Our Team's Favorite Summer Beauty Picks
Our editors tried plenty of new beauty and wellness products this summer, but the ones that stood out were the formulas we kept reaching for because they fit easily into our routines, delivered on what they promised, and felt genuinely good to use. From smarter exfoliation and lightweight body care to complexion products and treatment-driven essentials, these are the products that earned a lasting place in our rotation and that we would readily recommend beyond the season.
We’re picky about exfoliating pads because so many seem to exist at one of two extremes: barely doing anything or leaving skin feeling like you’ve made a terrible mistake. Your Favorite Ex gets the balance right. The glycolic acid and PHA combination gives skin that immediately smoother, brighter look we want from an exfoliant, but ectoin and sodium polyglutamate help keep the experience from feeling overly aggressive. We especially loved these during summer, when sunscreen, sweat and general buildup can make skin feel perpetually one cleanse away from actually being clean. A few swipes and everything just looks fresher.
We test enough body products that ‘skin care for your body’ has started to feel like a meaningless phrase, but Uni’s Body Serum actually earns it. It’s incredibly lightweight—exactly what we want when putting on a traditional body cream in August sounds miserable—but still leaves skin noticeably softer and smoother. The formula brings Australian caviar lime, Kakadu plum and marine ingredients into the mix, so it feels closer to a facial treatment than a basic moisturizer. And Rain may be our favorite Uni scent yet: airy, slightly aquatic, softly woody and expensive-smelling without competing with fragrance. This is the rare body product no one on the team has to remind themselves to use.
We’ve tried enough essences to know that a watery texture and a vaguely fermented ingredient story do not automatically make one interesting. Vital Fermented Essence is interesting. More than 90% of the formula is built around multiple ferments, including Galactomyces, Saccharomyces and Leuconostoc, and then Gentler Essentials takes the category into decidedly nerdier territory with nucleotide-rich yeast lysate and recombinant biotechnology. What sold us, though, was how consistently good skin looked with it in the routine: smoother, clearer and almost strangely well-rested. The texture is basically water, so adding it after cleansing requires zero commitment, and it makes everything layered afterward feel like part of a much better routine.
Every summer, we want to wear less makeup without necessarily looking like we’re wearing less makeup. SunnyDays solves that beautifully. It gives enough coverage to soften redness and even things out, but the finish still looks convincingly like skin—and somehow it’s also a mineral SPF 30. We’ve tried plenty of sunscreen-makeup hybrids where one half of the equation clearly feels like an afterthought; this isn’t one of them. The coverage is light-to-medium and buildable, the formula is fragrance-free and made with sensitive skin in mind, and on hot days it lets us eliminate an entire complexion step. That alone keeps it in rotation. But what will make it a must is how beautiful and flawless it makes the skin look, this is one people will ask about.
Magnesium sprays are one of those wellness products we theoretically love and then abandon because are they doing anything?! Sereno Velo is the first one we’ve genuinely wanted to keep within reach. MIJA pairs magnesium chloride with Vitamin B6 and Zinc PCA (so you know it’s actually doing something), then buffers the formula with aloe and adds lavender, green mandarin and vetiver, so the entire experience feels unusually considered for the category. We mist it onto legs and shoulders after long days or workouts, and it has become one of those small cues that signals the day is winding down. Even better: skin feels comfortable afterward, rather than like it’s been sprayed with seawater. And it’s not just our imagination, our Oura rings do show better deep sleep matrics when we’ve been spraying this before bed. If you’ve wanted to become a magnesium-spray person, start here.
