Beauty industry insiders report routines climbing toward twenty steps as consumers compete for increasingly marginal returns
SEOUL The once-revolutionary ten-step Korean skincare routine, celebrated globally for years as a comprehensive but achievable approach to skin care, has reportedly been quietly recategorized by serious enthusiasts as “the beginner’s version,” with dedicated practitioners now routinely incorporating twelve, fifteen, or in some documented cases upward of twenty distinct products into a single nightly routine.
“Ten steps used to feel thorough,” said Seoul-based beauty content creator Yuna Baek, gesturing at a bathroom shelf lined with what she estimates is nineteen separate products, arranged in a specific, non-negotiable order. “Now ten steps feels almost lazy. I have people in my comments asking why I skipped the essence mist between toner and serum. There wasn’t a skipped step. There’s just an entirely new step that didn’t used to exist, and now apparently does.”
An Industry That Keeps Finding New Gaps to Fill
Cosmetics companies, always attentive to consumer demand, have responded to the escalating routine culture by developing increasingly specialized products targeting increasingly specific, narrow functions a toner specifically for use between other toners, an essence designed to be applied before a different essence, and, in one product Baek says she’s genuinely uncertain how to categorize, “a mist that exists purely to help the previous mist absorb better.” Industry analysts describe the phenomenon as a natural, almost inevitable outcome of a beauty market built around continuous product innovation and consumer education content that rewards ever more granular specificity.
“There’s a natural ceiling to how many genuinely necessary skincare steps exist,” said one Seoul-based beauty industry analyst. “We are well past that ceiling. What’s driving the routine’s continued expansion at this point isn’t dermatological necessity. It’s a content ecosystem that rewards novelty, and a consumer base that’s been trained to associate more steps with more seriousness about skincare, even when the marginal benefit of step seventeen is genuinely difficult to measure.”
Consumers, Caught Between Devotion and Exhaustion
Baek says she genuinely enjoys her routine, describing the nightly ritual as meditative rather than burdensome, even as she acknowledges the financial and time commitment involved has grown substantially since she started documenting her routine several years ago. “It used to take me fifteen minutes,” she said. “Now it’s closer to forty-five, some nights longer if I’m doing a mask step. I don’t necessarily think my skin is dramatically better than it was at ten steps. I do think the ritual itself has become something I value independent of the measurable results, which is a slightly strange thing to admit out loud.”
A Backlash, Quietly Building
Not everyone in the beauty community has embraced the escalation. A modest but growing “skinimalism” counter-movement has emerged in direct response, advocating for stripped-down, four-or-five-step routines built around a smaller set of genuinely effective, dermatologist-recommended products. Proponents argue the maximalist trend has drifted well past any evidence-based skincare science and into something closer to consumerist ritual for its own sake. “At a certain point you have to ask what you’re actually treating with product number fourteen,” said one dermatologist who has publicly criticized the routine escalation trend. “For most people, a well-chosen five-step routine will outperform a poorly understood twenty-step routine, dermatologically speaking. But ‘five simple steps’ doesn’t generate the same kind of devoted content engagement as ‘my ultimate twenty-step evening ritual.’ The incentives point toward more, regardless of what the skin science actually supports.”
Baek, Unlikely to Simplify Anytime Soon
Despite the growing skinimalism pushback, Baek says she has no immediate plans to trim her own routine, citing both genuine enjoyment and, she admits candidly, a certain reluctance to disappoint an audience that has come to expect elaborate, product-dense content from her specifically. “If I posted a five-step routine tomorrow, my comments would fill up with people asking if I was okay,” she said, laughing. “There’s an expectation now. I built this audience on thoroughness. I’m not sure I can walk it back, even if part of me suspects the dermatologists arguing for less might actually have a point.”
The Economics of an Ever-Expanding Routine
Beauty industry financial analysts note the escalating routine trend has proven remarkably lucrative for cosmetics brands, with the average spending per dedicated skincare consumer climbing steadily alongside the growing product counts. Some brands have begun explicitly marketing “routine completion” bundles, packaging ten or more complementary products together specifically to lower the barrier to adopting a more elaborate regimen all at once, rather than accumulating individual products gradually over time. “It’s a genuinely smart business model,” the industry analyst said. “You’re not selling one product anymore. You’re selling an entire daily practice, and once someone’s invested in fifteen steps, the psychological and financial sunk cost makes stepping back down to five feel like a bigger decision than it should.”
Retailers report that skincare remains one of the most resilient beauty categories even amid broader economic caution among younger consumers, a pattern several attribute directly to the routine’s ritual quality rather than pure product efficacy. “People will cut back on a lot of discretionary spending before they cut back on their skincare routine,” one Seoul department store beauty buyer said. “It’s not really a rational purchasing decision at step fifteen anymore. It’s closer to a wellness practice. People protect their wellness practices, budget-wise, even when they’re cutting back everywhere else.”
Where the Trend Goes From Here
Whether the routine escalation continues climbing toward even higher step counts, or whether the skinimalism countermovement eventually gains enough traction to reverse the trend, remains genuinely uncertain among industry watchers. For now, both camps continue producing content, both camps continue finding devoted audiences, and consumers are left to choose their own position somewhere along a spectrum that now stretches from four steps to nearly two dozen. Baek, for her part, says she’ll keep documenting her own evolving routine regardless of which philosophy eventually wins out more broadly. “I’ll add a step if I genuinely think it helps,” she said. “I’ll also probably add a step if enough people ask me to try a new product, if I’m being fully honest about how content creation actually works.” Further coverage of Asia’s evolving beauty culture continues at bohiney.com.
SOURCE: https://prat.UK/
