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one of my favorite products that i own isn’t a color-changing lip product, an eye cream with encapsulated ingredients, or the perfect glowy foundation. it’s the holy grail product after a late night out because it removes my makeup like magic. take a cotton pad, and with a few drops of this magical liquid, you go from creased and cakey to cleaner than your phone case.

you’ve probably guessed it by now: it’s micellar water. yes, the iconic pink garnier one that girls in the bathroom beg for when their mascara smudges under their eyes. 

micellar water: the ultimate mystery. what does making water "micellar" do to remove all that eyeliner i spent a good chunk of my morning trying to perfect?

the secret lies in a silly little spherical structure known as a micelle. fitting, right? a micelle is just a bunch of surfactant molecules positioned so that they form a nice circular shape. surfactants, or surface-active agents, are molecules with a hydrophilic (water lover) head and a hydrophobic (water fearing) tail. 

if you saw the emulsifier post, you might’ve notice that a surfactant molecule and an emulsifier molecule are essentially the same thing. the question is, how can one create moisturizers and another remove makeup if they’re the same molecule? scientifically, emulsifiers are a type of surfactant and surfactants work by reducing surface tension between oil and water. this reduced tension enables the oil and water to mix due to their close proximity and form a uniform mixture.

surfactants are able to cleanse because the hydrophobic tail dissolves any oil or grease (makeup products, sweat), and this dirt and oil gets carried into the hydrophobic tail which can be washed off with water. micellar water has both surfactants and water, which is why you don’t need extra water (other than from the product), to cleanse your face.

hope you learned something today! as always, feel free to check out the rest of the site!

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