These days, there seems to be a gadget for nearly anything you can think of, from sanitising your smartphone with UV light to refrigerating your beauty products. Yes, skincare fridges are a thing, and have been for a while. What is a skincare fridge and do you really need one in your bathroom or boudoir?
Skincare fridges, also known as beauty fridges, makeup fridges or cosmetic fridges, became a frequent subject of bathroom “shelfies” on Instagram in 2019. Various beauty bloggers began to share photos with tiny pastel-coloured fridges filled with skincare products, and their subscribers immediately got interested in these new appliances. They’re cute, they’re extremely Instagrammable, but are they really necessary?
To answer this question, let’s figure out what a skincare fridge is and how it works. A skincare fridge is just what it says on the tin: it is a mini fridge with a useful volume of 4 to 6 litres (245 to 365 cubic inches) designed to keep beauty products that need to be stored at a certain temperature. Just like with a regular fridge, products can be stored in the fridge itself or in the door shelves.
If you know how a regular fridge works, you may wonder how manufacturers manage to fit a compressor, a condenser and an evaporator into a tiny 4-litre fridge. The thing is, they don’t need to, because, unlike household refrigerators that use a vapour compression cycle for cooling and refrigeration, skincare fridges use the thermoelectric effect.
A thermoelectric fridge contains a Peltier device consisting of two semiconductor plates. Its main benefits are that it is compact, makes little to no noise, and can be used for both cooling and heating. Besides, there is no risk of ice build-up inside the fridge or refrigerant leakage.
Their compact size, cute design and convenience have made skincare fridges a real hit among beauty bloggers and skincare enthusiasts. But what exactly is the purpose of a beauty fridge? Do skincare products really need to be refrigerated? Let’s find out.
The overwhelming majority of skincare products contain preservatives and undergo stability testing to ensure that they can be safely stored at room temperature for the entire duration of their shelf life. They will retain their efficacy even once they’re opened, unless you consistently forget to close the lids or keep them in direct sunlight.
However, this doesn’t apply to natural, organic and DIY skincare products that don’t contain strong preservatives. For such products, high temperatures can be detrimental, and it is usually best to store them in the fridge. Of course, you can just keep them in you kitchen fridge, but do you really want to store your serums and moisturisers next to meat, veggies and sauces?
In addition, certain skincare products don’t exactly need to be refrigerated, but they work better when chilled. If you keep eye patches and sheet masks in the skincare fridge, they’ll be ready to use whenever you want. Beauty fridges have a temperature controller, so you can set the temperature you need and not worry that the products will get too cold.
What Skincare Products Can Be Stored in the Beauty Fridge?
Like we’ve already said, you don’t need to keep all your skincare products in the fridge; most of them can be stored at room temperature perfectly fine. But some of them would be better off in the fridge where the temperature is lower and more stable. This includes the already mentioned eye patches and sheet masks that are more effective when chilled. Serums with vitamins A and C are also better kept cool because these ingredients aren’t particularly stable and may lose some of their efficacy when stored at high temperatures. You should also use the skincare fridge to store organic and handmade cosmetics, especially if you don’t use them very often and therefore need to extend their shelf life as much as possible.
It should be noted that the temperature in skincare fridges can be maintained at a level that is 18-20 °С below the ambient temperature. Therefore, this device can come in handy when the weather is really hot and you have no AC, meaning that the temperature in your house or flat is +30 °С or even higher. All you need to do to keep your skincare products safe from the heat is to put them in the fridge and set the temperature at about +20 °С.
In our online shop Organic Store, you can buy natural and organic skincare products from trustworthy manufacturers. They are formulated with natural, safe and effective preservatives and emulsifiers that make them stable at room temperature (as long as you keep them away from direct sunlight), so you don’t need to keep them in the skincare fridge. But we have products that work better when chilled! At Organic Store, we offer affordable prices, convenient payment methods and international delivery to most corners of the world.