The bank holds no face mask product photography, no jar, tube, sheet packet or bathroom-shelf frames, a gap the honesty section admits. The frame is the subject itself: the face in daylight, at the step this ranking grades.
Checked and updated October 2026
The short version. One basis, published in full below: the record the maker prints, because a mask is a short, violent promise, ten minutes of contact that either is documented or is theatre. The Ordinary’s Salicylic Acid 2% Masque wins at 92, the only bottle on the shelf that doses its headline in its name and prints a pH. The counts, each verified against the lists printed on the cards: full ingredient lists are published on 8 of 8. A headline clay or acid with a printed percentage stands on 3 of 8: the winner’s acid in its name, both of the Origins’ headlines in its copy, and the Kiehl’s clay blend at 90 percent, its individual clays undosed. Charcoal is sold as the headline on 4 of the records and stands in the top half of its list on 1 of them and at the middle seat of its list on a second; on a fourth it does not stand at all. A Fragrance or Parfum entry stands on 0 of 8, the cleanest column in the grooming run. A printed wear time stands on 7 of 8; the one record without minutes tells you to let it dry. And the species lines this page draws before it scores anything: four records are clay-led, two are acid-led, one is a sheet, and one is a scrub wearing a mask’s name, graded as printed and sent home for it.
First, the decision
One product, named before anything is scored: buy The Ordinary’s Salicylic Acid 2% Masque. Its published list runs 19 items and is printed entire on its card: water, kaolin second, squalane, glycerin, and salicylic acid seventh, dosed in the name itself at 2 percent, the only headline on this shelf whose strength is stated before the bottle is opened. The same maker prints the bottle’s pH, 3.50 to 4.50, the shelf’s only printed pH, and prints the strictest clock on the page: use on thoroughly dry skin, leave on for no more than 10 minutes, rinse. That ceiling is the record’s discipline in one line, an acid maker telling you the exposure is the treatment and the treatment has a limit. Its deduction is printed on its card: the charcoal in its retail subtitle stands tenth of 19, the middle seat of the list, a passenger behind the acid the name doses. At $8.12 an ounce it is mid-shelf arithmetic for the shelf’s complete document, and the value row prices the small tube honestly. What the honesty row’s 28 buys is the whole transaction this Card exists to reward: dose in the name, pH printed, ceiling printed, list entire.
Now the species paragraph, because this shelf hides three of them inside one word. A clay mask works by contact and absorption: a clay seated high on the list draws oil and surface debris as the layer dries, and the rinse carries them off. Four records here are clay-led, the Kiehl’s, the Paula’s Choice, the Origins and the Clinique, and they are graded on where the clay stands. An acid mask works chemically in the same minutes: the acid exfoliates while the layer sits, so its dose and its clock are the record. Two records are acid-led, the winner and the Jack Black cleanser its maker directs you to wear as a mask, and they are graded on whether the dose is printed. A sheet mask does neither: a fibre sheet holds an essence against the skin for a printed window and nothing is rinsed, and the one sheet record, the Mediheal, is graded on what its essence carries and where. What no species may do here is sell a headline its list does not contain. The product whose maker’s list omits both of its named actives entire is ranked eighth.
The by-need rulings, one line each, printed here so a reader can leave with his answer before the cards:
The complete document, oily or congested skin: the winner (92), the dosed acid in a clay base, ten printed minutes.
Oil alone, and the charcoal buyer: the Origins (82), the only bottle that prints its charcoal’s dose, 1 percent, beside its clay at 18 percent.
The traditional clay ritual: the Kiehl’s (82), kaolin and bentonite second and third, read beside the Origins on the tie ruling printed on both cards.
Dry, reactive, acid-shy skin: the Paula’s Choice (81), oatmeal and bisabolol, no acid anywhere on its list.
The sheet, and the cheapest session on the page: the Mediheal (73), $2.20 a mask, the one record that adds water instead of managing oil.
And the use rule, stated plainly once: a rinse-off mask is worn for exactly the minutes its maker prints, because on this shelf the minute is the dose; a maker that prints a ceiling is telling you the exposure is the treatment, and a maker that prints no time at all has left the dose to your guess. That is why the clock column below is graded as record, not as convenience.
The dose column: three printed numbers, and one borderline
Count the field the way the grooming Cards count. A printed percentage behind a headline stands on three of the eight products. The winner doses its acid in its name, salicylic acid 2 percent, with the shelf’s only printed pH beside it. The Origins doses both of its headlines in its copy, 1 percent bamboo charcoal and 18 percent oil-absorbing clay, the fullest dose document in the category. The Kiehl’s doses its blend, a 90 percent hydro-activated clay blend, a real number with a real limit printed on its card: the blend is dosed, the kaolin and bentonite inside it are not, separately. Everywhere else the shelf sells position and adjectives. Paula’s Choice seats its clays second and third and prints no percentage for anything. Jack Black seats glycolic acid tenth and prints no strength; a third-party estimator’s range for it is not a maker’s number and is not graded as one. Clinique prints no percentages as house policy. And the borderline, printed rather than tidied: the Mediheal’s tea tree family is dosed on its Korean label in parts per million, the extract at 4,000 ppm on one current rendering and 12,000 on another, and the American list the buyer here reads doses none of it. Take No. 14’s rule governs: a dose counts where the buyer reads it. Counted on the buyer’s label, the shelf’s dosed headlines stand at 3 of 8.
The charcoal column: four headlines, one cashed entire
Charcoal is the category’s favourite word, and four of the eight records sell it in the name or the headline. Read against the lists, it cashes entire once. The Origins prints charcoal powder ninth of 24, top half, and doses it at 1 percent in the copy: position and percentage, the complete document. The winner’s charcoal stands tenth of 19, the middle seat of its list, and the desk prints the seat without inflating it: the masque’s headline is its acid, dosed in its name, and the charcoal in its retail subtitle rides behind it. The Clinique’s charcoal stands twelfth of 22 on Sephora’s panel, thirteenth of 24 on the fuller rendering, the first seat of the bottom half on both, under a product name that leads with the word charcoal. And the fourth record is the column’s conclusion and the page’s skip: the Brickell mask, named Purifying Charcoal, publishes a maker’s list on which charcoal powder stands nowhere at all. Counted the way this page counts headlines: charcoal in the top half of its list on 1 of the 4 charcoal records, at the middle seat on a second, dosed on 1 of the 4, absent on 1 of the 4.
The clock column: seven printed times, one instruction to guess
Grooming Take No. 8 settled the rule this shelf is graded by: on a rinse-off product, the printed minute is the dose, the contact time standing in for every percentage the maker withheld. Seven of the eight records print a time. The clocks are a shelf in themselves: the Clinique at five minutes, or until the mask turns pale grey, the shortest order in the category; the Jack Black worn as a mask for approximately five minutes; the winner’s ceiling of no more than 10 minutes, the only maximum on the page, an acid maker capping its own exposure; the Kiehl’s at approximately 5 to 10 minutes; the Paula’s Choice and the Brickell at 10 to 15; the sheet at 10 to 20, the longest window, because an essence is not an exposure in the acid’s sense. The one record that prints no minutes is the Origins, the shelf’s best dose document and its worst clock: allow to fully dry and rinse, once a week. Dryness is a state that varies with the layer’s thickness and the room’s air; it is not a dose, and the fit row charges the missing number on the card of the very bottle that prints two percentages. The column’s conclusion cuts both ways, which is what a column is for: the maker that doses everything times nothing, and the maker that times everything to a ceiling is the winner.
The fragrance column: the clean count
A Parfum or Fragrance entry, the single word behind which a scent formula hides: on none of the eight current lists. The count is 0 of 8, and the desk prints it with the pleasure of a column that finally has nothing to prosecute. The winner carries none. The Kiehl’s prints a fragrance-free claim and cashes it entire, its 20-item list ending in oat flour and allantoin. The Clinique, a house built on the claim, cashes it. Even the skip’s maker’s list carries no fragrance entry, its failure lying elsewhere entire. Two cautions ride under the clean count, printed so the count is not misread. The absence of the word is not the absence of scent: the Origins scents itself with myrtle leaf water standing on its list as an ingredient at thirteenth, named where a reader can weigh it, and the Mediheal’s tea tree leaf oil is a perfume the list itemises. The honest construction, both times: scent as ingredients, not as a word. On the serum, toner and exfoliator shelves this column found the bottles that scent a step in secret. On the mask shelf there are none, and the page says so.
The paperwork column: plurality, renaming, and one absent list
Full lists are published on eight of eight, and the desk credits the publishing shelf-wide before it reads a word. The paperwork problems are of three kinds. Renaming: the Kiehl’s institution has been renamed on its maker’s own site, the Rare Earth Deep Pore Cleansing Masque now sold as the Rare Earth Pore-Minimizing Clay Mask, the same WW0328 record under a shorter promise; and the Jack Black seated here is not sold as a mask at all, its maker’s standalone mask having left the shelf, the record now a glycolic cleanser whose own directions carry the mask use, graded and named as such on its card. Plurality: the Clinique circulates two list lengths, 22 items on Sephora’s panel and 24 on the fuller rendering, its charcoal twelfth on one and thirteenth on the other, the desk printing both seats rather than choosing; the Mediheal circulates two tea tree doses on its Korean labels, 4,000 and 12,000 ppm, two generations under one name; the Kiehl’s own page instructs the serving three ways, approximately 5 to 10 minutes once or twice a week in one answer, two to three times a week in another, three times a week in its expert’s quote. And absence: the Brickell’s marketplace copy names nine key ingredients its maker’s published list does not carry, the extreme case of the run’s standing rule, that a buyer comparing documents should meet the same documents the desk met. The desk grades the maker’s current published record in each case and prints the divergence on the card.
How the scores work
Every product is scored out of 100 on its published record, under a basis settled for this shelf in the grooming run’s five-row shape: ingredient and claim honesty, 30 (the fullness of the published list, where the headline clay, acid or charcoal actually stands on it, whether any fragrance entry stands, and the maker’s claims read against that list, a dosed claim credited only where a percentage is printed); the active record, 20 (the mask’s working record as printed, its actives and their positions, its dose and its pH where either is published, and its printed wear time, the minute standing as the dose on a rinse-off shelf); fit and range, 20 (which skin and which routine the product actually serves, its printed frequency and clock counted as fit facts, its scent load and its sizes); value per ounce, 15 (the checked shelf price divided by the container, printed in the table below so the arithmetic can be checked, the sheet graded per single use and printed as such); and longevity and service, 15 (the stability of the formula record, the maker’s published service behind the product, and the house’s standing). Nothing here is a use test. This desk opened no jar, wore no sheet, and claims no measurements: a high score means the published record is strong. Two finishes stand level on this Card and both are ruled in the open: the Origins and the Kiehl’s at 82, ruled on the active record, 19 to 18, the dosed charcoal outweighing the dosed blend; and the Mediheal and the Jack Black at 73, ruled on the honesty row, 24 to 23, the sheet’s complete if undosed document outweighing the cleanser’s.
Seven ranked, and the one sent home
The Ordinary Salicylic Acid 2% Masque
An acid mask for blemish-prone skin, and the most complete document on the shelf, so its list is printed here entire: water, kaolin second, squalane, glycerin, dimethyl isosorbide, silica cetyl silylate, salicylic acid seventh, sodium polyacrylate, pentylene glycol, charcoal powder tenth, 4-t-butylcyclohexanol, sclerotium gum, acacia senegal gum, xanthan gum, phytic acid, polysorbate 20, trisodium ethylenediamine disuccinate, chlorphenesin and phenoxyethanol, 19 items in all. Begin with the name, because the name is the dose: salicylic acid at 2 percent, stated before the bottle is opened, the only headline on this shelf dosed in its own title. The same record prints the shelf’s only pH, 3.50 to 4.50, an acid’s working range stated by its maker rather than guessed by its reviewers. Then the clock, the strictest on the page: use once or twice a week on thoroughly clean, dry skin, do not use on wet skin, leave on for no more than 10 minutes, rinse. A ceiling, not a suggestion, from the one maker whose acid could burn past it, and the desk credits the ceiling as the record’s discipline. The clay base is real, kaolin second, so the species is honestly hybrid: an acid working in a clay vehicle, each graded on its own record. The one deduction, printed plainly: the charcoal of the retail subtitle stands tenth of 19, the middle seat of the list, a passenger; the desk notes the seat and grades the acid the name actually doses. No Fragrance entry stands on the list, and the formula is the maker’s stable, years-running record at the maker’s stable price. At $8.12 an ounce in a 1.7-ounce tube it is not the cheap ounce on the page. It is the documented one, and on this Card the document wins.
$13.80 for 1.7 oz at Sephora (about $8.12 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $13.80 at Sephora| Ingredient & claim honesty | 28 / 30 |
| Active record | 19 / 20 |
| Fit & range | 19 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 13 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 13 / 15 |
Origins Clear Improvement Active Charcoal Mask to Clear Pores
The charcoal mask the category pictures, graded on its current list, ILN99266, 24 items: water, kaolin second, butylene glycol, bentonite, montmorillonite, polysorbate 20, PEG-100 stearate, glycerin, charcoal powder ninth, propylene glycol laurate, caprylyl glycol, ethylhexylglycerin, myrtle leaf water, propylene glycol stearate, simethicone, lecithin, PEG-150 distearate, sorbitan laurate, hexylene glycol, xanthan gum, tetrasodium EDTA, disodium EDTA, phenoxyethanol and dehydroacetic acid. The dose document is the fullest in the category, and it is printed first: the maker states in its own copy that the formula is 1 percent purifying bamboo charcoal and 18 percent oil-absorbing clay, both headlines dosed, a thing no other maker on this shelf does for even one. The charcoal’s seat backs the copy, ninth of 24, top half, behind a clay bench of kaolin, bentonite and montmorillonite seated second, fourth and fifth. The maker’s clinical claim is printed as a claim and graded as one: an 84 percent oil reduction after one use, clinical testing on 30 women. Now the charge, and it is the clock column’s whole argument: the directions print no minutes at all. On clean skin, open the pores with a warm towel, apply, allow to fully dry and rinse, use once a week. Dryness is a state, not a dose; a thick layer in a steamed bathroom and a thin layer in dry air reach it an hour apart in exposure, and on a rinse-off shelf the minute is the dose the buyer is owed. No Fragrance entry stands on the list, the scent carried by the myrtle leaf water itemised at thirteenth, the honest construction. At $15.60 an ounce it is the dearest ounce on the page by a wide margin, and the value row prices it. Level with the Kiehl’s at 82 and placed ahead of it on the active record, 19 to 18: two dosed headlines outweigh one dosed blend.
$39.00 for 2.5 fl oz at Origins (about $15.60 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $39.00 at Origins| Ingredient & claim honesty | 27 / 30 |
| Active record | 19 / 20 |
| Fit & range | 16 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 7 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 13 / 15 |
Kiehl’s Rare Earth Pore-Minimizing Clay Mask
The clay institution, renamed on its maker’s own site, the Rare Earth Deep Pore Cleansing Masque now sold under the shorter name printed here, the same record graded. The published list runs 20 items: water, kaolin second, bentonite third, propanediol, glycerin, titanium dioxide, caprylic and capric triglyceride, cetearyl alcohol, corn starch, phenoxyethanol, ceteareth-20, caprylyl glycol, xanthan gum, ethylhexylglycerin, tocopherol, lecithin, aloe leaf extract, aloe leaf juice, oat kernel flour and allantoin twentieth. The clay bench is the shelf’s most honest seating: the two clays the copy names stand second and third, behind only water, which is where a clay mask’s clay belongs. The dose is real and its limit is printed on this card: the maker claims a 90 percent hydro-activated clay blend, a percentage for the blend entire; what proportion is kaolin and what is bentonite no document states, so the dose column credits the blend and the active row grades the seats. The fragrance-free claim is cashed entire, no scent entry on the 20, the list ending in oat flour and allantoin, a soothing tail the formula genuinely carries. The charges are the serving and the price. The maker’s own page cannot agree on how the mask is used: one answer directs approximately 5 to 10 minutes, once or twice a week; another recommends two to three times a week; its expert’s quote says three times a week. A buyer reading the maker’s page three times meets three rituals, and the fit row prices the disagreement. At $11.19 an ounce in the big 4.2-ounce jar it is premium arithmetic for a two-clay record. Level with the Origins at 82 and placed behind it on the active record, 18 to 19: the Origins doses its charcoal and its clay separately, and this bottle doses them together, as a blend, which is the one point’s whole substance.
$47.00 for 4.2 fl oz at Kiehl’s (about $11.19 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $47.00 at Kiehl’s| Ingredient & claim honesty | 26 / 30 |
| Active record | 18 / 20 |
| Fit & range | 17 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 9 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 12 / 15 |
Paula’s Choice Skin Balancing Oil-Absorbing Mask
A clay mask for combination to oily skin, and the shelf’s quietest document: nothing on it shouts, and nothing on it hides. The published list runs 22 items, two renderings of the maker’s panel agreeing: water, kaolin second, bentonite third, glycerin, willow bark extract fifth, stearic acid, steareth-2, aloe leaf juice powder, sea whip extract, colloidal oatmeal, bisabolol, ascorbyl palmitate, tocopheryl acetate, phospholipids, panthenol, retinyl palmitate, caprylyl glycol, butylene glycol, ethylhexylglycerin, hexylene glycol, disodium EDTA and phenoxyethanol. The clays stand where a clay mask’s clays should, second and third. Behind them the formula is built like an apology for the species: colloidal oatmeal and bisabolol, the two classic soothers, seated mid-list, with aloe, panthenol and sea whip around them, a mask designed for the skin clay masks usually punish. The directions print a time, 10 to 15 minutes, and a sensible frequency, several times a week for oily skin, once or twice for normal. The charges are two silences and a door. Nothing is dosed, not the clays, not the willow bark, whose salicin the copy leaves a reader to infer an acid from; the desk grades no inference, and the active row’s 15 prices a record of positions. No printed pH stands behind the formula. And the pill position is printed in its price line: the maker’s current United States door for this mask evaded the desk’s capture in this pass, the formula’s record complete and its shelf record not, and a Card that grades documentation prints its own gap where it finds one. What carries the bottle to fourth, three points behind the tie at the top, is the construction: the gentlest honest clay record on the page.
4 fl oz tube. No buy pill: the maker’s current United States shelf price and a live product door for this mask evaded capture in this pass, a November capture owed and stated here rather than tidied away; the value row is graded on the last verified United States full price for the tube, $19.00 (about $4.75 an ounce)
| Ingredient & claim honesty | 25 / 30 |
| Active record | 15 / 20 |
| Fit & range | 17 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 13 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 11 / 15 |
Mediheal Teatree Essential Mask
The sheet record, seated as the species’ strongest verifiable American document and graded as a sheet: a bamboo-fibre mask holding 24 ml of essence against the skin, nothing rinsed, the window printed at 10 to 20 minutes. The maker’s American list runs 35 items: water, glycerin second, 1,2-hexanediol, methylpropanediol, propanediol, hydroxyacetophenone, tea tree extract seventh, butylene glycol, panthenol, allantoin, betaine, trehalose, tea tree leaf water thirteenth, lactobacillus ferment, adenosine, disodium EDTA, carbomer, tea tree leaf oil eighteenth, arginine, and a tail of amino acids, 4-terpineol among them at twenty-fifth, closing in the crosspolymer and the two chlorides. The tea tree family is genuinely present, extract, leaf water, leaf oil and its active fraction 4-terpineol, four seats for the headline, which no other botanical record on this page matches. The dose is the charge, and it is a border story: on the maker’s Korean label the family is dosed in parts per million, the extract at 4,000 ppm on one current rendering and 12,000 ppm on another, two generations circulating under one name; on the American list the buyer here reads, no parts per million stand anywhere. Take No. 14’s rule grades the label in the buyer’s hand, so the active row grades an undosed headline with excellent seats. No Fragrance entry stands on the list; the tea tree oil is the scent, itemised as an ingredient, the honest construction. The fit row carries the species’ own facts: the longest printed window on the page, the only record that adds water instead of managing oil, and a format whose every use is a whole mask, which the longevity row’s 8 prices as construction rather than as a fault. At $2.20 a mask it is the cheapest single session on the page. Level with the Jack Black at 73 and placed ahead of it on the honesty row, 24 to 23: a complete document, undosed, outweighs a split one.
$8.80 for a 4-pack at Mediheal US ($2.20 a mask) (October 2026)
Buy · $8.80 at Mediheal US| Ingredient & claim honesty | 24 / 30 |
| Active record | 14 / 20 |
| Fit & range | 15 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 12 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 8 / 15 |
Jack Black Deep Dive Glycolic Facial Cleanser
Seated under its own name, because the name is the first fact: this is the maker’s Deep Dive Glycolic Facial Cleanser, a two-in-one cleanser and mask, the standalone Jack Black mask of the brief having left the maker’s shelf; its own directions carry the mask use, apply to a dry face and allow to dry for approximately five minutes, and it is graded here as the mask record its maker now sells, the premise corrected in print rather than in silence. The published list runs 35 items: water, kaolin second, glycerin, sodium methyl cocoyl taurate, magnesium aluminum silicate, volcanic ash sixth, oat kernel meal, sodium chloride, acrylates copolymer, glycolic acid tenth, then a botanical bench of arnica, rosemary, green tea and olive leaf extracts, allantoin, aloe, panthenol and chamomile through the middle, closing in the surfactants and preservatives. The clay seating is a mask’s, kaolin second with volcanic ash behind it, a better mask skeleton than several bottles sold as masks. The charges are the split record and the silent dose. As a cleanser it is used daily and rinsed in seconds; as a mask it is worn five minutes, and the desk grades the mask use its maker prints, with the fit row pricing the dual identity: a reader buying a mask is buying a cleanser’s second job. And the glycolic acid stands tenth, undosed on every document the maker publishes; a third-party estimator’s range is not a maker’s number and is not graded as one, the third shelf in a row on which this house’s acid prints no strength. No Fragrance entry stands on the list, the house’s fragrance-free discipline cashed again. The door, for once, is printed in its price line with relief: a live American shelf page and price were pinned for this bottle, at LovelySkin, after three Jack Black captures failed on Cards No. 90, 93 and 94; the eye bottle, the bump solution and the toner remain November captures. Level with the Mediheal at 73 and placed behind it on the honesty row, 23 to 24.
$25.00 for 5 fl oz at LovelySkin (about $5.00 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $25.00 at LovelySkin| Ingredient & claim honesty | 23 / 30 |
| Active record | 13 / 20 |
| Fit & range | 14 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 12 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 11 / 15 |
Clinique All About Clean 2-in-1 Charcoal Mask + Scrub
The maker’s current charcoal clay record, seated under its current name: the City Block Purifying Charcoal Clay Mask + Scrub of 2016 is discontinued, and this, its successor in the All About Clean line, carries the ritual forward, a five-minute mask that is massaged off as a scrub. The published list, Sephora’s panel, runs 22 items: water, kaolin second, maltodextrin, butylene glycol, silica, magnesium aluminum silicate, glyceryl stearate, PEG-100 stearate, sodium methyl cocoyl taurate, gentian root extract, laminaria saccharina extract, charcoal powder twelfth, tocopheryl acetate, acetyl glucosamine, caprylyl glycol, sucrose, xanthan gum, disodium EDTA, chlorphenesin, phenoxyethanol and the two iron oxide and titanium dioxide colourants. (The fuller rendering runs 24 items and seats the charcoal thirteenth; both documents put it in the same place, the first seat of the bottom half, and the desk prints both.) The credits are printed first. The clock is the category’s shortest and its most honest: leave on five minutes or until the mask turns pale grey, one to two times a week, a time and a visible endpoint together. The fragrance-free claim is cashed entire, no scent entry on either rendering, the house discipline holding. The kaolin at second is a real clay seat. The charges govern the score. The product is named and sold as a charcoal mask, and its charcoal stands at the bottom half’s first seat, undosed under the house’s stated no-percentages policy. And the acid the retail copy around this mask repeatedly pairs it with, salicylic acid, stands nowhere on the published list at all: the list carries no acid of any kind, its exfoliation done by the silica and the massage the directions describe, a mechanical record sold in a chemical’s company. At $11.47 an ounce it is premium arithmetic for a bottom-half headline. What keeps it ranked, clear of the skip by 31 points, is that its documents agree with each other and its clock is the best printed on the page.
$39.00 for 3.4 fl oz at Sephora (about $11.47 an ounce) (October 2026)
Buy · $39.00 at Sephora| Ingredient & claim honesty | 21 / 30 |
| Active record | 13 / 20 |
| Fit & range | 16 / 20 |
| Value per ounce | 9 / 15 |
| Longevity & service | 11 / 15 |
The numbers, side by side
| Mask | Score | Species | List | Price | The record, as printed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Ordinary Salicylic Acid 2% Masque | 92 | Acid mask, clay base | 19 items, kaolin 2nd, salicylic acid 7th | $13.80 / 1.7 oz at Sephora | Acid dosed at 2% in the name; pH 3.50 to 4.50 printed; ceiling of 10 minutes; charcoal 10th, the middle seat |
| Origins Clear Improvement Active Charcoal Mask | 82 | Clay and charcoal mask | 24 items, kaolin 2nd, charcoal 9th | $39.00 / 2.5 fl oz at Origins | Charcoal 1% and clay 18%, both dosed in the copy; no minutes printed, dryness is the timer |
| Kiehl’s Rare Earth Pore-Minimizing Clay Mask | 82 | Clay mask | 20 items, kaolin 2nd, bentonite 3rd | $47.00 / 4.2 fl oz at Kiehl’s | Clay blend dosed at 90%, individual clays undosed; the maker’s page serves it three ways |
| Paula’s Choice Skin Balancing Oil-Absorbing Mask | 81 | Clay mask | 22 items, kaolin 2nd, bentonite 3rd, willow bark 5th | 4 fl oz; current United States price not captured | Nothing dosed; oatmeal and bisabolol behind the clays; 10 to 15 minutes printed |
| Mediheal Teatree Essential Mask | 73 | Sheet mask | 35 items, tea tree extract 7th | $8.80 / 4-pack at Mediheal US | Tea tree family at four seats; dosed in ppm on the Korean label, nowhere on the American; 10 to 20 minutes |
| Jack Black Deep Dive Glycolic Facial Cleanser | 73 | Acid cleanser worn as a mask | 35 items, kaolin 2nd, glycolic acid 10th | $25.00 / 5 fl oz at LovelySkin | The maker’s mask directions on a cleanser’s bottle; the acid undosed; worn about five minutes |
| Clinique All About Clean 2-in-1 Charcoal Mask + Scrub | 70 | Clay mask and scrub | 22 items, kaolin 2nd, charcoal 12th | $39.00 / 3.4 fl oz at Sephora | Five minutes or until pale grey; no salicylic acid on the list; charcoal at the bottom half’s first seat |
| Brickell Purifying Charcoal Face Mask (skip) | 39 | Sold as a clay mask; listed as a scrub | 18 items, aloe 2nd, pumice 3rd | 4 fl oz; no verified United States price pinned | Charcoal, kaolin and bentonite all absent from the maker’s own list |
The value table
Price per ounce against score, the arithmetic checkable. The shelf runs from $4.75 to $15.60 the ounce among the priced tubes, and its order is not its ranking: the dearest ounce buys two printed percentages and no printed minutes, and the winner’s ounce buys the dose, the pH and the ceiling together.
| Mask | Score | Price per ounce | The verdict in one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paula’s Choice Skin Balancing Oil-Absorbing Mask | 81 | $4.75 | The gentle ounce: two clays and two soothers, at the last verified United States full price. |
| Jack Black Deep Dive Glycolic Facial Cleanser | 73 | $5.00 | The two-job ounce: a cleanser’s price for a mask’s second shift. |
| The Ordinary Salicylic Acid 2% Masque | 92 | $8.12 | The document’s ounce: the dose in the name, the pH and the ceiling printed. |
| Kiehl’s Rare Earth Pore-Minimizing Clay Mask | 82 | $11.19 | The institution’s ounce: the blend dosed, the serving contradicted. |
| Clinique All About Clean 2-in-1 Charcoal Mask + Scrub | 70 | $11.47 | The five-minute ounce: the best clock on the page under a bottom-half headline. |
| Origins Clear Improvement Active Charcoal Mask | 82 | $15.60 | The dosed ounce: both percentages printed, the minutes withheld. |
Two records stand outside this table’s arithmetic, for opposite reasons, both printed on their cards. The Mediheal is sold by the session, not the ounce: $8.80 for a 4-pack at the maker’s American store, $2.20 a mask, the cheapest single use on the page, its essence running 24 ml a sheet. The skip stands outside the ranking and outside the table: its maker’s Canadian store prices the 4-ounce jar at $49 CAD, no verified United States shelf price could be pinned in this pass, and an ounce the desk cannot price is an ounce the desk does not invent. Its problem was never its price. Its list was.
Which one to buy
Most readers, and oily or congested skin: The Ordinary Salicylic Acid 2% Masque, $13.80 at Sephora. The dose in the name, the pH printed, the ceiling printed, and the caveat carried on its card: it is an acid, worn on dry skin for no more than its 10 minutes, and sensitive or peeling skin is told by its own maker to leave it alone.
The charcoal buyer, and oil above all: the Origins (82), $39.00 at the maker, the only complete charcoal document in the category, bought with its one gap read first: no printed minutes, so the layer comes off when it is dry and not an hour later.
The traditionalist: the Kiehl’s (82), the two-clay bench seated second and third and the serving chosen by the reader, since the maker’s page offers three; the desk’s reading is the FAQ’s first answer, approximately 5 to 10 minutes, once or twice a week.
Dry or reactive skin: the Paula’s Choice (81), the clay built with soothers and no acid, bought where its current American shelf carries it; or the Mediheal sheet (73) at $2.20 a mask, the one record that adds water.
The five-minute reader: the Clinique (70), the shortest honest clock in the category, bought for the ritual and the kaolin, not for the charcoal in its name.
What we could not verify, and what we rested
The lists were graded as published, and their provenance varies, printed here rather than tidied away. The winner’s list, price and directions were read on Sephora’s product page, item 2267581, in stock at check time; its pH stands on the maker’s panel as carried by Ulta. The Origins list was read on the maker’s own store, document ILN99266, with its doses and clinical claim in the maker’s copy and its American price on the maker’s mobile store. The Kiehl’s list, blend claim and three servings were read on the maker’s own product page, where its price also stands. The Paula’s Choice list was read where two renderings of the maker’s panel agree entire; its current United States price and a live maker door evaded capture in this pass, a November capture owed, and its value row is graded on the last verified United States full price, $19 for the 4-ounce tube, labelled as such on its card. The Mediheal list and pack prices were read on the maker’s American store; its parts-per-million doses stand on the maker’s Korean labels and are printed as a border fact, not graded as an American dose. The Jack Black list was read on the maker’s published record with its mask directions in the maker’s own words; its price stands on LovelySkin’s listing, 5 fl oz, in stock at check time, the first Jack Black door this run has pinned after the failures on Cards No. 90, 93 and 94. The Clinique list was read on Sephora’s panel with the fuller 24-item rendering printed beside it on its card; its price is the maker’s American comparison-table price, $39.00, and its pill leads to Sephora’s product page for the same item, number 2421774. The skip’s list was read on its maker’s own routine page; the promises it fails stand in its Amazon listing’s key ingredients, quoted as the marketplace’s document, not the maker’s. Prices were checked on 22 October 2026 against merchant pages carrying the exact products named on the cards.
Rested, and why. COSRX’s sheet records are rested: the Mediheal’s American store carries the fuller verifiable document, list, pack prices and window on one maker’s page, and this page seats the sheet species once, on its strongest record. Clinique’s Anti-Blemish Solutions Oil-Control Cleansing Mask is rested unopened: an American drug-panel mask printing salicylic acid 1.0 percent is a follow-up Card’s first seat, and this page grades the charcoal record the brief and the shelf picture. The Origins Rich Purifying Charcoal Mask, the reformulated sister with the chia complex, is rested: the maker’s own FAQ distinguishes it from the original seated here, and two Origins records would crowd a species line this page draws once. Cetaphil’s DermaControl Purifying Clay Mask is rested unopened, the pharmacy clay whose list against its price is a November read. And H&M is rested, as it has been across the run: no product from its shelf is scored on this page. The photograph gap is admitted plainly: the bank holds no face mask product photography, no jar, tube or sheet packet, and no bathroom-shelf frames, the grooming run’s standing gap, so these cards run text-first and the hero is the subject itself, the face in daylight. Product and shelf frames are wanted from the merchant programmes.
Questions, answered
What is the best face mask for men?
On the published record, The Ordinary’s Salicylic Acid 2% Masque at 92 of 100: a 19-item list with kaolin second and the headline acid seventh, the dose printed in the product’s name, salicylic acid at 2 percent, the shelf’s only printed pH, 3.50 to 4.50, and the strictest printed clock on the page, no more than 10 minutes on dry skin, at $13.80 for 1.7 oz at Sephora, $8.12 an ounce. Behind it two clay records tie at 82, the Origins and the Kiehl’s, the tie ruled on the active record in the open; then the Paula’s Choice clay at 81, two records at 73, a 70, and the mask whose named actives do not stand on its maker’s own list, sent home at 39.
What is the difference between a clay mask, an acid mask and a sheet mask?
Three species share the shelf and this page grades each as what it is. A clay mask works by contact and absorption: kaolin or bentonite sits high on the list, the layer dries, and oil and surface debris leave with the rinse; four of the eight records here are clay-led. An acid mask works chemically in the same minutes: a printed acid does the exfoliating while the layer sits, which is why the acid records are the ones whose dose and clock matter most; two records here are acid-led, The Ordinary’s salicylic masque and the Jack Black cleanser that doubles as a glycolic mask. A sheet mask does neither: a fibre sheet holds an essence against the skin for a printed window, 10 to 20 minutes on the Mediheal record seated here, and nothing is rinsed. The species decide what an honest list looks like: clay is graded on where the clay stands, acid on whether the dose is printed, sheet on what the essence carries and whether its headline is dosed anywhere the buyer can read it.
Is the charcoal in a charcoal mask actually in it?
Charcoal is sold as the headline on four of the eight records, and it stands in the top half of its list on one. Origins prints the strongest charcoal document in the category: bamboo charcoal powder ninth of 24, and the dose printed in the copy, 1 percent charcoal and 18 percent clay. The Ordinary’s charcoal stands tenth of 19, the middle seat of the list, behind the acid its name actually doses. Clinique’s charcoal stands twelfth of 22 on Sephora’s panel, the first seat of the bottom half, under a name that leads with it. And the Brickell mask, named Purifying Charcoal, publishes a maker’s list on which charcoal does not stand at all, which is why it is the skip. A charcoal headline, read against the lists, cashes entire on one bottle of the four.
How long should a face mask stay on?
Exactly as long as its maker prints, because on a rinse-off shelf the minute is the dose: the contact time is the exposure, and the exposure is the treatment. Seven of the eight records here print a time. The clocks run from Clinique’s five minutes, or until the mask turns pale grey, through the winner’s ceiling of no more than 10 minutes, to the sheet mask’s 10 to 20 minute window. The one record that prints no minutes is the Origins, whose direction is to allow the mask to fully dry: dryness is a state, not a dose, and its fit row is charged for the missing number. Grooming Take No. 8 settled the rule this column grades by: where a percentage is absent, the printed minute is the only dose the buyer is ever told, and a maker that prints neither has told him nothing.
Do any of these masks contain fragrance?
As a list entry, none of them. A Fragrance or Parfum entry stands on 0 of the eight current lists, the cleanest column in the grooming run: the two leaders carry none, the clay institution carries none, and even the skip’s maker’s list carries none. Two cautions ride under the clean count. Absence of the word is not absence of scent: the Origins scents itself with myrtle leaf water standing on its list as an ingredient, and the Mediheal’s tea tree leaf oil is its own perfume, named where a reader can weigh it. And the Kiehl’s fragrance-free claim is printed on a list that ends in oat flour and allantoin with no scent entry at all, which is what a cashed claim looks like. On this shelf, for once, the default is the honest one.
Which mask should oily skin buy, and which should dry skin buy?
Oily and congested skin: the winner (92), the dosed acid working in a clay base for a printed 10 minutes; or the Origins (82) where the job is oil alone, its maker printing an 84 percent oil reduction after one use in clinical testing on 30 women. Dry or reactive skin should read the shelf from the other end: the Paula’s Choice clay (81), built with colloidal oatmeal and bisabolol and no acid at all, worn 10 to 15 minutes; or the sheet (73), the one record that adds water instead of managing oil. What dry skin should not take from this page is the acid winner worn past its printed ceiling, the habit of leaving clay on until it cracks, or the skip, whose pumice scrub wearing a mask’s name is the wrong tool for any skin on the page.
Why was the Brickell mask sent home?
Because the two ingredients its name and its marketplace copy promise do not stand on its maker’s own published list. Brickell’s Purifying Charcoal Face Mask is sold on activated charcoal and kaolin clay: the Amazon listing names both among its key ingredients, with bentonite clay, kelp, DMAE, MSM and hyaluronic acid behind them. The list Brickell itself publishes for the mask, on its own routine page, runs 18 items: aloe juice second, pumice third, jojoba beads fourth, butters, tea and botanical extracts. Charcoal stands nowhere on it. Kaolin stands nowhere on it. Of the marketplace’s named key ingredients, two, aloe and vitamin E, stand on the maker’s list. What the maker’s list describes is a pumice scrub in a mask’s name, and the desk grades the document the maker publishes, not the one its marketplace writes. Scored 39 and sent home.
The shelf above the sink continues at Card No. 94, toners, where the step this page’s masks prepare for is graded, Card No. 93, exfoliators, where the dosed leave-on and rinse-off acids stand at 88 and 85, Card No. 91, serums and Card No. 67, cleansers; the routine that orders them is in the skincare Decoder; and the two arguments this Card grades by, the minute as the dose and the dose that counts only where the buyer reads it, are made in Take No. 8 and Take No. 14, the number is in another country.
Checked and updated October 2026