Korean skincare has seen a massive rise in popularity over the last few years. The first time I heard about Korean skincare & beauty products was when I was doing a 3 month stint in Taipei and one of my friends was looking for BB Cream. Until then I had no idea that there exists a country full of people that are obsessed with skincare and companies that create skincare product & design innovations from texture changing face washes to under-eye cream in panda shaped packaging. This knowledge was the turning point of my current skincare obsession.

I went back to the US and raved about Korean skincare to whoever would listen to me. Then in 2013 I moved to India and tried convincing people that Korea is where the real skincare game is at. No one really believed me though mainly because, at the time, it was so difficult to get your hands on Korean skincare & makeup. Fast forward to 2018 and K-Beauty is everywhere. People now recognize K-beauty companies for the innovative, effective and affordable products. Brands like Innisfree, The Face Shop and Laneige are widely known now.

My K-beauty obsession is also now stronger than ever. I’ve taken this obsession beyond my vanity shelf to Instagram & blog posts. I also send out weekly newsletters of the biggest beauty news that week. I was researching this week’s newsletter content when I decided to look at the progressive of K-beauty popularity over time. I turned to Google Trends for the data.

Here’s what I found:

1. Overview

   • Searches worldwide about Korean skincare have exponentially grown since 2011 with the highest number of searches in Feb 2018.
   • In the last 12 months the #6 related query when people search ‘skincare’ in Google is ‘Korean skincare’
   • Korean skincare searches are well below searches related to ‘Fenty’. Pop culture status trumps everything.

2. Biggest trends & products to look out for

   • Glass skin searches are rising which means that people will be looking to purchase products that help them achieve that look.
   • These ingredients will be hugely popular this year:
     • EGF
     • Vitamin C
     • AHA 
     • BHA 
   • Essences, sleeping masks and sheet masks will maintain their popularity over this year with essences perhaps seeing an increase in popularity.

3. Products that will lose popularity this year

   • People haven’t searched much for derma-rolling compared to jade rolling over the last 12 months so I think it is unlikely to become as big a trend as jade rolling. I think that one of the biggest reasons why derma-rolling won’t take off is because it sounds surgical and intimidating compared to jade rolling.
   • Snail mucin is losing its popularity compared to earlier this year.

It’s hugely promising that the number of Korean skincare searches are increasing. This growing popularity means that more K-beauty products will be hitting the shelves worldwide and I can hardly wait!