Hair · Skin · Body
Nearly every beauty brand splits its shelf into lines, then tells you almost nothing about what separates them. Some code by colour. Some use numbers. Most name each line after an ingredient that explains nothing about who it is for.
Answer some real questions about your hair, your skin, and what's actually bothering you. Get a routine in order, with the specific line named, not just the brand.
With amika, blue is moisture and orange is damage repair. Nothing on the bottle says so.
Olaplex sells you No. 0 through No. 9. CeraVe sells three identical white bottles where the printed text colour is the only difference.
Dark underarms. Thinning edges. Post-acne marks that last months. Bumps on the backs of your arms. A curly kid when your own hair is straight.
Three quizzes
Each one is about ten questions and takes two minutes. You get a routine in order. What goes on first, how often, and why.
Curl pattern, porosity, protein versus moisture, scalp, and protective styles. Covers wavy through 4C, locs, transitioning, and kids' hair.
Start the hair quiz →
Dark spots and post-acne marks, melasma, texture, barrier damage, razor bumps, and sunscreen that doesn't leave a grey cast on deeper skin.
Start the skin quiz →
Dark underarms, knees and elbows, ingrown hairs, bacne, keratosis pilaris, ashiness, stretch marks. The whole list nobody puts in a beauty quiz.
Start the body quiz →
Or start from a photo. Upload a bare-face picture in good daylight and we'll read what we can see. Curl pattern, strand thickness, visible dryness or dark marks, and pre-fill the questions from it. It won't diagnose anything, and you can correct every part of it.
Hair photo Skin photoHow it works
"Try SheaMoisture" is useless advice. There are fourteen SheaMoisture lines and most of them are wrong for you. Every match here names the exact line, tells you what it is for, and tells you when to skip it.
Not what you think your hair type is. What it does when it air dries with nothing in it, and what your skin feels like three hours after washing.
Dryness and breakage need opposite treatments. Active acne and the dark marks it leaves behind are two different problems. We separate them.
Numbered steps with frequency. Top pick plus two alternates per step, so a sold-out shelf does not derail you.
Every product opens to its brand's whole range, with your line marked and the real packaging shades shown, so you can find it on the shelf.
The gap
You can match a foundation undertone in thirty seconds on any beauty app. Now try finding one that asks about your edges, your underarms, or the marks your breakouts leave behind. Those threads have thousands of posts and no good answer.
Foundation shade. Undertone. Occasionally a "what's your skin type" quiz that outputs a moisturizer. Almost always tied to what's in stock and what has margin.
Dark underarms. Hyperpigmentation on knees and elbows. Thinning edges after years of braids. Which of the six SheaMoisture lines is for high porosity. Whether their kid's curls need protein. What to do about bumps on the backs of their arms.
Straight answers
We do earn a commission on some retailer links, and we are upfront about it. What we do not do is let it touch the results. The matching engine scores products on your answers and has no commission data in it at all, which is why a large share of top matches are drugstore products under fifteen dollars that pay us almost nothing.
And where the honest answer is "this needs a dermatologist, not a serum", for thinning that has gone on for months, melasma, or patches that will not shift, the results say so instead of selling you something.
The directory
Korean skincare (COSRX, Beauty of Joseon, Anua, SKIN1004, Laneige, Round Lab), Ulta and Sephora bestsellers, and the drugstore staples that quietly beat both. Filter by concern, price, or which store actually carries it.
Every product opens to a page telling you what it's for, when to skip it, and which retailers stock it. Some of those links earn us a commission, which has no bearing on what the quiz recommends.
Browse the directory →We list the retailers that carry each product and link straight into their site. What we don't do is pretend to know what's on the shelf right now. Live inventory would need a feed from each store, and we'd rather say so than show you a stale “in stock” badge.
Guides
Fifteen guides on the things beauty threads argue about endlessly, written to be useful rather than to sell you something.
The float test is unreliable. Here is the one that works, and why porosity matters more than curl type.
SkinPost inflammatory hyperpigmentation is pigment, not scarring, and it fades. What works and how long it takes.
BodyOften it is not pigment at all. What to try first, and the home remedies that make it worse.