Witch Exfoliating Face Wash

I bought this product after seeing that it had brilliant reviews on Ciao and wasn’t too expensive for a face wash. Unfortunately, this just taught me that everyone’s skin is drastically different and what works for one is not necessarily going to work for another!

I associate the Witch brand with problematic, blemish-prone skin, which is exactly what I have. My T-zone gets quite oily which can cause blemishes and blackheads, and I wear makeup most days for work, so I need to clean my face very thoroughly every night. My skin is very resilient and hardy – I rarely suffer from sensitive or dry skin – so I do exfoliate every day to try to keep my pores as clear as possible.

To be honest this scrub let me down a bit, as I felt its exfoliating properties were quite limited. The wash is like a thin gel, with very small white crystals in that the packaging refers to as ‘microgranules’. These granules are quite unsubstantial and although there’s plenty of them, I’d say they have more of a scratching effect than an exfoliating one. I can feel them scraping against my skin like teensy little bits of dirt or stone, but they’re simply too small to have any real exfoliating effect on my skin.

In terms of blemishes, I can’t say that this face wash helped me at all. I felt that my blemishes increased when I started using this face wash instead of my previous one, and that they lasted for longer. I already use a prescription cream for acne at night, and with the face scrub I used before, when I got a blemish it would generally be gone within about three days. When I started using the Witch face wash, I found that I was getting more, larger blemishes and that they were lasting for up to five days.

The face wash when applied doesn’t foam too much unless I use a lot of it. It acts more like a gel that spreads out over the face. This means that it’s quite difficult to wash off, as it clings to the face. I also find that residue from the wash can often be left in my hairline and around the edge of my jaw. If I miss a bit when I’m trying to wash it off and I accidentally leave the tiny amounts of clear residue overnight then for the next few days I have little bumps all across the area. I know that in theory this is my fault for not washing it off properly, but I’ve never used a face wash that’s more difficult to wash off. It’s outrageous!

The packaging states that once you’ve washed your face you should ‘rinse and pat dry for skin so clean it tingles’. I actually never felt like my skin was particularly clean after I used this and I blame the lack of foaming. I felt like the wash had no effect when it came to removing even the slightest traces of makeup, so I definitely didn’t trust it to remove any dirt from my day that had clogged my pores or settled on my skin. The gel just seemed to sit on the surface of my skin and then take a bit or surface dirt away with it – and I felt even that depended on how well I splashed my face with water. On several occasions I felt the need to follow up after the scrub with some ordinary soap or a non-exfoliating cleanser.

I used the whole tube of this, partly because I detest waste and partly because I kept thinking it must be something else causing my skin problems, not this face wash. I found that as soon as I switched, my skin improved. I would never buy this again and never recommend it to anyone. Witch claim that it’s great for all skin types but especially oily/combination skin – I disagree.

At just £3.99 for 150ml, which lasted me almost two months of one or two uses a day, this still isn’t value for money to me.