I've been dipping my toes into Korean skincare for quite some time now and kits with mini products are a great starting point if you want to try out some new products and see how they work with your skin. I am a huge niacinamide fan and I've been using vitamin C and more brightening ingredients a lot more often so I decided to order this kit and give it a shot.
The Some By MI Yuja Niacin 30 days Brightening Kit is a set of 4 travel-size products from the Yuja Niacin range. They are formulated with high percentage of yuja extract and niacinamide to fight dull skin, hyperpigmentation and brighten up the complexion. I bought the set on iHerb for roughly 400 Crowns. In the kit there's a toner, serum, gel-cream and a night mask. Let's go over the individual products.
The Yuja Niacin Brightening Toner comes in a 30ml bottle and it's a low-ph toner targeted towards blemished skin. It contains 90% Yuja Extract and 5% niacinamide. It smells very strongly of citruses which is to be expected. It has water-like consistency and once you apply it, it leaves the skin brightened and slightly sticky. The texture is very lightweight but the drydown is more on the tacky side.
The Yuja Niacin Blemish Care Serum comes in a 10ml bottle with a dropper. It contains 82.3% of yuja extract and 5% niacinamide. It's meant to help with blemishes and discoloration.
The Yuja Niacin Brightening Moisture Gel Cream is a very lightweight gel-cream moisturizer with 90% yuja extract and 5% niacinamide. It comes in a tube with 30ml of product. It's supposed to help with blemishes as well as brighten up the skin. It smells, again, very citrusy and the consistency is very lightweigt but still moisturizing. It sinks into the skin very quickly and leaves it smooth and brightened.
The Yuja Niacin Brightening Sleeping Mask is a night mask with 70.5% yeju extract and 5% niacinamide. It comes in a tube with 20g of product. It's supposed to be a moisturizing and brightening overnight treatment for your skin. It's similar in consistency to the gel-cream, just a little thicker and creamier. It also seems to be more moisturizing which makes sense since you let it work over night.
All products have very nice yellow/white packaging so it's easy to spot which products belong to this line. They all smell like lemon candy which I'm fine with. It's not overwhelming or irritating and it's also probably just the scent of the yeju extract.
First impressions
My first impressions of these products were just horrible. My skin was feeling quite sensitive at the moment and trying out products with high percentage of natural citrus extracts was not a smart thing to do.
I applied the toner and the serum and my face started BURNING. I rarely have alergic reactions of any kind but this was just wrong. I turned into a tomato in seconds and my skin felt on fire. I had to go wash it off and gave up on the stronger products for the time. I then applied my regular soothing routine and put the night mask on top to dillute the yeju extract as much as possible. It was fine, my skin didn't freak out that time and I woke up looking well brightened.
The second product I started using on the regular is the Brightening Moisture Gel Cream. Since it's one of the last steps it wasn't irritating for my skin and it made my skin look very nice and brightened as well. The texture went well with my serums and SPF so I was pretty happy with it.
The toner took quite a while getting used to but now I can finally use it almost whenever I want. It's quite hydrating and leaves a little bit of a sticky residue but nothing major. It's also leaves the skin looking quite luminous.
The serum took even longer to be honest and maybe that's because of the lack of niacinamide. It brightened my skin a bit but I don't really suffer from any blemishes at the moment so its main effects aren't really showing on my skin and maybe I'm not getting the full potential with my skin type.
Month after using
Month is not a very long time to be testing out products but I don't think there's going to be any more revelations regarding these products. Maybe if you truly have acne-prone skin and you need to take advantage of that property of the line, you'll like these products better. For me, I used it mostly as a brightening care to make my skin more alive and luminous and healthy looking.
The products work, you can see the brightening effect quite fast and the textures and formulas are nice and work easily with other products as well. However, if you have very sensitive skin I wouldn't recommend these at all. My skin can take a lot and it took a couple weeks to get used to the yuja extract without getting any inflamation. I still cannot use all the product at once because I just find them a little too intense and irritating for my skin. However, I use them quite often separately when I need that brightening boost in my routine and that works really well.
The night mask and gel-cream are probably my favorites because they cause the least irritation and they are applied as the last step so they aren't that intense. I reach for the serum every now and then and I usually switch it up with my AHA toners/exfoliators that are also for brightening because I find that they give me similar effects. The serum I reach for very sparingly because it's very irritating to my skin and I usually use it just when I had a pigmentation problem.
Final thoughts
Overall, I would say that these products are good and work to brighten your skin really well. As I already stated, they are quite aggresive and beware before you use them. I would recommend doing a patch test for sure. It's also nice that they come in a kit so you can try them out little by little in case the yeju is just too intense for you.
I didn't achieve any groundbreaking results because they are targeted towards blemishes and acne-prone skin as well as dull skin and I'm mostly in the second category. However, I read some amazing reviews online from people who suffer from blemishes and had great results with this range of products. I can speak for the brightening and if you're careful and don't over-do it with the yeju, you'll be fine.
Would I recommend these? Probably yes, if your skin isn't too sensitive and if you really need a great brightening boost and feel like vitamin C serums aren't enough. These products worked for me way better in the brightening department than any vitamin C serum I've ever had. I've had some problems with hyper-pigmentation as well in the past couple months and I feel like the serum is a great improvement for that as well.
Have you tried any Some By Mi products? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!