21 Best Eye Creams For Dark Circles To Brighten Them Right Up
Brighten your eyes!
When building a beauty arsenal, our first step may be a great mascara or bold lipstick, but it's the foundation we are building upon that makes the most difference in how we feel and appear to the outside world. A big part of this look is the eye cream we use.
Eye cream is meant to be used on the skin around your eyes, which is thin and extra sensitive, and also could see dark circles, puffiness, dryness, fine lines, and wrinkles. Many of us find ourselves looking for ways for how to get rid of dark circles, to no avail.
Finding the right eye cream for dark circles can keep the eye area hydrated and even out these imperfections. Of course, finding the right one for you is a matter of your personal skin care needs and budget. Here are the best creams for dark circles under your eyes.
1. Lancer Skincare Eye Contour Lifting Cream
A triple-action eye treatment and hydrator that targets multiple eye area concerns for a brighter, more youthful appearance. This emollient blend of time-released Hyaluronic Acid and Shea Butter provides a cushion of rich and lasting moisture.
Powered by Dr. Lancer’s proprietary Multi-Dimensional Complete Pro-Youth Complex to improve the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, puffiness and dark circles and loss of elasticity. Finished with Diamond Powder and minerals for a photoluminescence to subtly illuminate, creating a youthful glow.
(Lancer Skincare, $95)
2. Pestle & Mortar Recover Eye Cream
This eye cream formulation is packed with multi-tasking goodness. The active ingredient, Palmitoyl tripeptide-5, is a powerful peptide which stimulates collagen production from the inside-out, making it a super-effective anti-aging tool.
Packed with a host of other beneficial ingredients including Irish moss extract, passion fruit extract, coffee bean extract and beta-carotene, Recover hydrates, protects, smooths, soothes, and restores the skin around the eye area. Fine lines are diminished, puffiness is counteracted and dark circles are reduced. The lightweight formulation is easily absorbed into the skin, ensuring fast and visible results.
(Amazon)
3. City Beauty Under Eye Recovery
City Beauty’s Under Eye Recovery is a brightening eye cream perfect for blurring the appearance of dark circles under the eyes, thanks to light-scattering optics and ingredients such as Hyalusphere™ (which uses a direct delivery system to saturate the skin’s surface with hydrating hyaluronic acid to help reduce dryness, hollowness and shadows), and Beautifeye™ (which protects, strengthens and improves the look of dermis properties on sagging upper eyelids as it reduces the appearance of uneven coloration and fatigue).
Under Eye Recovery also hydrates to help fight the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles over time.
(City Beauty, $50 for 0.5 fl oz)
4. Dermae Dark Circle Reducing Eye Cream
Diminish the look of dark circles, fine lines, wrinkles and puffiness with this skin-brightening eye cream. Formulated with Intensive Skin Brightening Complex containing Madonna Lily Plant Stem Cells, Bearberry, Niacinamide, Licorice and Green Tea to help fight discoloration for more a more evenly toned, luminous eye area.
Enriched with Pycnogenol®, Horse Chestnut and Yarrow, ingredients shown to help diminish dark circles caused by poor circulation, this is ideal for all skin types experiencing tired, dark-circled eyes. This formula enlightens the entire eye area to appear brighter, well rested and radiant.
(Walmart, $24)
5. Plantioxidants Bio Fermented Tea Eye Cream
This certified USDA organic eye cream uses caffeine from four different fermented teas — Pu’erh, Oolong, Yerba Mate, and Green — to stimulate sluggish circulation under the eye area to brighten dark circles. A natural diuretic, the caffeine also alleviates puffiness, while the tea’s anti-aging properties smooth lines, wrinkles, and increase firmness. The bottle is made with 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastic.
(Plantioxidants, $75)
6. 100% PURE Coffee Bean Caffeine Eye Cream
This eye cream uses anti-inflammatory, caffeine-rich green tea and coffee to de-puff while increasing circulation to brighten dark circles. It's concentrated with potent anti-aging vitamins, antioxidants, and nourishing rosehip oil to make the eye area look more awake and youthful.
(100 Percent Pure, $26)
7. Sonya Dakar Eyeposuction
Eyeposuction is a daily treatment for the reduction of puffiness and dark circles. It's formulated with a powerful complex of concentrated extracts of Pfaffia, Marapuama and White Lily, plants indigenous to the Amazon Forest region and West Asia.
(Sonya Dakar, $175)
8. InstaNatural Youth Express Eye Gel
Youth Express Eye Gel is a lightweight treatment designed to lift and restore firmness to the eye area. The formula features Matrixyl 3000, a powerful peptide that visibly reduces fine lines and crow's feet. The Hyaluronic Acid, Plant Stem Cells and Amino Acids hydrate and strengthen the skin to defend against early signs of aging.
Cucumber Extract decrease the appearance of dark circles and puffiness. Hyaluronic Acid helps soften the first signs of lines and wrinkles around the eye area. Plant Stem Cells and Amino Acids support a strong skin barrier to prevent crows feet, bags and puffiness
(Instanatural, $20)
9. SkinOwl eye+
Lightweight, effective, efficient, unique. Hyaluronic acid, periwinkle, and licorice ensure that deep penetration transform crepe-paper skin into healthy, resilient, and firm skin around your eyes. Cucumber fruit depuffs. Aloe smooths and silkens. The ultimate concentrate to combat fatigued, tired, run-down skin.
Crepe-paper skin is transformed into healthy, resilient skin. Allow the cucumber to depuff, aloe to smooth, and botanical hyaluronic acid to lighten and tighten. Store in the fridge to promote extra de-puffing.
(SkinOwl, $46)
10. PRIORI Q+SOD Fx230 Eye Crème
Contains caffeine to reduce dark circles and puffiness. This new adaptive eye cream features a multifunctional formula that protects the most sensitive skin areas while delivering powerful rejuvenating benefits.
(PRIORI Skincare, $95)
11. GOLDEN DOOR Silk & Diamond Eye Cream
This innovative eye care product is designed for all skin types, for both the upper and lower eye lid areas. It's a blend of botanical extracts with lightweight emollients that provide 72 hours of hydration.
(Golden Door, $88)
12. Georgette Klinger Marula Eye Cream
Georgette Klinger’s Marula Eye Cream refreshes, reduces redness and puffiness, and brightens dark circles to visibly diminish signs of fatigue, while powerful anti-oxidants protect your skin and prevent premature aging.
(Georgette Klinger, $32)
13. Suki Skincare Eye Lift Renewal Cream
Brightening benefits, overall even tone, hydration and nourishment, helps reduce redness, premature aging, fine lines and wrinkles, and promotes deeply hydrated skin.
(Amazon)
14. InstaNatural Eye Serum
InstaNatural Eye Serum is a highly concentrated blend of ingredients designed to brighten and refine the eye area. Vitamin C, Peptides and Plant Stem Cells work together to smooth and firm the skin, while Caffeine and Hyaluronic Acid decrease the appearance of lines, puffiness and dark circles.
(Amazon)
15. Shea Terra Argan & Green Coffee Around-Eye Serum
Help your skin fight back against wrinkles, sagging and dark circles, and help get back brighter, more youthful-looking eyes with the anti-aging nutrients of Argan and green coffee bean oils.
(Shea Terra Organics, $22)
16. Osmosis Skincare Refresh Eye Serum
Niacinamide is a wonder ingredient when it comes to relieving dark under-eye circles. It's a form of vitamin B, a vasodilator and an anti-inflammatory ingredient so when applied to an area topically, it will widen the cell walls and increase the blood flow to the area, which will help to alleviate dark circles and minimize puffiness in the under eye area.
(Dermstore, $60)
17. It Cosmetics Confidence In an Eye Cream
Made specifically for sensitive skin, includes an exclusive apricot tint and Drops of Light Technology that color-corrects and brighten, proprietary Anti-Aging Armour Rejuvenating Concentrate and ceramide complex, chrysin, licorice root, avocado and squalane to hydrate, smooth and refresh. Great for puffiness, dark circles, lines and wrinkles.
(Amazon)
18. Benefit Cosmetics It's Potent Eye Cream
Contains a peptide complex known to help restore elasticity and firmness, a blend of hydrating botanical extracts and loquat extract, known to help protect the skin from free radical damage.
(Sephora, $34)
19. Kiehl's Midnight Recovery Eye
This soothing treatment is infused with butcher’s broom, which improves micro-circulation and reduces redness and irritation. Could you ask for anything more?
(Sephora, $37)
20. Belif Moisturizing Eye Bomb
Formulated with hydrating herb, comfrey leaf, and elasticity-boosting pennywort herb, this will flood the eye area with intense moisture and a cooling texture that will last for hours.
(Sephora, $48)
21. Skin Actives Triple Correction Eye Cream
Instantaneously helps decrease the appearance of wrinkles, puffiness, and dark circles around the eyes.
(Skin Actives, $18.50)
Aly Walansky is a NY-based lifestyles writer. Her work appears in dozens of digital and print publications regularly. Visit her on Twitter or email her at alywalansky@gmail.com.
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