Is your eye cream doing anything, and do you need one?

Eye cream is tricky. It’s one of the products I get the most messages about, generally from people who, like me, have noticed changes in the texture of that delicate area. So many eye creams are just a marketing device designed to make you pay to shut the gate after the horse has bolted. Many are worse, more like confusing the gate for the horse itself, and hitching a nosebag full of oats to it.

Here are the things eye cream cannot do for you: eliminate dark circles completely; reverse the ageing process; get rid of wrinkles or deep-set lines; or impact bags, loss of volume or hollowness. If you see this language being used, you are faced with what Irish Times columnist and author Emer McLysaght would call “a swizz”. Here are the things an eye cream can (in theory) do for you: hydrate and brighten your eye area; provide a temporary but minimal tightening effect; and improve fine lines and pigmentation (if the formula contains a retinoid). That’s really it. However, that’s actually quite a lot, and not to be sniffed at.

Here’s why – dehydrated skin around eyes makes everything look a bit more desperate. On those days when you catch yourself in a mirror and think you’ve suddenly and inexplicably aged like a US president in their first 100 days in office, your eye area is probably just dehydrated, dry, or both. When this happens, the skin looks dusty, crepey and more lined. Dark circles look darker. Bags are puffier and hollowness appears gaunter. There are many reasons why this can happen: a bad night’s sleep; facial retinol migrating to the eye area and causing peeling or irritation; the gods deliberately aligning to make your day more difficult.

For the issues that eye cream cannot tackle, there are effective aesthetic treatments like under-eye filler. These are worth looking into if you have the budget and the issue really bothers you. You would be shocked, however, how a quick application of a hydrating product can make a speedy difference.

A hydrated eye area supports concealer and corrector more smoothly (masking darkness), reflects light rather than sucking it in, and plumps out the fine lines and texture that seem so suddenly to have worsened.

I love hydrating eye gels for those mornings when it looks as though my soul is trying to escape my body through the eyes. In 10 minutes, they act like a glass of water to an eye dying of thirst. I follow with a good eye cream (save your retinol eye cream for evening) and everything looks altogether less haunted.

One important tip – use SPF in the eye area, especially if you are using retinol anywhere on your face. It sustains damage more quickly than the rest of your thicker and more robust facial skin. Without a separate SPF applied daily, eye cream is pointless. You’re just closing your own hand in the gate after the horse has bolted.