Ole Henriksen african red tea foaming cleanser and the story of making it work

Have you tried anything from Ole Henriksen?

One of the things I love about +OLEHENRIKSEN is that they do a lot of travel size sets that are perfect for holidays and trying new products without the immediate pressure for long term commitment. It's something I wish more brands would do! I got a set with 7 products in total as it sounded perfect for my upcoming holidays.

The African Red Tea Foaming Cleanser has won the best natural cleanser at the Natural Health Beauty Awards and has a good number of positive reviews. I love the bright colours used on the packaging, and the clear bottle makes it easy to see how much product you have left. The black pump also dispenses the perfect amount of product, so even though it lacks the luxury element I'm always after, I don't really mind.

A very bad picture but one of the bottle (this picture was taken a while back, don't worry I have learnt from my mistakes, just had no time to take another!

You have to shake the cleanser quite vigorously before use to get it to foam well, the product turns from an orangey liquid into a fluffy white foam tinted with orange tint. The products main ingredient is red tea which contains alpha hydroxy acid which can help reduce wrinkles by moisturising and removing the top layers of dead skin cells, increasing the thickness of deeper layers making the skin firmer. The Borage seed oil moisturises whilst providing anti-inflammatory properties, and the citrus extracts are brightening and anti-septic. You can really smell the ingredients! Its like somebody has put orange peel in a tea bag, it's really weirdly refreshing (on a strange level I like it).

Are you a fan of foam cleansers or do you find them stripping?

I personally find this very stripping on the skin, in fact the first couple of times I used it my skin felt so dry and tight. It just seem to zap out all the moisture and before I had a chance to restore it with my other potions and lotions, the dry patches had already started forming. I put this cleanser away for a while but after reading about the dual cleansing method I decided to give it another go. Since I'm tight for money at the minute I have been using coconut oil as my oil based cleanser, after milk cleansers where way to gentle I risked using this again, and I'm still using it now! With the extra moisture provided by the coconut oil my skin is left feeling clean, refreshed and far more comfortable than it did before. The cleanser may not be as effective, but it works much better for me this way.

The moral of the story is not to give up on a product at the first sign of trouble, but to try it a number of different ways to see if it can work for you. If you try this and you have oily skin, it will probably be great as an everyday cleanser, dryer skin types may enjoy using it like I do. Finding a way to fit it onto my routine not only makes it worth my money but allows me to be able to review the product more honestly. You can see the full range of products on the website, you can be the cleanser full sized for £26/207ml or travel sized for about £7/45ml. If you would like to get a good feel for Ole Henriksen you can buy the same set I did for £29 at Bath and Rewind.