Best Natural Face Moisturizers for Healthy Skin: Reviews and Buyer’s Guide

If you want dewy skin without problematic ingredients, pay attention! We’re talking natural face moisturizers and giving you a list of our top picks and favorites ahead.

Moisturizer is something you should be smearing on every day. Using a product that often means you should consider the benefits of going natural.

Buzzy words like natural and organic have become mainstream in skincare. Still, there’s a lot of consumer confusion over what it all means and if they’re better for your skin. Skincare brands use words like natural and organic, but what do they mean?

Are you looking to add a natural face moisturizer into your skincare line-up? Or just looking to change up the one in your current rotation? We break down the best natural face moisturizers you can use below!

Best Natural Face Moisturizers

Best Natural Face Moisturizer Overall: Herbal Dynamics Beauty Prickly Pear and Vitamin C Daily Face Moisturizer

Hydrate and balance your skin with this formula featuring active ingredients like prickly pear seed oil and hyaluronic acid. This non-comedogenic, non-greasy, natural face moisturizer also features vitamin C and resurrection plants to promote youthful, radiant skin.

Extracts of watermelon and seaweed rejuvenate and soften while working to protect your skin from environmental stressors. The moisturizer is also rich in antioxidants, important to healthy cellular renewal.

Best Vegan Natural Face Moisturizer: Drunk Elephant Lala Retro Whipped Cream

This cruelty-free, vegan natural facial moisturizing cream is infused with six rare African oils and a plant ceramide complex to provide replenishing barrier support by reinforcing skin’s acid mantle and defending against the effects of everyday stressors. In addition, antioxidant-rich fermented green tea helps combat the signs of aging. Loaded with omega acids, the cream helps skin retain its long-lasting moisture, forming a protective layer that allows it to function at its optimal level.

Best Natural Face Moisturizer with Antioxidants: Herbal Dynamics Revitage Antioxidant Transforming Night Cream

This is a favorite of skincare and beauty expert Candice Cooper, who says, “For so long we were pretty clueless about what went into our skincare. But we’ve since become educated on what nourishes the skin, rather than hiding blemishes and imperfections. Revitage Night Cream uses powerful antioxidants like watermelon extract to fight the early signs of aging, and chamomile to soothe inflammation and even out skin tone and texture. Green tea and squalane reinforce water retention and protect your skin from environmental stressors for radiant skin. It’s so important to naturally treat these issues instead of covering them up with mineral oil and fillers.”

Best Natural Face Moisturizer for the Whole Body: Weleda Skin Food Original Ultra-Rich Cream

Skin Food is a natural face moisturizer that can also be used on dry skin for the elbows, hands, and feet. This multi-tasking moisturizer features extracts of gentle viola tricolor, calendula, and chamomile, in a rich, thick base of oils and beeswax to hydrate the skin and give you a healthy-looking glow.

Best Natural Face Moisturizer for Sensitive Skin: Osea Blemish Balm

This soothing, anti-inflammatory, natural face moisturizer calms redness while effectively targeting blemishes and future breakouts. Three varieties of organic seaweed combined with tea tree, juniper, and thyme minimize shine and calm breakouts and blemishes. This is the ideal formula for people with problems or sensitive skin or those who cannot tolerate heavy moisturizers.

Best Natural Face Moisturizer for Dry Skin: Ursa Major Golden Hour Recovery Cream

This natural face moisturizer delivers a dose of heavy hydration that makes your skin look fresher and healthier right away. This rich yet fast-absorbing face cream provides deep hydration and nourishment to soothe and replenish tired skin. Use it as a daily moisturizer, to fight wrinkles while you sleep, or anytime your skin needs some extra love.

Best Natural Face Moisturizer for Fine Lines: Biossance Squalane + Omega Repair Cream

This whipped texture moisturizer is rich in lipids, fatty acids, and ceramides. These ingredients hydrate, plump, and smooth skin for a radiant look. The cream also improves the appearance of fine lines for a healthy-looking complexion.

Natural Face Moisturizer Honorable Mentions

Herbivore Natural Pink Cloud Rosewater Moisture Creme 

Pink Cloud hydrates, visibly plumps, and smooths skin, leaving it with a glowing, slightly dewy finish. This natural face moisturizer includes rosewater, aloe water, and white tea extract to moisturize, soothe, and reduce the appearance of redness.

Little Barn Apothecary Borage + Botanicals Hydration Cream Concentrate

This natural face moisturizer can be used as a traditional moisturizer or as a night treatment. It has aloe vera, rose, bilberry, orange, lemon, cranberry, willow bark, and tea tree, along with squalene and borage oil to moisturize. The formula is deeply moisturizing and skin-smoothing.

Youth to the People Superfood Hyaluronic Acid Moisturizer

This natural face moisturizer’s fluffy, light-as-air texture is super hydrating. Featuring a moisturizing combo of natural and organic superfoods, like kale, spinach, green tea, and hyaluronic acid. These ingredients create a moisturizer that instantly restores, balances, and conditions.

Naturally Serious Mineral Sun Defense Moisturizer

The sheer, tinted natural face moisturizer is infused with humectants like squalane, vitamin E, and argan oil along with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide to shield your skin from harmful UVA and UVB rays.

Honest Beauty Organic Face & Beauty Oil

Made with certified organic ingredients, this lightweight, natural face moisturizer is perfect for dull, dry skin. Its star ingredient is avocado oil for repairing dehydrated skin, and the formula is non-greasy and non-pore-clogging.

Juice Beauty Antioxidant Moisturizer

Rejuvenate your skin with hyaluronic acid and powerful antioxidants that nourish, plump, and leave your skin feeling silky smooth. This lightweight natural face moisturizer hydrates and reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving your skin feeling smooth and looking ageless.

One Love Organics Skin Savior Balm

In addition to being a natural face moisturizer, this antioxidant-rich multi-tasking formula made from shea butter, acids, and coconut oil is the perfect solution for just about any of your skincare woes. This moisturizer cleans and illuminates your skin and gently removes dirt without stripping additional moisture from your skin.

Burt’s Bees Natural Acne Solutions Daily Moisturizing Lotion

This Amazon favorite is designed for acne-prone skin. It’s a lightweight organic moisturizer that helps prevent and protect against blemishes and breakouts. Formulated with antimicrobial salicylic acid, this natural face lotion is crafted for oily skin and safe for daily use.

Block Island Natural Face Moisturizer SPF 30

This face moisturizer combines organic and natural ingredients like green tea antioxidants, shea butter, and pomegranate in an invisible SPF 30 broad-spectrum protection that nourishes the skin and prevents wrinkles, early skin aging, and sun damage.

Olivella All Natural Virgin Olive Oil Moisturizer

This is another Amazon favorite that uses natural ingredients like olive oil to moisturize and rejuvenate the skin while retaining its natural humidity. This anti-aging moisturizer replenishes and revitalizes your skin and helps the skin retain its natural humidity.

100% Pure Restorative Extra Riche Créme

This vegan, organic, natural face moisturizer features sea buckthorn, shea butter, and jojoba oil for normal to dry skin that glows. As it’s both vegan and organic, you can be sure that no plants, animals, or people were harmed in the making of this beloved moisturizer.

Awake Human Organic Face Moisturizer

This unscented natural face cream is for every skin type. Its formula blends aloe, jojoba, green tea, shea butter, and sweet almond.

Hydrated Skin is Healthy Skin

A strong, healthy, hydrated epidermal barrier is essential for healthy skin. The epidermal barrier is made up of the top three layers of your skin. It acts as a brick wall to stop things like bacteria and environmental stressors from getting into your skin. The barrier also keeps moisture from escaping.

Our epidermal barriers are up against damage like UV rays, pollution, and weather conditions every day. Without a strong wall, the skin becomes dry, irritated, and more susceptible to breakouts and damage. A moisturizer seals to support and protects your skin from the elements.

The Case for Natural Skincare

Why would you choose a natural skincare brand over a conventional one? To limit your exposure to chemicals that are potentially hazardous to your health and the planet.

Your skin absorbs much of what you put on it, and there’s mounting evidence that ingredients like parabens, phthalates, and synthetic fragrance are causing problems, from endocrine disruption to allergic reactions to chemical sensitivity. By choosing natural skincare products, you filter out potential toxins and irritants absorbed by your skin.

These aren’t the only reasons to go natural. One of the main benefits of natural ingredients is that they can be more sustainable and generally better for the environment when responsibly sourced.

What can a natural facial moisturizer do for your skin?

Along with regular cleansing and wearing SPF, moisturizing is one of the essential steps of any skincare routine. Your skin needs hydration to function properly.

Natural face moisturizers made from plant actives like hyaluronic acid and squalane will nourish and hydrate your thirsty skin. However, the best moisturizers will also include ingredients like retinol to fight free radical damage and SPF to protect skin from future damage and help maintain the integrity of your skin’s epidermal barrier function.

Who can benefit from using natural face moisturizer?

Just like the rest of your body’s organs require you to drink water to stay hydrated, so does your skin. Everyone can benefit from using a natural face moisturizer, even those with oily skin.

Many people confuse oil with hydration, but moisturizer’s role is to improve the skin’s hydration by adding water to it. Just because your skin has a lot of oil doesn’t mean it has enough water, and a lack of hydration can trigger a host of skin problems.

Things like weather, pollution, and aging can disrupt the skin’s integrity, causing it to spring tiny leaks. The skin can then no longer act as a barrier to water loss, and it becomes dry.

Using a natural face moisturizer is especially important if you use drying acne treatments such as retinoids and benzoyl peroxide. Acne medications can quickly take your skin from oily to uncomfortably dry and peeling. Adding a natural face moisturizer into your daily skincare routine is the best defense against these side effects.

What Do Natural and Organic Mean in Skincare?

The natural skincare movement has gone mainstream, and buzzwords like vegan, natural, and organic are on product labels everywhere. But what do these words mean?

There are no governmental or beauty industry standards when it comes to defining:

• Organic
• Natural
• Green
• Clean
• Botanically-derived
• Non-toxic

The word organic is somewhat regulated, not by the FDA, but by the USDA, which uses it to confirm that ingredients in skincare products are free of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, and other inorganic substances.

Natural and organic skincare is generally understood to mean that they’re:

• Untouched by pesticides, GMOs, or synthetic chemicals
• Made without any artificial ingredients or fragrances

A good rule of thumb when choosing natural skincare products is to read the label. If you can’t pronounce the first five ingredients, it’s probably not good for you.

List of Harmful Ingredients to Avoid in Skincare

• Parabens, triclosan, and phthalates may cause endocrine disruption.
• Sulfates (especially sodium lauryl/laureth sulfate, or “SLS”) due to skin irritation. (Many studies like this one use SLS as a baseline skin irritant.)
• Petrochemicals are known for pore-clogging.
• Ethoxylated ingredients (anything that ends in “eth,” phenoxyethanol, polysorbates) can contain 1,4-dioxane contamination and may be a carcinogen.
• Synthetic color is often derived from petroleum or coal tar, which has a possible link to behavioral issues.
• Synthetic fragrance is highly allergenic and often contains petrochemicals and phthalates.

Natural Skincare Ingredients

Some of the hardest-working, scientifically proven ingredients in skincare products are natural.

• Rose-hip oil and niacinamide have powerful skin-smoothing, anti-wrinkle, and anti hyperpigmentation qualities. Green tea is a strong antioxidant that is preventive against aging.
• For redness and inflammation, ingredients like argan oil, chamomile, and aloe work wonders. Blue tansy is a superstar for calming irritation.
• Rice and cotton extracts provide major hydration. Plant oils like rosemary and rose boast antioxidants. These combat the stressors that cause dry and parched skin.
• Acne-prone skin has a foe in salicylic acid.
• Address hyperpigmentation with brightening mulberry extract or licorice. Vitamins A and C are also effective, and retinoids provide a double hit of both.

How to Moisturize Your Face the Right Way

Taking care of your face isn’t as simple as squeezing face moisturizer into your hands and slathering it on your cheeks. You want to always test a new product first, and once you’ve determined it’s right for you, you need to wash your face before applying your products in a certain order.

1. Patch test before using any new facial moisturizer.

In addition to making sure you like how the product smells and feels, patch testing helps ensure that it doesn’t lead to clogged pores, allergic reactions, or breakouts. Apply a small amount of natural face moisturizer on your inner arm because it’s where your skin is thinner. Wait a day or two to see if you react badly to it.

2. Always wash your face before using a natural face moisturizer.

It’s important to start with a face wash anytime you plan to apply your face moisturizer:

• Wet your face, and use circular motions to massage a gentle cleanser into your skin.
• Aim for at least 30 seconds of massaging to let the cleanser’s ingredients do their job, paying attention to your T-zone.
• Rinse with lukewarm or cool water.

If you’re looking to decrease redness, splash your face with cold water to constrict blood vessels. Gently pat skin dry with a clean, dry face towel.

3. Apply your natural face moisturizer to clean, slightly damp skin.

You should always apply moisturizer to clean skin, right after washing and before your skin is totally dry. Moisturizers are most effective if you use them while your skin is still damp. Wet skin absorbs the product more readily. The moisturizer can also lock in that hydration.

4. Applying your natural face moisturizer.

Squeeze a little more than a pea-sized amount of natural face moisturizer into your palm and warm it up in your hands. Massage it into your cheeks using gentle circular motions. Then massage into your forehead and rest of your face, using light, gentle upward strokes, especially on the neck.

5. Consider a facial oil on top of your natural face moisturizer.

Facial oils are great occlusives. They don’t draw water into the skin as moisturizers do, but they can help seal it in your skin.

However, those with oily or acne-prone skin should be cautious. Using facial oils can clog pores.

6. Layer your products in the right order.

The order in which you use your products can affect how well they work. Start with the lightest products and work your way up to the thickest product. For example, wash, treat, moisturize. If you use multiple treatments or serums, again, layer them from thinnest to thickest.

Our recommended order for a face skincare routine is as follows:

1. Cleanser
2. Exfoliant
3. Toner
4. Spot treatments for breakouts
5. Serum
6. Eye cream
7. Moisturizer
8. Sunscreen

7. Consider using a different natural face moisturizer at night

You can absolutely use your daytime moisturizer at night, even if it has SPF. It won’t hurt and it’s better than nothing. But there are some good reasons to consider using a night cream.

Your skin is in peak repair state at night; cell turnover and regeneration occur when your body is in REM sleep. Night creams are often packed with ingredients like peptides and retinol that can help soothe and repair the skin.

Other Skincare Tips

A good face moisturizer is a key part to having healthy skin, but it’s not the only important step to take. You should also protect your face from the sun, take care of acne as needed, and make sure you’re sleeping on a clean pillow.

Don’t forget to apply sunscreen when going outside

Some natural face moisturizers have SPF numbers, but many do not. Before you venture outside, you should apply a coat of sunscreen to your face, regardless of the weather. You may even benefit from wearing sunscreen indoors because glass windows do not block UV rays completely.

Don’t be afraid to boost your skincare routine with a face mask

A face mask can be better than applying a product to your skin. The mask keeps the air around you from absorbing part of the product and mitigating its effects. The best face masks can perk up dry or aging skin.

Treat acne as it arises

The best acne treatments for you will depend on whether you’re dealing with inflammatory or noninflammatory acne. Inflammatory acne is accompanied by swelling and is the tougher type to treat because it’s rooted deeper in the skin.

Rid yourself of dark eye circles with targeted treatments

Dark circles under your eyes aren’t exactly a sign of a major health problem. They can, though, keep you from looking and feeling your best. You can apply cold compresses, soaked tea bags, or cucumber slices against any bags to make them go away.

To make sure the dark circles stay away, stick to a set sleep schedule and follow a skin-healthy diet.

Wash your pillowcase and pillow frequently

Your pillowcase and pillow absorb your sweat, facial oils, and other body cast-offs. Even the best pillows can cause acne breakouts if you don’t wash them often enough.

You should change your pillowcase, along with your other bedding, at least once a week. Some experts even recommend switching out pillowcases as often as every three days.

How to wash your pillow will depend on what fill it has. Many down, feather, and shredded foam pillows are machine washable and should be cleaned every few months. You can also air out your pillow every once in a while to keep it smelling fresh and save on the number of times you need to wash it.

However, not all pillows are machine-washable. For example, many memory foam pillows must be lightly washed in a bathtub. If your pillow is not machine washable, you can still freshen it up with a quick coat of baking soda and thorough vacuuming.

How to Choose the Right Natural Face Moisturizer for Your Skin Type

The key to choosing a natural face moisturizer is knowing which ingredients will best address your skin’s needs. A moisturizer should contain a combination of hydrating ingredients to draw water into the skin and more occlusive ingredients to seal in the hydration. Still, depending on your skin type, you may need to look for specific ingredients.

Acne-Prone Skin

Are you breakout-prone, with skin that tends to be on the oilier side? Choose a lightweight natural face moisturizer with hyaluronic acid.

Dry Skin

Is your skin extra-thirsty? Look out for ingredients like shea butter, ceramides, and squalane.

Oily Skin

If your skin is truly oily, you should use a natural face moisturizer in serum or gel form. Look for one with pure hyaluronic acid to lock in water without any greasiness.

Combination Skin

Use a lightweight moisturizer only on those areas that need it. Apply it to the cheeks and jawline, and avoid the areas that tend to be greasy, like the nose and forehead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Vaseline good for the face?

Vaseline doesn’t add any moisture to your face. Rather, it locks in the moisture on your face, preventing it from evaporating. Some people also use it as a hypoallergenic way to prevent chapped lips.

However, Vaseline can increase the chances of an acne breakout. You also shouldn’t apply Vaseline immediately to sunburns, whether they’re on your face or body. Vaseline can lock in the sun’s heat and cause further damage.

What is the best homemade moisturizer?

If you have dry skin and no store-bought moisturizer on hand, you can try applying:

• Honey
• Coconut oil
• Sunflower seed oil
• Powdered oatmeal in a bath

We suggest against using olive oil, which can irritate the skin. Still, others have used it with no ill effects. You can also try drinking a glass of milk to keep your skin hydrated.

Is coconut oil a good moisturizer?

Coconut oil can help your skin stay hydrated. However, that’s partly because its oils help lock in moisture on your skin, rather than because of added moisture. If you use coconut oil in your skincare routine, try applying it after a moisturizer for more effectiveness.

Should you moisturize every day?

Many skincare experts recommend moisturizing your skin as often as twice a day. Applying moisturizer in the morning will ensure your skin feels fresh and renewed throughout the day. Putting it on a night keeps your skin hydrated while you sleep.

Which foods hydrate your skin?

If you want to make sure you’re eating a skin-healthy diet, try eating:

• Yellow and orange vegetables and fruits, such as carrots
• Green leafy vegetables
• Tomatoes
• Berries
• Nuts
• Beans and lentils
• Fatty fish such as salmon and mackerel

Avoid consuming large amounts of processed or refined sugars and unhealthy fats.

Don’t Forget Why You Should Use a Natural Face Moisturizer

If a product stays on your skin all day, you should care about its ingredients and go natural. Natural skincare products are all about being as pure as possible.

The best natural products will have:

• Minimal ingredients, most of them botanically-based
• Few preservatives, synthetics, or added dyes and fragrances

With more options than ever, it’s not hard to find a natural version of your favorite face moisturizer.

We could go on and on about the importance of moisturizing your skin with a natural face moisturizer. The bottom line is you don’t have to sacrifice results, texture, or your health when you use one.

Choose a plant-based formula without harmful ingredients to heal and hydrate your skin. And expect your healthiest, happiest complexion yet!