When to Start Using Eye Cream, Honestly: Do You Need One, and How to Use It

Most of the advice on this question comes from brands that sell eye creams, and it tends to land on “start in your twenties”. We sell eye creams too, so here is the version with the sources attached: what is actually different about the skin around your eyes, when an eye cream earns its place, how to use one, and what is in ours, fragrance included.

What makes the skin around your eyes different

The skin around the eyes is the thinnest and most mobile on the body: in some people it measures as little as 0.2 mm. A 2024 review of eye-cream ingredients notes that it is especially exposed to sun damage, smoking, pollution, contact dermatitis and the rubbing that comes with seasonal allergies. It is also constantly moving as you blink and squint.

Two practical consequences follow. Products that are fine on your cheeks can sting here, and this is one of the places where allergic reactions to skincare show up most readily.

Is an eye cream different from a face cream?

Less than the price usually suggests. EU cosmetics law does define an eye product: a cosmetic intended to be applied in the vicinity of the eyes. The safety assessment of such a product has to pay particular attention to its microbiological quality, and a few ingredients that may be used in other cosmetics are not allowed in eye products at all.

Beyond that, the active ingredients are the ones face creams use: hyaluronic acid, peptides, retinoids, vitamin C, caffeine, niacinamide. Eye creams tend to be thicker and richer in oils than ordinary face creams. The same 2024 review states its main limitation plainly: there is a lack of clinical trials on eye-cream formulations and on the skin around the eyes. Most of what is known comes from studies of the same ingredients elsewhere on the face.

When should you start using eye cream?

Not at a particular age. Start when there is a specific reason, and choose the product for that reason. The table sorts the common ones.

The dark-circle rows follow a 2026 global expert consensus, which recommends caffeine only for the vascular kind and camouflage for every kind. Our caffeine and dark circles guide explains how to tell yours apart with a ten-second stretch test.

Should you start in your twenties?

Brands often say so, as prevention. We found no trial of starting an eye cream early. What has been tested is sunscreen. In a randomised trial in Nambour, Australia, 903 adults under 55 were assigned either to use sunscreen every day or to carry on using it as they liked, for four and a half years. The daily group showed no detectable increase in skin ageing, and ageing was 24% less than in the other group, graded by assessors who did not know who was in which group. The trial measured sun-related ageing of the skin in general, not the eye area, but it is the closest thing to evidence for prevention that exists.

The catch is that most of us miss the eyelids. In a 2019 study, people left more of the face uncovered when they applied an SPF moisturiser than when they applied a sunscreen, and the difference came mainly from the eyelid area. If you want to prevent lines around your eyes, the most useful habit is to take sunscreen right up to them, without letting it into the eyes.

Can you use your face moisturiser around your eyes?

Yes, if it does not sting, make your eyes water or leave your eyelids red. Plenty of people never use anything else there. A few things make a face product more likely to bother the eye area: fragrance, alcohol high in the ingredient list, and active ingredients such as exfoliating acids and retinoids, which are best kept off the eyelids unless the product is made for that area.

If you use an eye cream, there is no need to put face moisturiser over the same skin as well.

Eye cream before or after moisturiser? Morning or night?

Apply products from the thinnest to the thickest. Most eye creams are lighter than a rich face cream, so the usual order is cleanser, serum, eye cream, then moisturiser. If your eye cream is the richer of the two, put it on last. In the morning, sunscreen always goes on last, around the eyes as well.

Morning or night depends on what you use it for. A caffeine product makes most sense in the morning, when puffiness tends to be at its worst. A richer cream is easier to wear at night, when it does not have to sit under make-up or sunscreen. Once a day is enough for most people; twice is fine if your skin likes it.

How to apply eye cream

1. Use a small amount, about a grain of rice for each eye. More does not work better, and it is more likely to end up in your eyes.
2. Dot it along the bone around the eye with your ring finger, which tends to press most lightly.
3. Pat it in gently from the inner corner outwards. Do not rub or drag the skin.
4. Keep it a few millimetres away from the lash line, because a cream can travel into the eye.
5. Give it a minute or two to settle before make-up or sunscreen.
6. If you use our Caffeine Gel Booster, mix a drop into the eye cream rather than adding another layer.

Can eye cream cause milia?

Milia are tiny, firm white bumps: small cysts filled with keratin, the protein of the skin’s outer layer. Many appear for no obvious reason. For the rest, DermNet, the New Zealand dermatology reference, lists two kinds of trigger: skin injury as it heals, such as burns, dermabrasion and blistering rashes, and, rarely, some topical medicines, including hydroquinone, 5-fluorouracil and corticosteroid creams.

Rich eye creams are often blamed online, and the idea is plausible, since eye creams tend to be oilier than face creams. But we found no study that tested whether eye creams cause milia. If small white bumps appear after you start a new product, stop it for a few weeks and see whether new ones keep coming. Do not squeeze them: milia often clear by themselves within a few months, and a dermatologist can open and empty the ones that do not.

When your eyelids react: fragrance, nickel and nail polish

Red, itchy or flaky eyelids are often an allergic reaction to something that touched them. Among 266 people with dermatitis around the eyes who were patch-tested at Massachusetts General Hospital, an allergy was the likely cause in about half (50.8%). The commonest culprits were nickel (16.5%) and the fragrance mix used in patch testing (13.2%).

A 2025 review of 17 studies by the American Academy of Ophthalmology found the same names recurring: fragrance mixes and the fragrance ingredients cinnamic alcohol and balsam of Peru, the preservative methylisothiazolinone, nickel, gold, the antibiotic neomycin and nail-care products. Nail products are on that list because hands carry them to the eyelids.

That matters here, because all three of our eye products contain fragrance. Their ingredient lists include parfum and named fragrance allergens: limonene, linalool, coumarin and geraniol in the two creams, geranyl acetate and linalyl acetate in the booster.

If your eyelids are reactive, use something without fragrance and patch-test anything new on a small area for a few days first. If a rash keeps coming back, a dermatologist can patch-test you to find the cause. A swollen eyelid that is red, hot or painful, or any change in your eyesight, needs urgent medical advice.

What is in ours

We make two eye creams and a caffeine booster designed to be mixed into them. All three are fragranced, and none of them is a treatment.

Smoothing Eye Cream

The Smoothing Eye Cream is the lighter of the two creams: 33 ingredients, starting with aloe leaf juice, jojoba oil and glycerin. It contains dipalmitoyl hydroxyproline, sodium PCA, extracts of horse chestnut and black tea, escin, and a plant lipid fraction (glycosphingolipids and glycolipids) that is related to ceramides but is not the ceramides used in barrier trials, as our skin barrier guide explains. Two forms of hyaluronic acid sit near the end of the list, and shea butter comes after the fragrance, so both are present in small amounts. We found no trial of the horse chestnut extract or escin on the skin around the eyes.

Brightening Eye Cream

The Brightening Eye Cream is the richer one: 35 ingredients, with sunflower seed oil second, rice bran oil, shea butter and three plant waxes, plus ginkgo and grape leaf extracts, horse chestnut and hyaluronic acid. Despite the name, it has no ingredient aimed at pigment that we can point to evidence for; the only vitamin C is ascorbyl palmitate, listed after the fragrance. Treat it as a rich moisturiser for dry skin around the eyes.

Caffeine Gel Booster

The Caffeine Gel Booster is a short-list gel of 11 ingredients, with caffeine fourth, after water, alcohol and glycerin. It is meant to be mixed into an eye cream in the morning. The alcohol and the fragrance are the ingredients most likely to sting, so patch-test your mix first. What caffeine can and cannot do is in our caffeine guide.

If your eyelids react to fragrance

Our Sensitive Skin Moisturiser has no fragrance and no ethanol. It is made as a face cream rather than an eye product, so try a little at the outer edge of the eye area first and keep it away from the lash line. The rest of our fragrance-free range is in the fragrance-free edit.

Where to start

If the skin around your eyes feels dry, start with the Smoothing Eye Cream once a day, patted along the bone and kept away from the lash line. If it is very dry, the Brightening Eye Cream is the richer option. If your eyelids react to fragrance, skip both and use the Sensitive Skin Moisturiser instead.

Whatever you choose, finish the morning with sunscreen around your eyes. Our tinted SPF 50 stick is one option; the right one is the one you will actually wear every day.