Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foam Review and Ingredients Analysis

Etude House has released their Each Month Cleansing Foam, which consists of a collection of 12 (yes, twelve!) different types of foaming face cleansers, each with different plant extracts, for different skin types. You can buy a few, or buy just your favourite, and rotate them around as the weather changes, and your skin's needs change.

Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foam

For this review I tried 5 out of the 12 Each Month Foaming Cleansers: the Number 1 Deep Moisturizing Avocado and Butter, Number 2 Firming Pomegranate and Berry, Number 3 Tone Clarifying Apple and Tomato, Number 5 Fresh Clean Green Tea, and Number 7 Soothing Relief Aloe Vera. These are so typically Etude House, in the best way possible - they have the cutest packaging ever, lots of choices, and they really smell great! The smell of each cleanser actually matches the products - for example, Number 3 Tone Clarifying Apple and Tomato actually smells of apples to me, while the Number 5 Fresh Clean Green Tea has a nice fresh scent. Little details like that really make the cleansing experience quite pleasant.

There are three types of finish - your cleanser can either be in the form of a "moist pearl cream", "moist gel", or "fresh cream". The different types are spread out across the 12 cleansers, but generally, the types meant for more dry skin would come in the form of the gel, while those meant for oilier skins will come in the form of a fresh cream. But regardless of whichever types of cleanser you pick, all of them lather well, and rinse off easily. Let me demonstrate each of the cleanser types below.

Below, is an example of a "moist gel". The cleanser I'm using for this is Number 2, Firming Pomegranate and Berry. As you can see, it is a gel form that is clear. I found this to be the least drying out of all the cleansers. Perhaps because my skin is sensitive, so I found that this didn't have the "squeaky clean" feel that the other two types had. I know some people like that squeaky clean feeling, but for me, I prefer not to have it, so this was my favourite type out of all the three.


Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foam: The "moist gel" cleanser type.
Below is the "moist pearl cream" cleanser. The one I used as an example for this is Number 3 Tone Clarifying Tomato and Apple. This is a pearly-looking creamy cleanser, that lathers well and rinses off easily. It left my skin feeling squeaky clean, but not as much as the "fresh cream" type cleanser. I found this to be alright, and I think it might benefit girls with combination or oily skin.


Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foam: The "moist pearl cream" cleanser type.
Lastly, below is the "fresh cream" cleanser. The example I used for this was Number 5 Fresh and Clean Green Tea. I think this is probably my least favourite type of cleanser, as it left my skin feeling squeaky clean, but more so than the "moist pearl cream" types of cleanser. I found this, honestly, to be a tad on the drying side, so this is probably best left to girls with oily skins.


Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foam: The "fresh cream" cleanser type.
So that rounds off my experience with the cleansers. And, because I like to go a bit more in-depth into the ingredients, here are the ingredients for all 5 of the Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foams that I have:


Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foam is formulated to give you a clean wash, while including some humectants and emollients so your skin is not dried out.
From here you can see that while there are differences between the various types of cleansers, the main ingredients are fairly similar. Almost all of the cleansers have ingredients like Glycerin, a humectant that we all know and love, Sorbitol, a humectant and slip agent similar to Glycerin in function, Stearic Acid, which is a fatty acid used as an emollient and also a thickener (it's also a major component of natural butters, like cocoa and shea butter), and Myristic Acid, also a fatty acid (this one is found in animal and vegetable fats, like dairy fat, coconut and palm oil), but here, it serves as the surfactant, so it is the ingredient that cleanses the skin and produces the foam you see. These four ingredients form the core of the cleanser.

Then there are ancillary things that vary with the exact formula you buy, like Potassium Hydroxide, which is a pH adjuster, as well as a variety of emulsifiers such as PEG-32, PEG-100 and PEG-400, and a variety of polymers like Acrylates C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, depending on the formula, which thicken the formula, or otherwise add little tweaks to it. Of course, there are also the plant-based extracts - you'll see also that Etude House has very helpfully included how much of the plant extracts are actually in the final product, and the variance is quite large - the concentration of plant extracts range anywhere from 0.075ppm (ppm is parts per million, so 1ppm = 0.0001%) to 1000ppm, and in cases of fairly high concentrations of plant extracts, the notation changes to mg (e.g. 9.9mg of plant extract). These concentrations seem to be pretty typical of the levels of plant extracts in skincare products in general, so if it seems low to you, just remember - this is typical, it's just that Etude House is just more honest in disclosing the amount of plant extracts they use. By and large, even brands that aggressively advertise themselves as being "natural" use plant extracts in similar concentrations, too, but I suppose they figured that aggressively positioning themselves as being natural sells better than being more honest.

So all in all you get a product that is 1) formulated to give you a clean wash, 2) has some moisturizing ingredients, like humectants and emollients, and 3) has varying levels of plant extracts. For those who are concerned about SLS and SLES, you'll be happy to note that this product doesn't have either, since the main surfactant is Myristic Acid.


Etude House Each Month Cleansing Foam: Your choice of Cleansing Foam will depend on your own individual skin needs.
As you can see, the squeaky-clean feeling I felt when using some of the Every Month Cleansing Foam was primarily due to the relatively higher concentrations of Myristic Acid in those formulas. So depending on your skin type, if you have drier skin or more sensitive skin, then you may want to look for a formula that's less dry, like the "moist gel" formulas. A good clue if you're looking at the ingredients list would be to see how far up the ingredients list Myristic Acid is - the earlier it is listed, the higher concentrations of the ingredient you'll get. So your choice of cleanser would depend on your own skin needs (do you have dry skin? Combination skin? Really oily skin?), your cleanser preferences (do you like your cleanser in a gel, or creamy?), and how keen you are on the plant extracts - fortunately, Etude House actually is pretty honest in disclosing the percentage of plant extracts, so if you want a cleanser that has a greater concentration of the plant extracts, you can always read the label to find one. Among the samples I have, the ones with the fairly high concentrations of plant extracts are Number 7 Soothing Relief Aloe Vera, and Number 2 Firming Pomegranate and Berry. To be honest, I'm not hung up over whether my skincare has plant extracts or not, as long as it is properly formulated, but if you are, now you know where to look!

With all that said and done, what do I think of the Each Month Cleansing Foam? Well, at $6 a tube, and with 100ml of product in each tube, this is a really great deal, and superb value for money. The positives are that the product is sensibly formulated and packaged, and little details like the nice scents really make my day when I use the cleansers. The downside? Based on the samples I got, it seems like the formulations tend to be geared towards oilier skins, so if you have extremely dry skin, you might have some issue looking for a suitable formula. But then again, I only have 5 out of the 12, and it seems like some of the ones I didn't test (like Numbers 9 to 12, which feature names like Red Wine and Walnut) seem more geared towards dry skin. If you have very dry skin, it might be good to find one of the "moist gel" formulas, as that in my experience is the least stripping of the cleansers. On the whole, I think these are great if you're looking for an effective cleanser that is value-for-money, and still pleasant to use. After all, you can't go wrong with a nice, basic cleanser with really pretty scents.

Recommended?	Formulation	Packaging	Ease of Use	Effectiveness
Yes, if you like stronger cleansers	7/10	8/10	8/10	8/10
The Bottom Line: While this line of value-for-money cleansers generally offers strong cleansing properties, there are some formulas that are gentler to drier skin. With 12 options, there's probably one that will suit your preferences.

(Product was sent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)