The best wrinkle products

Last reviewed: August 2011

By age 40, most people's skin shows some wear and tear. As skin becomes thinner and less resilient, people develop wrinkly eyes and foreheads, and crease lines from the sides of the nose to the corners of the lips.

This process is exacerbated by sunlight: Every ultraviolet ray that penetrates the skin acts like a molecular bullet, setting off a biochemical chain reaction that damages collagen (the main component of skin) and creates fine lines and wrinkles. UV light also disturbs the skin's pigment cells, creating age spots and freckles in light-skinned people, and uneven distribution of pigmentation in darker-skinned people. Though pigment changes, age spots, and fine wrinkles are not a health problem, the sun overexposure that causes them is the principal risk factor for skin cancer. Following are some wrinkle products to consider.

Wrinkle creams

Americans spend more than $1 billion a year on wrinkle products. In our test, we found that at best the wrinkle creams had a small effect, and not on everyone. After 12 weeks our top-rated cream lessened wrinkles somewhat on nine of 16 people.

Wrinkle serums

How well do wrinkle serums really work? Not very. The effectiveness of even the best products varied from subject to subject. And improvements were minor—when we did see wrinkle reductions, they were at best slight, and they fell short of the miracles that manufacturers seemed to imply on product labels.

Eye creams

We tested 16 over-the-counter eye creams and found several worth trying. Just don't expect these wrinkle products to turn the clock back to your dewy-skinned youth. None came close to eliminating wrinkles. And one moisturizing product with no anti-wrinkle claims reduced wrinkles about as well as several high-rated eye creams did.