Fungal Acne Safe Moisturizers: We Scanned 26 Popular Creams

Almost every "fungal acne safe moisturiser" list online is someone's opinion, copied from someone else's opinion. For this one we did something more boring and more useful: we typed the published ingredient list of 26 popular moisturisers into our scanner and recorded what it found.

Some of the results will annoy you. A few of the creams people recommend most often for sensitive skin contain ingredients that Malassezia, the yeast behind fungal acne, can feed on.

What the scanner is looking for

Malassezia lives on skin and eats fats. It does this with enzymes that cut ester bonds, which is why the usual suspects are fatty acids and their esters: stearic, palmitic and oleic acid, glyceryl stearate, PEG stearates, polysorbates, sorbitan olivate, polyglyceryl isostearate, lecithin, and most plant oils and butters. We don't flag ethers such as ceteareth-20, or fatty alcohols such as cetyl and cetearyl alcohol, which don't release a fatty acid the yeast can use. There's a printable list on the ingredient cheat sheet.

This comes from lab biochemistry and what dermatologists see in practice, not from trials of each ingredient, so treat it as a strong screen rather than a guarantee.

The results

Passes are listed first. "Likely safe" means no known trigger, but something unrecognised looks like a fat or emulsifier, so check it yourself. The pores column is a separate question: it is about regular acne and blackheads, not fungal acne.

What passed

Six creams came back with no known trigger and nothing suspicious left unrecognised: Minimalist Vitamin B5 10%, Anua PDRN Hyaluronic Acid 100, Krave Beauty Oat So Simple, Malezia 5% Urea, Purito Oat-in Calming Gel Cream and SKIN1004 Centella Poremizing Light Gel Cream. Uriage Bariéderm-CICA and Geek & Gorgeous Hydration Station also passed, and Curel Intensive Moisture comes back as likely safe. CeraVe Moisturizing Cream also lands on "likely safe" in the table, but its pore-clog score is poor and some of its ingredients weren't recognised, so don't read that as a recommendation. Read its label yourself.

Look at what they have in common: they're mostly gel creams, or lean on simple emollients such as squalane, caprylic/capric triglyceride and dimethicone, rather than butters and ester-based emulsifiers. If you're picking blind, "gel cream" is a better bet than "rich cream". For more on one of the few oils people tolerate, see our squalane guide.

What failed, and why it matters

The popular failures are the interesting part:

• Cetaphil Moisturizing Cream and Daily Hydrating Lotion: glyceryl stearate and PEG-100 stearate, plus sunflower seed oil in the cream.
• Vanicream Daily Facial Moisturizer and Moisturizing Cream: glyceryl stearate and PEG-100 stearate, and polyglyceryl-4 isostearate in the facial one. Vanicream is very good for allergies and irritation, which is a different job.
• CeraVe Daily Moisturizing Lotion and PM Lotion: polyglyceryl-3 diisostearate, and polysorbate 20 in the daily lotion.
• Aveeno Calm + Restore, Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel, Beauty of Joseon Dynasty Cream: cetearyl olivate and sorbitan olivate, an emulsifier pair that turns up in lots of "light" creams.
• La Roche-Posay Cicaplast Baume B5+: shea butter and polyglyceryl-4 isostearate.
• The Ordinary Natural Moisturizing Factors + HA: oleic, palmitic and stearic acid.
• COSRX Snail 92, both SKIN1004 creams, Round Lab Soybean cream, Minimalist Ceramides: lecithin, olivate emulsifiers, plant oils or fatty-acid esters.

None of these are bad products. They are good barrier creams, and plenty of people with fungal acne use some of them without trouble. But if you've been treating fungal acne and it keeps coming back, the moisturiser is the first place to look.

Read this before you trust any list, including ours

• Coverage is partial. Our database knows a few hundred ingredients, and a long list can contain 40 or more. Where something isn't recognised, we say so rather than assume it's fine.
• Formulas change and differ by country. A US tube and an Indian tube of the same cream can have different ingredient lists. Always scan the label you are holding.
• Lists order by amount. A trigger in the last few places of the list is a trace amount, and some people react while others don't. Our score accounts for position, but your skin is the final test.
• It isn't medical advice. Fungal acne is easily mistaken for bacterial acne, and the treatment differs. If you aren't sure what you have, see a dermatologist.

How to check your own moisturiser

Paste the ingredient list into the pore-clog checker. It flags fungal-acne triggers and pore-clogging ingredients, and tells you where a flagged ingredient sits in the list. You can also browse all the products we've scanned in the product finder, filtered to "no fungal-acne triggers found". The full picture of what to avoid is on the fungal acne safe guide.