Is retinol suitable for my skin? This scanner from L’Oreal gave me an answer

If you’ve ever wondered what a great product Retinol Suitable for you, you are not alone. I spent hours researching skincare products on Reddit to see if I should be using it, and also to figure out which version is right for me. And then, when I use it, whether it works the way it should.

I’m one of the nine in 10 women who feel frustrated about skincare and can’t decide which products are best for me, according to cosmetics giant L’Oréal. There is “fun” in trying makeup, but trying skincare is “frustrating,” says Jeff Baloch, global general manager of augmented beauty and open innovation at the company.

“Part of the problem with this is the fact that we do a lot of testing without having the facts and science behind what our skin needs individually,” says Baloch.

Last year, I tried some of them L’Oreal advanced technical products at Vivatech in Paris, including Kiehl’s Derma-Reader, an imaging device that can scan your skin and make product recommendations. The Derma-Reader was great to try, but the technology only looks at the top surface level of your skin, and also only recommends Kiehl’s products as a treatment, which may not be the best for you.

in Consumer Electronics Show 2025 This year, the company unveiled a new device, the Cell bioprintingin cooperation with the Korean beauty technology company NanoEnTek. It can take reading from under our skin and reading biomarkers to tell us whether we should respond to certain ingredients — like retinol, for example — and then matching our skin with the right products.

Watch this: I gave L’Oreal my hives to find out what products are good for my skin (and you can too!)

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I was excited to try this technique, as I’ve experimented with retinol quite a bit over the years and couldn’t figure out if it was right for me. Retinol – a form of vitamin A – Affordable and available without a prescription, it promises to smooth fine lines and wrinkles, shrink enlarged pores, and treat acne. But it also has its downsides: namely, that your skin can take a long time to adapt to it, and in the meantime, it can become dry and flaky, or it can cause breakouts.

I’ve given up retinol twice during my ongoing acne clearing, often referred to as the retinol unsightly. But as L’Oréal’s photo tech told me, my skin is three years older than I actually am, and if I can tolerate retinol, the anti-aging effects might be worth it.

What Cell BioPrint revealed to me

My Cell BioPrint experience began with swabbing my skin several times with a sticker to capture skin cells. The label was placed in a cartridge, and it took about a minute to remove everything but the proteins from my skin. The liquid inside the cartridge containing the proteins was then squeezed from a dropper onto a test strip and fed into the Cell BioPrint benchtop machine, which took about 90 seconds to read my biomarkers.

The good news: L’Oréal’s tech told me that my skin had a high response to retinol, with a score of 75 out of 100. If I could tolerate that, I might be able to improve pores, oiliness, and skin barrier function, all of which L’Oréal identified as “needing attention.” Besides retinol, she gave me recommendations for SkinCeuticals’ salicylic acid serum and PCA IT Cosmetics zinc cream.

I really appreciated the scientific analysis of my skin, which made me determined to stick with retinol the next time I feel like quitting, even though I may need to start with a lower concentration than I used previously. I also liked that the service, designed to provide in-store skin analysis, was able to tap into L’Oréal’s extensive library of skincare products, rather than solutions from just one brand.

“Today, we have so many choices, and what we need to understand is, which are the right choices for our biology and our needs?” Baloch said. “A lot of products take time to work. So this means really seeing the unseen and taking the guessing game out and giving you the most accurate products.”