Review: Body Shop Tea Tree Oil line

When I went back to school in September my previously low maintenance skin went a bit haywire. I started getting breakouts in my chin, mostly on the left hand side of my face. Part of the reason for this was that I was sitting at a desk a lot more, which meant that I was resting my chin on my hand. My usual routine of using the Cetaphil cleanser and moisturizer just wasn't cutting it anymore so I decided to test out something that had worked for my sister in the past, the Body Shop's Tea Tree Oil collection.

Tea Tree Skin Clearing Foaming Cleanser was ok to use. It didn't irritate my skin, but it also didn't remove makeup very well. I found after using it my skin felt very tight, like it had no moisture left in it. The smell was very medicinal and strong, though it went away after a few minutes.

Tea Tree Skin Clearing Toner was the product I was most leery of using, as I remember it being super drying. Turns out that despite reformulating the product to make it less drying it still made my skin feel tight and dry. I also found that if I used it too close to my eyes that my eyes would start to sting. As with all Tea Tree line the smell was very medicinal.

Tea Tree Skin Clearing Lotion has a gel consistency. On my dry/combination skin it felt good for about 5 minutes before it sank in, then my skin felt tight and dry. It also had the nasty side effect of making my eyes sting and water like crazy for about 5 minutes after applying. The smell on this product lasted longer than the others, about 20 minutes before it went away.

Tea Tree Blemish Fade Night Lotion after using the above lotion for two weeks my skin was feeling very dry and was getting rough spots. I went back to the Body Shop and the sales girl recommended this for night time use as it has a thicker consistency that the Clearing Lotion. This lotion smelled terrible, almost like tires. While I noticed that is did fade some of the marks left by pimples, it was not very moisturizing at all. This is the only product from the line that I will still use however, just to try and fade the blemish marks left behind on my skin. I will not repurchase this product once its been used up.

Overall I would NOT recommend these products. I used these products for around a month and a half and while I didn't have any serious breakouts, I still got pimples. I think the main part of my breakouts slowing down was the concentrated effort I've made to not rest my chin on my hands. I found them super harsh on my skin. If you have oily skin these might work for you, but not for people with normal/dry/combination skin.

Overall Rating: Would Not Repurchase, Not Recommended.