Product Review: Neutrogena Transparent Facial Bar

Every day essentials

When there's a storm coming, most people rush out to buy milk and bread. Me, I go and buy my beauty essentials. Okay, so I also ended up going to the store and buying milk, but that wasn't because of the storm. In any case, these are two products that I absolutely love and use on a regular basis. This post is specifically about the Neutrogena Transparent Facial Bar for acne-prone skin (a review of the dry shampoo is forthcoming, I promise!). I was in luck today too, because it was on sale for $5.29.

I first purchased this facial bar when I was in Maui. I'd brought along a travel sized container of my usual morning face wash, but I found it was a little too harsh to be using both in the morning and at night. After a bit of browsing, I pulled the travel sized version of the facial bar off the shelves and decided to try it. I've been using it almost nightly ever since!

This is the first and only facial cleanser I've used that comes in a traditional bar soap form. It actually makes for easy use, since I can just wet my face with a wash cloth, get some soap on the washcloth, scrub my face, and then rinse. It's a very gentle formula that doesn't dry out my skin, a problem I have sometimes with cleansers despite the fact that I have oil/combination skin. And it really does help my acne prone skin. I've been out of it for over a week now and I've noticed more breakouts in that time. I also find that because it is so easy to use, I'm better about properly washing my face at night than when I use a different kind of cleanser, much as I might like them.

My nightly routine now always includes this cleanser. Depending on how much makeup I'm wearing, I'll use my CVS Oil Free Eye Makeup Remover (a knock off of the Neutrogena remover of the same name) and a CVS Exfoliating Apricot Towelette  to get the bulk of my eye makeup and foundation off. Then I use this Neutrogena Facial Bar to really give my face a good wash. I've found that if I'm not wearing heavy makeup, this works just fine on its own to remove makeup and cleanse all in one. After I've finished washing my face with this, I use witch hazel as a toner and top it all off with my favorite night cream- Neutrogina Naturals Nourishing Night Cream (review of the night cream here).

I cannot say enough about this facial bar! It's simple to use, the scent is very minimal, and it works great. Given that it took me over four months to go through the travel size, it's also a great bang for your buck. And anything that encourages me to wash my face more and cleanses so well is worth every penny, anyways, in my opinion!