Is Retinol Right for My Skin? This L'Oreal Scanner Gave Me an Answer

If you’ve ever wondered whether the wonder product retinol is right for you, you’re not alone. I’ve spent hours scouring skin care Reddit to work out if it’s something I should use, as well as which version is right for me. And then when I have used it, whether it’s working the way it should.

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

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

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 looks at only the top surface level of your skin, and also recommends only 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, the Cell BioPrint, a collaboration with Korean beauty tech company NanoEnTek. It can take a reading from under our skin and read the biomarkers to tell us whether we should be responsive to certain ingredients – like retinol, for example – and then match our skin with appropriate products.

I was excited to try the tech, as I’ve experimented with retinol a little over the years and haven’t been able to work out whether it’s for me. Retinol – a form of vitamin A – is affordable, available over the counter and promises to smooth 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 adjust to it, and in the meantime, it can become dry and flaky, or it can cause an acne purge.

I’ve twice abandoned retinol during an ongoing acne purge, often referred to as the retinol uglies. 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 retinol, the anti-aging effects could be well worth it.

What the Cell BioPrint revealed to me

My Cell BioPrint experience started with dabbing my skin multiple times with a sticker to pick up skin cells. The sticker went into a cartridge, and it took about 1 minute to strip out everything but the proteins from my skin. The liquid within the cartridge containing the proteins then got squeezed from a dropper onto a test strip and inserted into the tabletop Cell BioPrint machine, which took around 90 seconds to read my biomarkers.

The good news: L’Oreal’s tech told me that my skin has a high responsiveness to retinol, with a score of 75 out of 100. If I can tolerate it, I might be able to improve my pores, oiliness and barrier function, all of which L’Oreal identified as “needing attention.” Along with retinol, it gave me recommendations for a SkinCeuticals salicylic acid serum and a zinc PCA IT cosmetics cream.

I really appreciated the scientific analysis of my skin, which made me determined to persevere with retinol the next time I feel like quitting, even though I might need to start at a lower concentration than I’ve previously used. I also liked that the service, which is designed to provide in-store skin analysis, was able to tap into L’Oreal’s vast library of skincare products, rather than solutions just from 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 the products take time to work. So this really is seeing the invisible and taking the guessing game out and giving you the most precise products.”