Skincare Ingredients for dark marks

It can be a pain looking for products to lighten hyperpigmentation (dark spots). While there may be many products that claim to lighten your dark marks, not all have safe ingredients to help you do this.

You want to look out for products with bleaching agents such as hydroquinone, which is a common recomendation for dark marks. Bleaching agents can cause serious side effects.

We have listed below skin brightening alternatives, derived from natural ingredients.

Safest products for lightening pigmentation

Kojic Acid

Kojic acid is made from fermented soy sauce, and rice wine. 

It is great for lightening pigmentation and dark spots as it prevents the formation of tyrosine, which is an amino acid that’s needed to produce melanin. 

Retinol

You might see retinol appear in an ingredients list as retinyl acetate. Retinol is a man-made form of vitamin A.  Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin that is good for healthy skin and often works as an antioxidant.

Retinol is proven to improve mottled pigmentation, fine lines and wrinkles, skin texture, skin tone and color, and your skin's hydration levels. 

L-Ascorbic Acid

This is the only form of vitamin C that you should look for in your skin care products. Many skin care products today claim to have vitamin C derivatives as an ingredient (magnesium ascorbyl phosphate or ascorbyl palmitate, for example), but L-ascorbic acid is the only useful form of vitamin C in skin care products.

Vitamin C is the only antioxidant proven to brighten skin, stimulate collagen, minimise fine lines, scars, and wrinkles.

You can find Vitamin C from fruits and plants such as Tumeric, blackcurrants
citrus fruits – oranges, limes and lemons, berries, kiwifruit, tomatoes, broccoli. sprouts, red, yellow and green capsicum and many more.

Now that you understand what ingredients are in your products, we hope you make smarter decisions when choosing products to help fade your dark marks.