Banila Co It Radiant Brightening Essence Review or: Her Royal Highness among the Brightening Essences.

How have you all been doing lately? Since the summer vacation time in Germany started, all hell broke loose at my workplace (which is at the main station of the German capital). We are currently understaffed, overworked, half of us is at vacation and the other half is sick. Guess which half I am. Today it’s my day off luckily and I spend it with big mugs of tea and free oreo cookies from work. (there was a promo where people gave away free oreos and they gifted our store an amount that will probably last us a lifetime, a whole fridge is full with them!! Not that I am complaining.)

Putting work aside, I’ve been teasing you guys about a certain product that I fell in love with right away and today is the finally the day to spill all those detailed skincare beans! I am speaking of course of the absolutely graceful looking Banila Co It Radiant Brightening Essence.

Yes, the 10 White Flower Complex is already an incentive to buy this thing but honestly? I’d lie if I didn’t say that the packaging had me on its side the first time I lay eyes on this beauty. Luckily, the peeps over at ibuybeauti were so nice to grant me some store credit so I could pick some items that were interesting me for quite a while and here we are! Not only does it look insanely pretty among my skincare stash but it also makes me feel like a queen whenever I reach for it (and that is a lot.)

From Banila Co:

Whitening functional essence for tidying up skin’s tone, providing moisture and brightening effect. Fermented ingredients used for intensive moisturizing, decent melanin care to whiten up the skin. The whitening line for clean and bright skin enhances skin transparency with clean water, making sleek and soft skin texture.

*10 White Flower Complex: 10 different natural flower ingredients for brightening

*LipoLight Photograhic:  Capsulized particles fill in wrinkles, pores and blemishes

Capacity: 50ml

First Things First.

I reached out to the seller that I got this from (ibuybeauti) prior to this review because the essence came in a different packaging than displayed on their website. In fact, what I received seems to be the perfect marriage of the It Radiant Brightening Essence inside the gorgeous packaging of the It Radiant Brightening Oil (I even checked multiple times if I really received the essence instead of the oil):

Now, I absolutely don’t mind the gorgeous packaging at all. I am just not sure if this is a new design? Did Banila Co change their essence packaging to this from the oil? You can see that the container is similar to the oil but not the same; it is a lot taller and it also holds 20ml more product than the oil. Sadly, I didn’t receive any answer from ibuybeauti in the past three days so I chose to post the review nonetheless and update this post when I hear back from them. Since I wasn’t exactly sure which product I received I translated the Korean ingredients that came with the product and upon further research yes, it is indeed the essence and not the oil. However, it does seem as if they reformulated the product? Because the ingredients printed on my packaging was slightly different from what I found on the Hwahae app; Dimethicones for example were not on the original ingredients list. Very confusing stuff. I just thought it is very much relevant as it could lead to major confusion if any of you chose to buy this and receive different packaging than I did so I’d very much like a definite answer. Will keep you posted as soon as I hear back.

Despite alcohol being very high on the ingredient list I am very pleased to see that this product does contain a good amount of flower and root extracts as they advertised. If you are sensitive to either alcohol, silicones or castor oil, I would advise to look elsewhere for a brightening essence. I personally fare well with these ingredients so I don’t mind them too much – I would have preferred the (old?) formula without the silicones though. They do make the skin feel nice but despite that effect, I don’t really need them in my skincare, but that would be the only thing I’d have to pick on.

The essence comes in this gorgeous glass container plus dropper. It is heavy and therefore not recommended for travelling around and one of the reasons why I didn’t get this when I was still living in Korea – coming back home was already as hard as it gets. While the chromatic like is extremely appealing, I would prefer if I could somehow get a better guess of how much is left, even if it was just a gap in the back to see how much is left. I’m not too mad though because every application of this feels as if I’m the Khaleesi of Germany.

Here you can see the capsulized particles that are in the formula. You don’t notice them when you use the product as they melt together upon touch.

The texture is a light gel-like formula that literally melts into the skin within a few seconds and dries completely matte – no residue or oily feeling, I love it! It is extremely lightweight and I don’t own any skincare item with a similar texture, to be honest. Due to the formula you only need a tiny amount (less than half a dropper) to cover your whole face which makes the 50ml last a lot longer than I initially expected. Also, the scent of this is amazing. Although quite flowery, it smells nothing like those heavy flowery perfume scents that a lot of products have (Skinfood for example). It is a very delicate scent and if there was a perfume like this I would instantly buy it. I wish I could smell of it every. single day.

The light is a bit lighter in the after than the before due to my apartment being a total dick when I try to take any before and after pictures (I tried to adjust them but that only made it worse) but I think you can definitely tell that I had some nice fading of hyperpigmentation in the past weeks.

Please note that I am also using AHAs, BHAs, Vitamin C and sunscreen daily to make my hyperpigmentation fade. You will very likely have no success in fading hyperpigmentation if you toss the sunscreen – if you’re clueless as to what to start, have a look at my battle of the sunscreen post for general sunscreen knowledge as well as a break down of 5 popular choices.

That being said, I just adore this essence. The texture is amazing and great for layering several steps, it smells divine and I think it does help with my hyperpigmentation. Of course, this is no miracle product that will fade your problem areas by the speed of light (patience is, as always, the key to success.) but I think this is a nice supporter for the actives that I am using to boost the fading process. I am definitely already sad about the fact that I have to run out somewhen, but this is a very strong contestant to actually be one of those items I just have to repurchase, I do enjoy using it that much (and I barely repurchase any products except for my beloved COSRX A-Sol, snail essence and a good 5.5 pH-level cleanser. 

In fact, I am thinking if I should splurge at the Banila Co Miss Flower & Mr Honey Essence Oil since one of my bloggers in crime Fiftyshadesofsnail loved it so much (However, it is 30ml compared to the 50ml I’m getting here so I might just stick to my waters……might. I still have an amazon gift card left over from my birthday earlier this month…)

If you want to get some luxurious essence that makes you feel like a queen at every application, the best deal for my fellow European peeps would be to get it for 26.93$ at Ibuybeauti or 31.20$ at Koreadepart, but if you live in the US, Amazon could have cheaper options. Sadly, my local Amazon didn’t stock it as didn’t Memebox :/

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Shopping by those links means that colorcrrush receives a small commission, which helps to support this blog – see my full disclosure and review policy here.

Have any questions left? Feel free to let me know in the comments! 🙂 Also, if you have a favorite brightening essence that I should try next, I am always happy over getting recommendations.

Lots of love,

Sam