At times the world of skin care can be a pretty intimidating place. Not only is it saturated with declarations of banishing dark circles and erasing stubborn wrinkle lines, but we’re also endlessly bombarded with bewildering (and practically alien) buzzwords that may as well be written in Klingon. Merely navigating the sea of pseudo-science propaganda is basically a guaranteed stress headache waiting to happen (and everyone knows what stress can do to your skin…..). We’re overwhelmed with choice, options and avenues to get lost down and at times it makes us feel a bit, er thick.     

What we need is a guiding hand to help us wade ruthlessly through the jargon and get down to the bare bones of the matter to see what really, REALLY makes a difference to skin. So, we enlisted a crack team of leading dermatologists to ask the one question we all wanted to know: what’s your number one – above all others – skincare hero, the product you couldn’t be without, the formula that’s really made a difference to your skin, the pot of cream or bottle of serum that you’d whisk away to a desert island, the skincare mainstay you really can’t be without? And we didn’t stop until we pried it out of those (unbelievably) soft hands of theirs.

Click through the gallery to see the skin care saviours that trusted derms just can’t bear to live without.