Is retinol right for my skin? This L’Oreal scanner gave me an answer

If you’ve ever wondered if the wonder retinol product is right for you, you’re not alone. I’ve spent hours scouring Reddit for skin care to find out if it’s something I should be using, and which version is right for me. And then when I used it, if it works as it should.

I’m one of nine out of 10 women who feel frustrated with skincare and can’t figure out which products are best for me, according to cosmetics giant L’Oreal. There’s a “joy” in experimenting with makeup, but experimenting with skincare is “frustrating,” says Guive Balooch, the company’s global managing director of augmented beauty and open innovation.

“Part of the problem with this is that we’re doing a lot of auditions without the facts and science behind what our individual skin actually needs,” says Balooch.

Last year, I tried out some of L’Oreal’s cutting-edge tech products at Vivatech in Paris, including Kiehl’s Derma-Reader, an imaging machine that can examine your skin and make product recommendations. The Derma-Reader was fascinating to experiment with, but the technology only looks at the top level of your skin’s surface, and also only recommends Kiehl’s products as a treatment, which may not be the best for you.

At CES 2025 this year, the company unveiled a new device, Cell BioPrint, a collaboration with Korean beauty technology company NanoEnTek. It may take a reading under our skin and reading biomarkers to tell us if we should be responsive to certain ingredients – like retinol, for example – and then match our skin with appropriate products.

Check this out: I gave L’Oréal my cells to know which products are good for my skin (and so should you!)

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I was excited to try the technology, as I’ve experimented a bit with retinol over the years and haven’t been able to figure out if it’s for me. Retinol – a form of vitamin A – is affordable, available over the counter and promises to soften fine lines and wrinkles, shrink enlarged pores and treat acne. But it also has its downsides: namely that your skin can take a long time to adapt to it, and in the meantime, it can become dry and wrinkled, or it can cause an acne breakout.

I’ve ditched retinol twice during an ongoing acne breakout, often referred to as ugly retinol. But as L’Oreal’s imaging tech has told me, my skin’s age is three years older than my actual age, and if I can tolerate the retinol, the anti-aging effects may be worth it.

What Cell BioPrint revealed to me

My Cell BioPrint experience started with painting my skin several times with a glue to get the skin cells. The adhesive came in a cartridge and it took about 1 minute to remove everything but the protein from my skin. The liquid inside the cartridge containing the proteins was then squeezed from a dropper onto a test strip and fed into the Cell BioPrint machine on the table, which took about 90 seconds to read my biomarkers.

The good news: the L’Oreal tech told me that my skin has a high reaction to retinol, with a score of 75 out of 100. If I can tolerate it, I may be able to improve my pores, oiliness, and barrier function , all of which L’Oreal identified as “attention-seeking.” Along with retinol, he recommended a SkinCeuticals salicylic acid serum and a PCA IT cosmetic cream with zinc.

I really appreciated the scientific analysis of my skin, which made me determined to continue with retinol the next time I feel like quitting, even though I may have to start with a lower concentration than I used before. I also liked that the service, which is designed to provide in-store skin analysis, was able to tap into L’Oreal’s huge library of skincare products, rather than solutions from just one brand.

“Today, we have so many choices, and what we need to understand is, what are the right choices for our biology and our needs?” Balooch said. “A lot of products take time to work. So it’s really about seeing the unseen and taking the guesswork out of it and giving you the most accurate products.”