Clarins Instant Eye Make-Up remover

The Clarins Instant Eye Make-up Remover is a bi-phase liquid cleanser designed to take off waterproof and heavy makeup. It's heavily raved about especially by the wonderful beauty duo that are Vivianna and Lily Pebbles. But at £20 a bottle, is it worth the hype?

I'm pretty loyal to my micellar waters and rarely wear waterproof mascara's mainly because they are so darn hard to remove. But I picked up a little bottle of this makeup remover at a Beautychat Live event with Clarins a few weeks ago and I've been trialling it since.

This little blend of oil and water contains camomile extract, rose and cornflower waters, and sits as two  blue and white liquids that need to be shaken well before applying to a cotton pad and sweeping over the eyes.

First up, this smells lovely. There's a beautiful subtle, clean and slightly fresh floral scent that you won't find in any highstreet skincare. Once it's shaken up and on a cotton pad it's a pale blue colour and feels slightly oily when swept across the skin. I like to apply a generous amount and hold it onto one eye at a time to skin in before I gently move it around.

It isn't a one sweep and you're done magic remover but it did do a better job at removing heavy makeup than my usuall Garnier micellar water. I tried this out on strong liner days when I was wearing Benefit's Rollerlash and it did remove it fairly easily but still required some rubbing to get off all traces of mascara.

A slight issue I had with this is that I like to really saturate a cotton pad to remove my makeup but this formula tended to immediately run into my eyes even when I shut them tight. It didn't sting at all but I wasn't too happy to have foreign chemicals run into my eyes so I ended up using less product which meant rubbing my eyes a bit more. This isn't a problem I have with micellar waters, I think it could be because this was a little more oily than I'm used to.

My other problem with this is that it didn't wow me. It was more effective than my micellar water but my Garnier micellar water isn't marketed at removing waterproof or heavy makeup, it just does it anyway. As the Clarins Instant Eye Make-Up Remover claims to 'instantly lift away every last trace of make-up' and is £19 for 125 ml I was hoping for slightly more magical things.

Overall this is a nice product to use, and it might impress you more if you do struggle to remove waterproof mascaras. It left my skin feeling nice and soft but I would always follow this kind of product with another cleanse so I don't expect any skincare benefits to work wonders in the short time this might be on my skin.

Clarins Instant Eye Make-Up Remover, £19