The best face serum: 30 formulas to help transform and treat your skin

Best Bakuchiol Face Serum

Still having a hard time pronouncing ‘bakuchiol’? You’re not alone. All you need to know is that this plant extract functions in the same way as retinol. It stimulates collagen production, improves skin elasticity and the look of wrinkles, but minus any unwanted side effects like irritated skin. In this powerhouse serum bakuchiol works alongside mid-strength retinol and collagen-boosting peptides to tighten and smooth, making it a serious contender in your anti-ageing arsenal.

Best Serum For Smooth Skin

You know that feeling when you touch your skin and it feels like there are tiny bits of sand just under the surface? When it feels rough to the touch? If that's you, use this every night for about a week to let the resurfacing acids buff away dead skin cells.

Best Face Serum For Dry Skin

Another hydrating serum with a difference. This formula is made up of three peptides, hyaluronic acid, organic cactus and rambutan peel which work together to give you bouncy, plump and hydrated skin.

Best Iconic Face Serum

The original. The classic. Here are a few facts about the serum that everybody loves. In one year, Estée Lauder sold over 5.7 million bottles of ANR globally. It reduces the appearance of the key signs of ageing, it hydrates and illuminates. It was the first skincare product to use hyaluronic acid, and the formula has been patented until 2033.

Best Anti-Aging Face Serum

With 20 potent plant extracts, this watery brown serum firms skin with continued use and satisfies thrill seekers by leaving skin immediately brighter and dewier.

Best Serum For Dull Skin

This newly reformulated version does the same incredible work at fighting signs of sun damage, brightening and generally decongesting the skin as the original. But by swapping out lactic acid in favour of glycolic acid, which penetrates deeper into the skin, the effects are more dramatic. If you were a regular user of the original, we recommend using it every other day to let your skin get used to it.

Best Face Serum For Blemish-prone Skin

There is a shift away from ‘plus beauty’ – using everything on the bathroom shelf – to ‘minus’ beauty, AKA applying only what your skin craves right now. Caudalie has bottled all you need to fight spot-causing bacteria – grape polyphenols and purifying organic essential oils – in this non-greasy serum.

Best Hydrating Face Serum

This is Japan's number one skincare range and demand for it over here was so high that people were buying it from international websites and paying astronomical shipping fees. Finally it's available over here and it's a corker of a hydrating serum. It has three molecular weights of hyaluronic acid, which means the larger ones target the skin surface, the medium in the superficial layers and the lowest weight penetrate deeper. If you have dehydrated skin, this will transform.

Pro-Collagen Renewal Serum is infused with a cutting-edge blend of Padina Pavonica and Red Microalgae, along with Alfalfa and Stevia extracts that deliver retinol-like benefits without the irritation. Improving the look of lines, clarity, firmness, sun damage and visible pores. Gentle enough for daily use, your complexion will be left looking firmer and renewed.

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Best Purse-friendly Vitamin C Face Serum

Here's what The Inkey List does well. It creates really good, uncomplicated skincare at really affordable prices. They've created serums with every hero ingredient. If you know that you want to brighten and tighten the skin, you know this serum will do the job.

Best Firming Face Serum

This incredibly smart serum has won 200 beauty awards, it has 42 patents worldwide, one bottle is sold every seven seconds and it is the product of 25 years of research. And it's just had a facelift. The newest version contains a technology that generates skin's immunity and ability to defend itself by improving the micro-circulation within the skin.

Best Face Serum For Facial Massage

If your concern is a lack of firmness, then combining FaceGym's at-home facial workouts with this potent and highly active serum will improve things vastly. It calms stressed skin, it drains puffiness, stimulates collagen and elastin to redefine your natural contours.

Best Serum For Dry Skin

Keeping your skin hydrated is one of the easier things to do when armed with a good hyaluronic acid. We really recommend using Vichy's Minéral 89 serum straight after cleansing, morning and evening, and then applying a more active serum. Double seruming is the new double cleansing.

Best Face Serum For Sensitised Skin

We've never tried a better serum for calming irritated and angry skin. Those with sensitive skin will absolutely love its soothing effects. It's also brilliant on sunburn or skin that's reacted badly to a punchy product, like a peel or retinol.

Best Face Serum For Glowy Skin

This golden elixir boosts luminosity, whilst hydrating and protecting against oxidative stress. There's a soft focus finish to it, which helps blur imperfections and blemishes too. Top tip: use it on top of make-up to add highlight.

Best Face Serum For Oily Skin

In all honesty, you could get your hands on any Zelens serum and be happy. But this Power B serum is one of our favourites. It's great at controlling oil and calming particularly bad blemishes, as well helping to prevent future breakouts.

Best Tanning Face Serum

If you want to fake a natural glow, but don't want it to look like you're faking it, then this is the ideal addition to your routine. It hydrates beautifully, thanks to the added hyaluronic acid complex. And it add just the right amount of warmth to you skin, without that orange tinge.

Best Night Face Serum

This nightly serum contains the antioxidant purslane to help repair environmental damage, cotton thistle to counteract dryness, beta-glucans to reduce redness and a high dose of hyaluronic acid, which, Sturm says, ‘works throughout the night to replenish moisture reservoirs in multiple skin layers.’

Best Face Serum For Hyperpigmentation

If you're trying to tackle hyperpigmentation, then this is worth the investment. It contains 10% vitamin C, which brightens the skin and phloretin which helps even out skin tone.

Best Face Serum For Healthy Skin

This is so much more than a hyaluronic acid serum. It is the result of 30 years of research and it has six patents. Utilising the power of the Life Plankton probiotic, it is a powerful healing serum that is proven to stabilise skin, helping it becoming stronger, healthier and firmer in just 8 days.

Best Face Serum For Sensitive Skin

Containing bakuchiol, this makes for a good alternative to retinol. If you suffer from sensitivity, but still want to reap the benefits of a smoother complexion, this is the serum for you.

Best Retinol Face Serum

Shani Darden is the woman responsible for Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Emily Ratajkokski's glowing skin. So imagine her expertise bottled. This 2.2% encapsulated retinol is super gentle and smoothes skin texture, reducing the appearances of blemishes and dark spots. There's also 2% lactic acid - a gentle exfoliator that nibbles away at dead skin cells.

Best Purse-friendly Face Serum

The Ordinary still remains one of the most popular skincare brands on the planet. It's serums like this that keep it that way. Hardworking anti-ageing ingredients, like peptides, hyaluronic acid and Matrixyl 3000, for just over £10.

Best Face Serum For Uneven Skin Tone

Medik8's latest product boasts brightening and resurfacing abilities. That's down to the inclusion of oxyresveratrol. Ideal if you're after a serum to tackle your age spots, hyperpigmentation or uneven skin tone.

Best Overnight Retexturing Face Serum

Ole Henriksen promises you'll wake up in Dewtopia after using this potent night serum. Inside there's a mixture of 10% AHAs and 10% PHAs, which together deliver an overnight result of a brighter and smoother complexion. As it's so punchy, start using it every other night, then build up to nightly.

Best Hyaluronic Acid Face Serum

We love doubling up on serums. First a hydrating serum, then a targeted treatment one. This is such a good hydrator, we recommend everyone use it as their first serum step.

Best Face Serum For Sensitive Skin

Sometimes what your skin needs is a little bit of comfort. Maybe it's because you've overdone it on other powerful skincare. Whatever the reason, Kate Somerville's super calming serum floods your skin with fatty acids and ceramides to help rebuild your skin barrier.

Best Luxury Face Serum

Augustinus Bader has just launched this serum and it has fast become one of our favourites. Much like the other products in the line, the serum contains the brand's TFC8® technology, which encourages the skin to heal itself. It's also got vitamin C and resveratrol inside so it's got the added brightening and free radical protection elements too. We've been waiting for this serum and it doesn't disappoint.

Best Natural Face Serum

When this serum first hit the market, it caused quite the stir and with good reason. Formulated using 22 nutrient-rich botanicals and oils, this face oil can be used on all sin types and tackles all manner of skin concerns. It's rich enough that you can use it alone, but in winter we'd double up with your moisturiser.

Best Vitamin C Face Serum For Blemish-prone Skin

Skinceuticals own the vitamin C market. Hand on our hearts, we'd go as far as saying that its are the best vitamin C serums available. And now they've just dropped another. This time for blemish-prone skin. This serum controls oil production, reduces the appearance of blemishes and improves skin tone and clarity. Skinceuticals does it again.