Top 7 Best Day Cream of 2022

Sometimes you find a real gem on the pharmacy shelf. Eucerin is one such brand, whose products deliver almost exclusively good results. And Eucerin AtoControl Face Cream is certainly no exception.

This is a face cream that’s mainly aimed at people with dry and sensitive skin that easily gets irritated. Finding a day cream that feels comfortable on the skin, when you have that sort of skin, can feel difficult. It’s almost an Aha moment when you discover this budget-friendly saviour.

This is a face cream that’s designed to suit even users with atopic dermatitis. Atopic dermatitis, or eczema as it’s often called, is a chronic skin disease where the main symptoms are dry and irritated skin that becomes flaky. It’s inflammatory but not contagious. When Eucerin AtoControl Face Cream is applied, it immediately feels soothing on the skin. The cream contains, among other things, Licochalcone A, an antioxidant extracted from Chinese liquorice root with anti-inflammatory properties, as well as ceramides. These work together to strengthen the skin's natural barriers.

The cream is of course fragrance-free and the skin immediately feels moisturised and much smoother than before application. Eucerin AtoControl Face Cream is quickly absorbed and works really well before applying make-up. This is a day cream that will neither hurt your purse nor irritate your sensitive skin – two big thumbs up from our testers.

Does your skin long for a real moisturising cream with a scent reminiscent of ice cream? If so, then Sunday Riley ICE Ceramide Moisturising Cream may well be the right moisturiser for you.

This is a rich cream that takes gentle care of itchy and tight skin on your face. If your skin is dry all year round, Sunday Riley ICE Ceramide Moisturising Cream could be your ideal permanent companion. If your skin is only dry during the winter, this is a must-have winter friend.

The cream is solid but still absorbed quickly and it leaves your skin deliciously soft with a mild scent of vanilla. This is also a pretty expensive cream, which makes you grateful that it works as well as it does. A jar lasts a really long time.

Yes, we did say jar. But it’s OK because for once the little tools that come with it, so you don’t have to put your fingers in the jar, are actually really big. Instead of a small, feather-light spoon, you get a spatula with some weight to it. The spatula actually feels a little luxurious.

As the name suggests, Sunday Riley ICE Ceramide Moisturising Cream contains ceramides, which are an effective ingredient in strengthening the skin's natural barriers.

Sunday Riley ICE Ceramide Moisturising Cream is a really pleasant cream for restoring the moisture balance in your skin. It work bests if your skin is in the normal to dry range. If you have oily skin, this isn’t really the cream for you.

Dermalogica Intensive Moisture Balance is a face cream for dry to very dry skin. Dermalogica is a brand that always feels safe to use. Their products always maintain the same high quality and never seem to irritate the skin.

Although this cream is aimed at the driest skin, it’s not hard to apply. The cream is absorbed really quickly and your skin will immediately feel less dry. Dermalogica Intensive Moisture Balance leaves no sticky film on your skin, which makes it easy to immediately follow up with any make-up.

The format is a practical and impact-resistant tube. Dermalogica have a very neutral packaging design overall, and that applies to this day cream too. It’s so neutral that it won’t scare away anyone who dislikes flashy packaging. The scent is as discreet as the packaging, something that people with dry skin will be grateful for.

The only real downside to Dermalogica Intensive Moisture Balance is the price. As effective as it is, you just can’t avoid thinking your wallet is suffering when you buy it. But if you have dry and sensitive skin that’s also sensitive to perfume, it may be money very well spent.

Lancome Génifique Youth Activating Cream is a day cream that is primarily aimed at people with early signs of ageing.

This is a smooth and incredibly easily absorbed cream that makes the skin feel great. But what do we mean by great, exactly? Well, soft, calm and not tight from dryness or suffering from any outbreaks.

Lancome Génifique Youth Activating Cream has a very light formula that’s absorbed by the skin in an instant. The scent is mild and not remotely overpowering. There’s actually a fine line between adding a scent to a face cream, and that scent being too much. With this cream they’ve succeeded in creating an elegant but discreet scent, which adds a feeling of luxury without being irritating.

However, although it matches the elegant scent well, the jar isn’t really the most practical thing in terms of format. Admittedly, it comes with a small spatula, but spatulas almost always get lost in the bathroom cabinet. In the end, you just have to use your fingers to get cream out of the jar, which isn’t optimal from a hygiene perspective. It also makes it easy to use too much product, and given the price that’s not something you want to be doing.

But the format and price are the only disadvantages of Lancome Génifique Youth Activating Cream, which is otherwise a pure joy to use. The skin feels healthy, fantastically smooth and has a nice glow.

Skinrx Lab MadeCera Cream comes in a gorgeous pink tube that pulls off the trick of looking edgy and classy at the same time. This is a highly moisturising day cream, thanks to glycerine and ceramides.

It also contains niacinamide, which has become a popular skincare ingredient in recent years. Niacinamide helps to make pores less visible and supports skin elasticity. Anti-inflammatory Madecassoside (also known as cica or centella asiatica} is also included in the mix

Day cream that works well under makeup

Skinrx Lab MadeCera Cream has a consistency somewhere between cream and gel, so it feels cool and comfortable when you apply it to your skin. Your skin feels instantly hydrated but not greasy. It makes a wonderful makeup primer, providing a lovely base for your foundation. Just remember to give it some time to absorb before you start applying foundation.

Skinrx Lab MadeCera Cream contains ingredients that are known for their soothing properties, as well as ingredients that usually work well for a wide range of skin types. So this can be an excellent cream to try, even if you have sensitive skin. If you feel unsure, it also comes in a smaller tube with enough cream to test for at least a couple of weeks.

This is a day cream that’s good to use in summer and possibly even better to use during the winter months. With its effective barrier protection, Skinrx Lab MadeCera Cream makes your skin feels soft, supple and hydrated 24 hours a day.

Lixirskin says we don’t need different creams for day and night, and from a budget point of view, this statement is kind of appealing. So Lixirskin Universal Emulsion is intended to be used both during the daytime and at night. However, we actually find that a slightly richer cream would be preferable for the night.

Lixirskin Universal Emulsion is an easy-to-apply cream with a subtle scent of rose and ylang ylang, which also moisturises instantly. It provides SPF 10, which feels a bit on the low side, but is better than nothing at all.

This is a perfect product to use if you haven’t the patience for the 10-step Korean beauty routine that's become popular in recent years. Spending half an hour on skincare may be very pleasant, but most of us just don’t have that much time to spare. The kids need their breakfast or to be put to bed, you’ve got a TV series to watch, you’re in a rush to catch the train – you simply don’t always have the energy or time to think about a skincare routine that contains a dozen products.

Lixirskin's philosophy is as stripped down as the design of their packaging – a minimum number of products should give maximum results. So Lixirskin Universal Emulsion shouldn’t only replace a night cream, but also a serum. Of course it’s an individual thing to feel how well this cream does its job and whether you want to replace day cream, night cream and serum with just one product. But we found it worked really well as a combined day cream and serum.

The skin feels moisturised and supple. No itching, no tightness, just soft and happy skin. The hole in the tube should have been a little smaller, because it’s easy to squeeze out too much of the product. But beyond that, Lixirskin Universal Emulsion is a really nice day cream, which also looks great on the bathroom shelf.

Pixi Rose Ceramide Cream is a day cream, which despite being really rich, still has the consistency of a hybrid between cream and gel. It’s light and cooling on the skin, with a slight scent of rose. Products that smell of rose can sometimes be too strong, but here the scent is actually rather mild with a herbal feel.

The tube is made of aluminium, which makes it easy to squeeze out even the last drops. However, this does mean that once you've finished the cream you need to remember to discard the tube in the metal recycling bin, while the lid is plastic.

Although the cream is relatively rich, the skin still absorbs it relatively quickly. As the name suggests, this is a product that contains ceramides. Ceramides occur completely naturally in the skin and act as its building blocks. As we age, the levels of ceramides in our skin decrease, which means that, as a barrier, the skin becomes weaker. This, in turn, can cause the skin to become dry, amongst other things.

Pixi Rose Ceramide Cream is something in between a cream and a gel, so it's easy to apply and quickly absorbed. However, that also means it doesn’t feel quite as moisturising as several of the other creams in the test. That doesn’t necessarily have to be negative, though. For the summer, or if you simply have skin that isn’t too dry, this makes a really nice alternative.