Sooryehan Chunsam Golden cleansing foam

 

Sooryehan Chunsam Golden cleansing foam written in gold ink with a pink/blue sheen

My drawing of the Sooryehan cleanser, because I like to draw. If you want to check out the original, link to Sooryehan's website is below 

Link to Sooryehan's website so you can see the cleanser tube. I haven't taken a picture of the tube as all my photo stuff is packed away

About my skin

I used to stick to more affordable products and use a lot of different products to address features like signs of aging, larger pores and CCs, redness and dull skin. I'm going to call these things I'm addressing "features" rather than "concerns", which is just a personal preference. My skin doesn't need fixing, I just tailor my routine to address certain aspects of it. This may seem a pedantic choice of words but language matters! 

 I'm 40 with combination skin, prone to CCs but not acne (unless I've used a product that disagrees with me) and my skin is perpetually dehydrated because of the actives I use. My neck is dry, dry as a desert, and very sensitive, so I use an entirely different routine that would be too bland for my face - plus, my neck routine wouldn't address my face skin features. 

Cost of Sooryehan Chunsam Golden Cleansing foam

£2.64 (approx) for 40ml but several months past expiry when I bought it.

KoreaDepart has it for $22 for 160ml on sale.

Introduction 

My first premium cleanser - how exciting!

I've begun to have expectations about how other premium products perform but I have no idea how a cleanser might be.

Generally, I find cleansing a bit boring and not something I particularly want to spend money on because I have things that work fine.

I thought this would potentially be an interesting experience: what does a premium cleanser do differently? What is there to do differently when the purpose is to cleanse your skin?

I hope it won't be stripping and I hope it'll leave my skin feeling soft. Maybe it will do something else with longer acquaintance?

Packaging

It's nice gold tube, classy as always with Sooryehan!

The product dispenses easily and not too much at once which makes it straightforward to use.

I don't mind a screwcap, like this has, but I get why a flip top might be preferred. A pump wouldn't work for this because it is pretty thick.

Texture

It's a really thick cream texture, super solid when you squeeze it out and bright gold!

Sooryehan Chunsam Golden cleansing foam squeezed out of the tube: it's a thick golden cream

Ingredients

As usual, I don't have much to say about the ingredient list - it's by Sooryehan, I trust it to be well-formulated with beneficial ingredients!

What I can say is that it's nice to see glyercin above the cleansing agents - that suggests to me feel it will be hydrating or that it will counteract potential drying effects.

From Mary Morning webshop, hard to find ingredients for this so hopefully it's accurate?

Water,Glycerin,Myristic Acid,Butylene Glycol,Potassium Hydroxide,Stearic Acid,Lauric Acid,Stearate,Glyceryl Stearate,Sodium Methyl Cocoyl Taurate,Punica Granatum Fruit Extract,Arctium Lappa Seed Extract,Houttuynia Cordata Extract,Panax Ginseng Root Extract,Velvet Extract,Cordyceps Sinensis Extract,Phellinus Linteus Extract,Platycodon Grandiflorus Root Extract,Polygonum Multiflorum Root Extract,Angelica Tenuissima Root Extract,Phaseolus Radiatus Seed Extract,Ceratonia Siliqua (Carob) Fruit Extract,Trichosanthes Kirilowii Root Extract,Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Extract,Tocopheryl Acetate,1,2-Hexanediol,Mica,Titanium Dioxide,CI 77491,Trisodium EDTA,Flavor

Fragrance

This smells weird. I do not like it at all. It smells mouldy to me. 

I got my partner to smell it and he said it was fine, just smelled like foundation to him.

I guess it has an earthy, herbal smell and I don't like that kind of fragrance.

It's not so bad once you rinse it off. It leaves behind a faint aroma that's slightly sweeter.

Perhaps some of the scent and the reason it smells like foundation is down to the gold pigment?

Based on fragrance alone, it is unsuited to my taste so I'm not sure if I'll repurchase.

I say not sure because the rest of my experience was very interesting. More on this below, of course!

What Step?

Cleanser! I use it as a single cleanse but that might not be right for everyone.

My current routine is in flux but I'm usually applying the following:

• Cosrx AHA Whitehead Power liquid
• Cos de Baha Salicylic acid 4% / Benton Aloe BHA Skin toner 
• Missha Artemisia Calming essence
• Toner: Sooryehan Hyobidam Fermented Toner and The History of Whoo Ultimate Rejuvenating Balancer (Cheonyuldan I think)
• Sooryehan The Black Serum
• Geek & Gorgeous A-game 5
• Sooryehan Hyobidam Fermented emulsion
• Sooryehan Bon Firming cream
• Sunscreen - varies but usually Verdio UV Moisture Gel N.

Experience

I don't use much in the way of foaming cleansers. Whilst I've tended to stick to single cleansing using oil or balm, I do have a hybrid oil-gel cleanser. Single cleansing has worked fine for my skin with Simple's Hydrating Cleansing Oil or The Beauty of Joseon Radiance cleansing balm.

This cleanser was so interesting to use - as you can see from the texture section, it's thick, dense and gold coloured. You don't need much to create a foam and said foam is rich without being too bubbly. Having tried it on my hand, I can see it actually turns into a milk texture rather than a foam texture.

It is rich and velvety when emulsified

I was reading a description of a premium cleanser (not sure which cleanser or where I read it) that described the foam of a cleanser as cashmere. Nice.

That's a very clever description because it gives the impression of a rich, refined softness that also has some substance and texture to it - unlike, say, silk, which feels watery and smooth, but has little thickness.

Here's something else I should probably admit for full disclosure. One of the reasons I don't like cleansing is that I don't really like getting water on my face so it's hard for me to get excited about cleansers.

Back in the days when I didn't need skincare, I usually didn't cleanse my face. I just didn't need to do it. Well, maybe I did but my skin looked fine so I figure I didn't need to bother.

Now that I do use skincare, I cleanse twice a day but at least one of those will be a micellar water + reusable bamboo pad cleanse.

On the upside, this means a premium cleanser would last me quite a while!

So, as I've mentioned, it emulsifies in a very pleasant way - I'll borrow that cashmere description for this.

Compared to my limited experience of foaming cleansers and what I've seen from reviews on foaming cleansers, it's not a big, airy foam. That might be why I like it more than the one other purely foaming cleanser I've tried (from Simple).

And I like that it's not a liquid texture when you squeeze it from the tube: it's a thick cream. It definitely feels premium when you dispense it and when it's emulsified.

I did actually really enjoy the foam, I said to myself: oooh, this is different! And that's probably because it's not a foam!

Even when you've started to rinse it, towards the end of the emulsifying, it's still pretty velvety, no big foamy bubbles - just little bubbles as shown here

On a less positive note, I had a moment of panic as I was getting towards the end of the cleanse when I was adding more water to dilute it and began to wash it off.

It started to feel soapy and I was finding my hands didn't glide over the surface of my skin so easily. I immediately thought: aargh! This is going to dry my skin out. And I used it on my dry, dry neck! Eeeeeeeeee! Panic!

But: by the time my skin had air dried, it felt super soft - as soft, if not softer, than having just used an oil or balm cleanser.

I do not pretend to understand this. Not one jot.

I deliberately left extra time before I started my skincare routine to see if my skin showed any signs of drying out: redness, tightness, itchiness (a very common sensation for my neck).

I even went outside to see if cool air would aggravate my skin.

Nope.

My skin felt hydrated, comfortable, super soft.

The next day, when I got my partner to check the scent, I washed my hands with my normal antibac handwash (it's not super drying for one wash but can be drying if you do it too often).

I applied the cleanser to my hand, sniff test done, and then emulsified it, rubbed it in. I will say my hands looked whiter where I was emulsifying, which is probably the gold pigment?

Again, I got that soapy, drying feeling towards the end of the cleanse, just before adding more water to wash it off.

But again, once my hands were dry, the hand that had the cleanser actually feels more hydrated and soft than my other hand that helped wash off the cleanser but didn't really get much cleanser on it. Huh.

To test this cleanser further, I applied thick layers of waterproof makeup to my hand:

Various types of waterproof makeup on my hand, including a much thicker layer of Heroine Make mascara than would ever be on my eyes. Also included here is Physicians Formula eyeliner and MAC Ruby Woo lipstick, plus some foundation and other matte lipsticks.

So it did struggle with Heroine Make Long and Curl Advanced Film and L'Oréal matte lipstick. But most cleansers do! it removed foundation without a trace left and even Mac Ruby Woo, which is impressive.

Traces of Heroine Make, L'Oréal lipstick and MAC Lipstick. But as I said, I put a lot of the Heroine Make and it really clumped on my hand so it's not the fault of the cleanser that there's residue left.

I did another round of cleansing as I forgot to take emulsification photos and still my hands didn't dry out at all! I'm very, very impressed with that, especially as I used a lot of cleanser.

I've also tested it against my other HG cleansers. As usual, Sooryehan beats them hands down. My skin didn't exactly feel dry or tight but it was on the way to it with my other cleansers. 

I don't really have any analysis points to add here right now so I'll leave you with my final thoughts.

 Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed using a premium cleanser - Sooryehan has yet to disappoint me in any category of product, despite the fragrance.

The minute one I've panned one of my cleansers, I will replace it with a premium cleanser. I actually enjoyed the cleansing process, it wasn't my usual "let's get it over with".

Given my success with Sooryehan so far, I'll probably try to find a cleanser like this but with a nicer scent! However, I'm open to trying other things - feel free to comment if you have any recommendations :)