Review: St. Ives Exfoliate & Nourish Coconut Oil Scrub (For Face)

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St. Ives Exfoliate & Nourish Coconut Oil Scrub

(retail: around $6.99, 4.23 oz.)

You may recall, back in January of this year, that I was pretty excited when I first posted about these new oil scrubs from St. Ives. They definitely piqued my curiosity (there's an apricot formula as well) so when I found them at my local Walmart last month, I immediately purchase the coconut formula. So let's see how it's been working for me, shall we?

Availability: In-store at Walmart, Target and various drugstores. Online at Walmart.com, Target.com, Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime Pantry.

From St. Ives:

Aloha smooth, sweet smelling skin! From America’s No 1 scrub brand* comes our first ever oil scrub. With pure grapeseed oil and 100% natural coconut shell powder, to nourish and exfoliate in one step. It’s not complicated! The coconut shell powder makes an excellent exfoliator and partners perfectly with pure grapeseed oil to nourish with a flourish. Coconuts, where to start? We just can’t get enough; milk, flesh, we’ll take the lot. But here’s something you might not know, the shell is also brilliant. So we use that too. It’s a natural exfoliator which helps buff our skin to that softness we all love. Our coconuts come from the Ivory Coast and Sri Lanka too. The shells are milled and rounded to the exact level of exfoliation so it’s just right – not too rough, not too soft. Natural Ingredients include Coconut Shell Power, Grapeseed Oil, and Coconut Oil. 

HOW TO USE: Now this is a bit different. Apply a small amount of oil into your palms (start with a dime sized amount, you can always add more if you need). Rub together and massage gently into DRY skin. Add warm water and continue massaging in circles to stimulate the skin. The oil will emulsify, where it turns milky white. Don’t forget to work right up to your hair line and around the sides of your nose. Rinse thoroughly with warm water and pat dry with a towel. Smooth it on and scrub up 3-4 times a week.

Recommended Skin Type: mature, combination, normal, oily

INGREDIENTS: Vitis Vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil, Sorbeth-30 Tetraoleate, Isopropyl Palmitate, Silica Dimethyl Silylate, Hydrated Silica, Phenoxyethanol, Fragrance (Parfum), Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Shell Powder, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil.

*Based on 52 week unit sales ending 7.30.16

Made in USA

When I first posted about this product, I immediately thought, "A cleansing oil and exfoliator? Yes!" Well after using this for a month now, I've come to realize that I was absolutely wrong about that. This is a facial scrub that happens to be oil-based. Big difference! Now, I don't think St. Ives was in any way deceptive about this product--they state right on the front of the bottle that this is a "Coconut Oil Scrub." It was absolutely my fault to think that it was a cleansing-oil-exfoliator hybrid type of product. I guess when I saw "scrub" and "oil," my mind went there.

Right on the bottle, St. Ives tells you to use this product 3-4 times a week. That should have been my first clue, right? If this were a cleansing oil and exfoliator in one, you would be able to use it every single day as your normal facial cleanser (as with all cleansing oils). 

So for my review below, I am reviewing this product strictly has an exfoliator--NOT a cleanser.

Standard flip-top lid

In this close-up, you can see that the "scrubbies" in this product (coconut shell powder) are quite small. They are NOT the large pieces of apricot and walnet shell that you find in the classic St. Ives Apricot Scrub. The coconut shell powder in this scrub is what St. Ives describes as having a "Medium" exfoliating factor, and I would agree with that. The powder content is dense enough to do some nice exfoliation, but it's not as heavy-duty as a microdermabrasion product. This product is also not as exfoliating as my holy grail St. Ives Green Tea Scrub. But to be clear, it's also not the type of product that you work into the skin and think, "This isn't scrubbing my skin all." You can definitely feel something.

Looking at my pic above, when you squirt this product out of the bottle it looks like a thick gel. But the moment you start to work it into your skin, it takes on a traditional oil texture and it's not thick at all. As with cleansing oils, you apply this product to DRY skin, and after working it into your skin (taking care to avoid the eye area), you can get your hands wet and then the product will take on a more milky texture. After that, it's time to rinse. And for me, this product rinsed fairly well. Not as well as my beloved DHC Cleansing Oil and Palmer's Cleansing Oil (reviews here and here), but well enough. I can still feel a slight oily residue after rinsing, but that goes away after patting my skin dry with a towel. I have oily skin, so I'm very sensitive to products that leave an oily residue and I really can't feel that at all once my skin is dry.

After using this product, my skin feels smooth, clean and not too dry. But it does feel slightly tight, which I wasn't expecting given that this is an oil-based product. Overall, my skin has been pretty happy with this product, but I do want to mention that the fragrance level of this product is medium-strong. You can definitely smell it when you open the bottle and work it into your skin. To me, the fragrance isn't straight coconut, but more like a coconut and mixed berry blend. It's quite sweet and almost candy-like.

So do I love this product? Not really, and here's why: I can't quite figure out its place in my skincare regimen. I tried using it as a cleanser (even though it doesn't claim to be one, of course) and it wasn't effective at removing my foundation. You also can't get this product near your eyes, given the presence of coconut shell powder, so again, it's not a cleanser. I'm OK with it not being a cleanser, but the problem for me is that you must apply it to dry skin. I don't know about you, but I generally use my facial scrubs right after cleansing, when my face is still wet. With this product, you need to cleanse your face, dry it, dry your hands, and then apply the scrub. After two weeks of doing just that, I was tired of that extra "drying off" step. So then I decided to just use this scrub in the morning, when my skin was already pretty clean (after the previous night's cleansing). Using it in the AM was more convenient for me, but it felt kind of weird to massage the oils already on my skin after a night's sleep back into my skin, without fully cleansing my skin. So I felt like I needed to use a cleanser after this scrub in the morning. Do you see where I'm going with this? Too many steps that I'm not used to, and I just don't think this product is great enough to warrant building a whole new routine to accommodate it.

FINAL VERDICT: Based on everything I said above, I'm trying to think of a person who may truly benefit from a product like this. It's innovative (I can't remember ever seeing an oil scrub before at the drugstore) and I don't hate it. I really want it to work for someone. Using this as an AM product that takes the place of your facial cleanser could work for some of you, but St. Ives does not mention that this product is suitable for dry skin (and I would agree since my oily skin feels slightly tight after use). I'm thinking that if you have normal to oily skin and generally don't like to use a heavy cleanser in the morning, this might give you enough cleansing in addition to the exfoliation. But again, it's a scrub, so you can only use it 3-4 times a week. So it won't take the place of your normal AM cleanser. When it comes to facial scrubs, I'm extremely loyal to my holy grail St. Ives Green Tea Scrub, and I plan to stick with that.

Availability: In-store at Walmart, Target and various drugstores. Online at Walmart.com, Target.com, Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime Pantry

The products featured in this post were purchased with personal funds. For more information, click here.