The 11 Best Face Washes for Men, Tested and Reviewed (2024)

It may be easy to assume that what you use to wash your face doesn’t matter, especially if you’re going to follow it up with other products like serums or moisturizers. After all, the most important thing is to just get your face clean, right? You’re not wrong (that is an important thing), but cleansing your face is the first step in your routine, laying the groundwork for everything that comes after. Using the right face wash can make a huge difference in not only the health of your skin but how it looks, as well.

What is the right face wash, you ask? Well it depends on your skin type and what your concerns are. Face washes come in all shapes and sizes, but using one that’s specifically formulated for your skin is baseline. If you have sensitive skin, you don’t want to use a harsh cleanser that’s going to leave it dry and irritated. On the flip side, if you have oily skin, you may want to use a cleanser that contains an ingredient like salicylic acid that can help not only deep-clean your pores but also control oil even after you’ve finished washing. And you’re going to hear us say this a lot below, but it bears repeating over and over: That tight, squeaky clean feeling you often get after you wash your face? No bueno. That means your skin’s moisture barrier has been disrupted and the natural oils have been stripped away, which can lead to dryness and irritation down the road, particularly if you don’t moisturize afterward. (You should always moisturize afterward.) That’s not good for any skin type.

So choosing the right face wash for you is the literal first step in an effective skin-care routine. But with all the options out there, where do you start? This list, of course. We’ve tested dozens and dozens of face washes to find the very best. Start here and wash in good faith.

Sometimes natural products, particularly face wash, can either leave you wanting more or wishing they weren’t so aggressive. This one strikes the exact right balance between deep cleansing and skin protecting. The fragrant gel foams up as soon as it hits water, which helps it clean deep down into your pores to leave your face feeling ultra-clean, even if you’re particularly dirty or sweaty. (The witch hazel in the formula helps with this, too.) Even with that deep clean, however, it never leaves your face feeling stripped. It may be the aloe vera and plant-based cleansers in the formula, which are effective but gentle. And while it does have fragrance—if you have sensitive skin, you may want to be careful—we found this to be one of the very best cleansers we tried out of the whole bunch.

Exfoliating cleansers make life easier by combining two steps in one, but typically they’re too harsh to use every day (especially if we’re talking about a scrub). We love this one, however, because it’s one of the gentlest we’ve tried. Even though it contains a trifecta of exfoliating acids (salicylic, mandelic, and gluconolactone), it’s still gentle enough to use every day on most skin types, though we recommend starting slow and seeing how your skin reacts if yours is very sensitive. It’s particularly nice if you have oily or acne-prone skin, since the salicylic acid helps to keep your pores clean and has oil-controlling properties. We noticed that our blackheads and breakouts started to look way better after just a few days of using it and continued to clear up with each use.

It can be hard to justify spending a lot of money on a cleanser, since it’s a product that doesn’t stay on your skin that long in the grand scheme of things. That is, however, until you actually use a luxury cleanser. We’re not saying they’re always better, but the experience of using one like this is unparalleled. The gel texture is silky and smooths over your face like butter as it blooms into a light but rich foam. While it cleanses your face of any trace of dirt or grime (not to mention oily stuff like sunscreen), it also leaves behind a stem-cell complex that can help prevent signs of aging (though we recommend using it as part of a larger antiaging routine since the active ingredients in a cleanser are not going to be the same as, say, those in a serum). In our testing, we did find that after using this cleanser, not only did our skin feel insanely clean, but it also looked brighter and happier.

Cream cleansers can be beneficial if you have dry skin, but they can also be heavy and leave your skin feeling not as clean as others. Luckily, this cream cleanser doesn’t do that. The featherweight, whipped texture comes out of the tube like a puffy cream and explodes into a rich lather immediately. The lather is the key here—there’s a lot of it and it allows the cleanser to effectively clean away dirt and oil without leaving behind the filmy feeling many other cream cleansers can. Instead, it leaves your skin feeling soft and happily moisturized, not to mention helping to fortify and protect the all-important moisture barrier.

Cleansers come in all shapes and sizes, and plenty of people out there prefer a bar for a variety of reasons (they can be more sustainable, last longer, or just have a preferable feel). The problem is that traditional soap bars can be way, way too harsh on your skin because textbook soap strips your skin’s protective oils while it cleans away dirt and grime. This bar, however, is never going to do that. It’s formulated to be gentle thanks to the coconut-based cleansing agents and the nourishing jojoba oil in the formula. We are not necessarily bar people, but we found that this cleansing bar deep-cleaned our faces just as well as, if not better than, many of the more typical cleansers we tried. It’s also formulated with oily or combination skin in mind and helps remove excess oil while leaving behind a matte finish. We found that using this in the morning meant that we had less shine throughout the day.

Maybe it’s the charcoal in this French-made cleanser, but something about it gave us one of the deepest-feeling cleans out of everything we tested. We could almost feel the dirt being drawn out of our pores, and after just one use our faces felt and looked incredibly clean. More incredibly, though, this deep-cleaning wash is still gentle enough to use every day (believe us, we did) with no irritation or dry, tight feeling. In addition to the aforementioned charcoal, there is also zinc PCA in the formula, which acts as an antibacterial agent and also helps to remove and control oil. If you have oily or congested skin, it’s a godsend. And even if you don’t, it’s still pretty damn good.

The secret to this ultra-gentle cleanser lies in the glucosides, surfactants that do the actual removal of dirt and oil. The ones found in this formula are gentle and nondisruptive to your skin’s barrier, which means not only that the texture of this cleanser is silky and smooth but also that it’s not going to leave your face feeling dry or tight. It foams up well, though not a ton, to let you know that it’s really getting down into your skin to clean it out, but there’s no lingering redness or irritation after using it. We found that it works equally well on all skin types, even sensitive skin, and has earned a permanent place in our medicine cabinet.

Not only does this cleanser contain 2 percent salicylic acid (the most you can get without a prescription) that helps to exfoliate the surface of your skin as well as inside your pores, but it also contains lipo-hydroxy acid, an additional exfoliant. The combination helps to heal blackheads, whiteheads, and breakouts and control oil production, which can also help prevent future breakouts. Before you say it sounds too harsh, though, we found that this cleanser didn’t leave any irritation behind. If you’re not currently breaking out and just want to prevent future pimples, using this a couple times a week is probably enough, but if you have very oily skin or have an active breakout, it’s still gentle enough to use every day.

On the surface, this cleanser is pretty straightforward. Its main active ingredients are hyaluronic acid and glycerin, both of which help your skin retain moisture and are fairly standard in many of the skin-care products you use. However, there’s something about this cleanser that we can’t get enough of. Maybe it’s the smooth gel formula that lathers up in the way you’d expect from a luxury cleanser. Maybe it’s the fresh, clean feeling it gives to our skin without leaving behind any dryness whatsoever. Maybe it’s the fragrance-free formula that’s safe for even very sensitive skin. Whatever it is, it beat out cleansers triple (or more) the price to earn a permanent spot in our routines. It’s just that good.

Whether you have dry skin or oily skin or land somewhere in between, this cleanser is designed to help balance it out. The cleansing coconut esters help to gently remove dirt and oil from your skin without disrupting the protective barrier (which is what happens when cleansers leave your skin feeling tight or dry) and rose-hip extract helps to balance it out. If you have oily skin, it helps control oil production. On the flip side, if you have dry skin, it helps keep the moisture inside your skin. (An intact skin barrier helps further with keeping skin moisturized by preventing evaporation.) It’s on the expensive side, but it works so well we’ll gladly pay a premium.

Using an oil cleanser is a great idea when you have dry skin, because it cleanses without stripping the natural oils off the surface of your skin, which are important in keeping an intact moisture barrier. The problem is that if you’re used to foaming cleansers that leave you feeling clean, oil cleansers are not going to give you that sensation. Except this one, that is. Because this is a foaming oil cleanser, you get the best of both worlds—the moisturizing effects of an oil cleanser and the foam that you want from a traditional cleanser. It’s perfect for chronically dry skin, but even if you’re just feeling a little dry from cold weather, dry air, or other temporary factors, this can be a great option to keep your skin moisturized and clean.