Round Lab

Round Lab is a Korean skincare brand built around ingredients from the Korean peninsula: deep sea water drawn from around Ulleungdo and Dokdo, and plants gathered across the Taebaek mountains. Each line is named for what it's built on.

1025 Dokdo is the line the brand is best known for. It runs on that deep sea water and covers the basics — cleanser, toner, lotion, cream, cleansing oil — and its cleanser is described as slightly acidic, at pH 5.0 to 6.0. Birch Juice uses sap from silver birch in Inje and carries the sun care: the Birch Moisturizing Sunscreen promises zero white cast, and lists avobenzone, homosalate and octisalate as its filters.

The rest divide by concern. Mugwort is the calming line, Pine Cica pairs pine with madecassoside, Black Soybean and Soybean Panthenol work on firmness, Vita Niacinamide on tone with seaberry and vitamin C, and Camellia Collagen on elasticity.

Three of those claims are worth unpacking: what a pH figure on a cleanser buys you, what birch sap actually contributes, and what makes a sunscreen leave a cast or not.

Start with the pH. Healthy skin sits at roughly 4.7 to 5.5, and soap-based cleansers run far more alkaline — that's the tight, squeaky feeling. At pH 5.0 to 6.0, the 1025 Dokdo cleanser sits close enough to avoid most of that swing, and a cleanser in that range is the cheapest improvement available in a routine. The gel cleanser below is where we'd start.

Birch sap is a gentler proposition: liquid tapped from birch trees, standing in for some of the purified water, carrying sugars and minerals as a light hydrator. Deep sea water works much the same way. Both make a formula comfortable rather than powerful, which is what you want in a toner or a daily cream — the two birch sap picks below.

The zero-white-cast claim holds up, and it's a filter question. Organic filters absorb UV and tend to disappear; mineral filters scatter visible light and leave a pale film. With avobenzone, homosalate, octisalate and octocrylene on its list, the sunscreen below is built on organic filters in the same way.

We don't carry Round Lab itself. For each of these jobs, though, we send an alternative we rate highly — the four picks below.

For Round Lab's 1025 Dokdo Cleanser: add water to create a creamy foam, massage it over the face thoroughly, then rinse with lukewarm water. For the 1025 Dokdo Toner: after cleansing, soak a cotton pad and sweep it gently over the face — or use the leave-on method, soaking pads and resting them on the face for five to ten minutes. The four picks above are arranged in that same order: cleanser, then toner, then cream, with sunscreen last in the morning.