stratum corneum is the outer layer every moisturizer works on, and tape-stripping deliberately disrupts the barrier so there is something to watch recovering. Read them as reasonable evidence that this is an effective moisturizer. They are not evidence that it does anything a well-built fragrance-free cream with glycerin and a good emollient would not.

One detail on the Amazon listing is almost too on-topic for this site to leave out. When we checked, a bullet on Kiehl's own listing read "Formulated with Pro-Ceramides and Squalene" — with an e. The ingredient list says squalane, with an a, and the listing for Kiehl's squalane overnight mask makes the same slip. It is a copywriting error, not a formula problem. But that one letter is the whole reason squalane exists as a skincare ingredient: squalene is the unsaturated form that oxidizes readily, and squalane is the hydrogenated, stable version made from it. Our squalane vs squalene guide covers why the difference matters.

On how it feels, we have to hand over to people who used it, because we did not. The most detailed account we could fetch comes from two staff reviewers at Space NK, a UK retailer that sells Kiehl's, writing in August 2024. One, with combination skin, described a "featherlight feel" that "refrained from settling into my pores or producing excess oil," and was surprised because the cream "appeared quite thick and heavy initially"; sensitive around the eyes, they reported it "didn't spark any reaction." The other, with a slightly drier skin type, praised the "cloud-soft texture" and how it "prepped the skin for a smooth base" under makeup, but added: "I wouldn't recommend this to someone seeking an intensive and repairing treatment." Two caveats apply. A retailer has an interest in the products it reviews, and Space NK's own UK product copy mentions vitamin A, which is not on the US list we verified, so their jar may not have been the identical formula. Still, that last line matches what the list predicts: glycerin and silicones at the top make for a light, quick-absorbing, slightly slippy cream, not a rich one.

Price is where the recommendation is simpler than you might expect. The 1.7 fl oz jar sits in the premium bracket, in the same general range as the other squalane face creams we cover rather than far above them; the live price and cost per ounce are in the spec table above, and they move, so check them rather than us. Kiehl's own Amazon storefront also lists a 5.07 fl oz size that costs substantially less per ounce, which is the sensible buy once you know your skin likes it, and a 0.95 fl oz size that costs more per ounce but is the cheaper way to find out. None of that changes the bigger picture. If what you want is squalane itself, a 100% squalane oil costs a small fraction as much per ounce, and a few drops of it over any plain fragrance-free cream gets you the ingredient at full strength rather than at 4.5%.

So who should buy it? Someone with normal, combination or mildly dry skin who wants one light, fragrance-free daily cream with squalane genuinely high on the list, and who values a third-party eczema seal. This is a good, well-made version of that, and we score it accordingly. It is a weaker fit for skin that breaks out easily, because of the myristyl myristate and the oils; for anyone avoiding silicones; for very dry or damaged skin, which will do better with a real ceramide cream; and for anyone with a botanical allergy that the SkinSAFE flag might concern.

The bottom line: Kiehl's Ultra Facial Cream tells you exactly how much squalane is in the jar, and at fourth of thirty-five, 4.5% is a real share of the formula — the most squalane-forward face cream we cover. The rest of the front label deserves less excitement. The glacial glycoprotein and the pro-ceramide sit in the trace zone below the preservative, there is at least as much dimethicone as squalane, and the hydration claims come from the brand's own studies. Buy it as a light, fragrance-free everyday cream with a National Eczema Association Seal. Do not buy it for the glacier.