How to Choose the Best Face Scrub for Your Skin Type

A good face scrub should leave your skin feeling smoother and fresher – not tight, sore or as though you've just sanded it.

The trick is finding the right kind of exfoliation for your skin. Some people love a proper grainy scrub, while others are much happier with a creamy polish or an oil-based formula. Your skin type matters too: the scrub that works brilliantly for oily skin may be completely wrong for dry or sensitive skin.

We've put together this guide to help you choose, including some of the bestselling natural face scrubs and exfoliators at MyPure.

What does a face scrub actually do?

Your skin naturally sheds cells from its outermost layer. Exfoliation helps remove some of the dead cells sitting on the surface, which can leave skin feeling smoother and looking less dull.

There are two main approaches. Physical exfoliators use fine particles or textured ingredients to buff the surface of the skin, while chemical exfoliators use ingredients such as AHAs and BHAs to loosen dead surface cells without the same scrubbing action.

This guide concentrates mainly on physical face scrubs and facial polishes. Neither approach is automatically better – what matters is finding an exfoliator your skin is comfortable with.

Choose your face scrub by skin type

Our bestselling natural face scrubs

We've sold face scrubs for more than 20 years, and one thing hasn't changed: customers have very different ideas about what makes a good scrub. Some want barely-there polishing; others want to actually feel the grains.

Neither preference is necessarily wrong. The important thing is matching the texture and formula to your skin.

Lavera Pure Beauty 3 in 1 Wash, Scrub & Mask

Best for: Oily skin and skincare minimalists

Lavera Pure Beauty 3 in 1 Wash, Scrub & Mask earns its bathroom-shelf space by doing three different jobs.

It can be used as a cleansing wash, an exfoliating scrub or left on the skin as a mask. That makes it particularly interesting if your skin tends towards oily or blemish-prone and you'd rather buy one multi-purpose product than several separate treatments.

What it feels like: More purifying and cleansing than the richer oil-based polishes in this guide.

Why we'd choose it: Convenience. It's a practical option if you want exfoliation without adding another single-purpose product to your routine.

Sukin Oil Balancing Pore Refining Facial Scrub

Best for: Oily and combination skin

If excess oil and congested-looking skin are higher on your list of concerns than dryness, Sukin Oil Balancing Pore Refining Facial Scrub makes more sense than choosing one of the richer facial polishes.

What it feels like: A traditional physical scrub aimed specifically at oilier complexions.

Why we'd choose it: It's an easy way to narrow down the Sukin options – choose the Revitalising Scrub if you're normal-to-dry and look towards Oil Balancing if you're oily or combination.

Worth remembering: oily skin still doesn't need aggressive scrubbing. Use light pressure and let the exfoliating particles do the work.

UpCircle Face Scrub with Coffee & Rosehip Oil

Best for: Dry skin and people who like a proper scrub

If you like to actually feel your exfoliator working, UpCircle Face Scrub with Coffee & Rosehip Oil is one of our perennial favourites.

It uses repurposed coffee grounds for physical exfoliation in a richer formula created with dry skin in mind.

What it feels like: Properly grainy. This isn't a barely-there facial polish.

Why we'd choose it: If you actively enjoy a tactile scrub, this gives you that experience while making use of repurposed coffee grounds.

One thing you should know: coffee grounds are messy. There's really no getting around it. Despite that, the UpCircle scrub remains a firm favourite with the MyPure team – we think the results are worth a little extra rinsing of the sink.

How often should you exfoliate your face?

There's no universal exfoliation schedule. How often you should use a face scrub depends on your skin, the strength of the product and what else you're using in your routine.

For many people, once or twice a week is a sensible place to start, unless the individual product recommends otherwise. Then pay attention to your skin rather than trying to hit a particular number of exfoliation days.

Redness, tightness, persistent dryness, soreness or stinging can all be signs that your routine has become too aggressive.

How to use a face scrub properly

Technique matters almost as much as the product itself.

Skip exfoliation if your skin is sunburnt, broken or already irritated.

Can you use a face scrub if you have spots?

Possibly – but scrubbing spots harder won't make them disappear faster.

Aggressive physical exfoliation can make already inflamed skin feel more uncomfortable. If you're prone to blemishes or clogged pores, choose products formulated with your skin type in mind and be particularly gentle around active spots.

Persistent or severe acne is different from the occasional blemish and is best discussed with a pharmacist, GP or dermatologist rather than trying to scrub it away.

Are natural face scrubs better?

Natural doesn't automatically mean gentle, just as synthetic doesn't automatically mean harsh.

Ground seeds, shells, minerals and other naturally derived exfoliating ingredients can provide very different levels of physical exfoliation. What matters is the complete formula, the texture of the exfoliating particles, how you use it and, most importantly, how your own skin responds.

At MyPure we specialise in natural and organic beauty, but we'd still choose a face scrub according to your skin rather than simply picking the product with the longest list of botanical ingredients.