Using a Vitamin C eye cream is one of the best things you can do for the skin around your eyes. This skin is generally thinner and more delicate than the skin on your face, and this only gets more pronounced as you age. Vitamin C eye cream can help plump up and firm thinning skin, keeping you looking younger for longer. It can do this and much more.

What does Vitamin C Eye Cream do?

Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant. This is important because your skin, and the delicate skin around your eyes, is always being subjected to free radicals. These are unstable atoms, missing an electron, which can steal that electron from healthy skin and skin proteins, causing serious damage, including signs of aging such as fine lines and wrinkles.

Because UV radiation is one of the main causes of free radicals, this can also result in hyperpigmentation around the eyes as the skin attempts to protect itself by producing melanin. Melanin is the substance that gives your skin it’s color and causes freckles and tanning in response to UV exposure.

In addition to hyperpigmentation, free radicals also damage the protein collagen, which is vital for plump, firm, and elastic skin. This damage leads to fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin on the face and around the eyes. And, the already fragile skin under the eyes can become even thinner.

Helps Prevent and Improve Crow’s Feet, Fine Lines, and Wrinkles

While repeated facial movements have some bearing on the development of crow’s feet, damage from loss of collagen is a crucial factor. Vitamin C eye cream can help with crow’s feet, fine lines, and wrinkles in two ways.

Since Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant, applying it topically can neutralize free radicals that have overwhelmed the skin’s natural antioxidant defenses. This helps to prevent the damage free radicals can cause to the skin around the eyes.

Also, Vitamin C plays a critical role in collagen synthesis, boosting the production of this vital protein. This, in turn, helps to repair the damage that has already been done. In a 1999 clinical trial, topical ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) was applied to one side of each participant’s face, while a control vehicle was applied to the other for three months. Optical profilometry image analysis showed a statistically significant 73.7 percent improvement of crow’s feet on the active treatment side.

In fact, not only does Vitamin C stimulate collagen production, it actually prevents it from being broken down in the first place, thereby helping to prevent signs of aging such as crow’s feet, fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin.

Helps Diminish the Look of Dark Circles and Hyperpigmentation

Dark circles are caused by a number of things, including rubbing the eyes. This causes the tiny blood vessels to break and blood to pool under the eyes causing dark circles. And sometimes blood pools under the eyes for other reasons, causing darkening. Vitamin C eye cream can boost collagen production, thickening the under-eye skin, thus reducing the look of this kind of darkness.

This increased collagen production also strengthens the tiny blood vessels under the eyes to prevent them from breaking in the first place. This is because collagen is such an important protein in the body. It not only supports skin and blood vessels but also bones, ligaments, muscles, and more.

You can also have dark circles simply because your under-eye skin has thinned, as with aging, and blood vessels become more visible. Again, Vitamin C’s stimulation of collagen production helps your under-eye skin to plump up and hide these blood vessels, thereby reducing the look of dark circles.

Using Vitamin C eye cream can help to keep dark circles from occurring, or at least keep them to a minimum, by stimulating collagen production to help keep the under-eye skin from thinning further, and significantly slow its thinning as you age.

Also, Vitamin C’s antioxidant abilities protect the delicate under-eye skin from damage due to sun exposure, including hyperpigmentation (darkening of the skin and dark spots). You can also experience dark spots as you age (age spots). Both types of darkened areas are caused by excess melanin production.

Vitamin C interferes in the production of melanin, reducing hyperpigmentation. It also has brightening qualities that allow it to lighten the skin and even out your skin tone. Together, these actions help diminish the look of hyperpigmentation around the eyes. Vitamin C eye cream can help prevent hyperpigmentation caused by free radicals from UV exposure, pollution, cigarette smoke, and even metabolic processes.

Vitamin C eye cream is not a substitute for sunscreen. You must always protect your skin with sunscreen safe to use around the eyes with an SPF of at least 30.

Best Vitamin C Eye Cream

There are numerous Vitamin C eye creams on the market today. The most potent creams will have Vitamin C in the form of L-ascorbic acid as it is the active and pure form of the vitamin. But L-ascorbic acid is unstable and will oxidize when exposed to air, heat, and light, sometimes even on your skin. And, it can be irritating to delicate under-eye skin if not paired with the right additional ingredients.

When choosing a Vitamin C eye cream, be sure to look at all of the other ingredients, so you know what you are getting. Vitamin C may be listed in alternate forms such as Ascorbyl Palmitate and Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate (MAP).

However, Ascorbyl Palmitate and Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate don’t really increase the level of ascorbic acid in the skin, either because they don’t convert to ascorbic acid well or because they don’t absorb as well. L-ascorbic acid is the form that is necessary for Vitamin C’s beneficial actions to take place in the skin.

Beautystat’s Universal C Eye Perfector is the best Vitamin C eye cream for a number of reasons. It contains the world’s only stable L-ascorbic acid, meaning it won’t oxidize like other ascorbic acid formulas but will stay fresh to the last pump. L-ascorbic acid is the purest and most active form of Vitamin C. Beautystat’s formula contains 5 percent stable L-ascorbic acid, providing all the benefits of Vitamin C to the skin around the eyes, including antioxidant protection, collagen production and protection, hyperpigmentation reduction, and the smoothing of fine lines, wrinkles and crow’s feet.

In addition, Universal C Eye Perfector contains caffeine, which is proven to reduce puffiness that not only is unpleasant on its own but also causes dark shadows under the eyes.

Hyaluronic acid, a humectant capable of binding 1000 times its weight in water, binds and locks moisture to the skin around the eyes, providing deep, long-lasting hydration. This is important for the health and vitality of your skin, and it also helps diminish the look of dark circles which can be caused by dehydration.

This eye cream also contains EGCG, derived from the most active part of green tea, which brightens and protects the sensitive under-eye area and provides additional antioxidant protection.

And, while not a complete substitute for sunscreen, Beautystat’s Universal C Eye Perfector has added titanium dioxide, which is a mineral sunscreen.

Finally, this Vitamin C eye cream has optical diffusers that brighten and blur imperfections on application.

All in all, Beautystat’s Universal C Eye Perfector is the best all-around Vitamin C eye cream for combatting and slowing the signs of aging.

OleHenriksen Banana Bright + Eye Cream

This eye cream promises a formula that brightens, visibly diminishes dark circles and crow’s feet, and improves concealer application and wear. The brand claims these actions are accomplished by its triple Vitamin C complex with real gold that improves the delivery of Vitamin C to the skin. It’s also vegan and fragrance-free. OleHenriksen has combined ascorbic acid with glutathione and gold to create a water-soluble complex they claim improves delivery to the surface layer of skin. It also contains 3-O-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid and Tretrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, both Vitamin C derivatives.

But, while nanoparticles of gold have been shown to penetrate the skin, more research is needed to determine the potential toxicity of gold once it has entered the body. It is not inert as once thought.

Paula’s Choice C5 Super Boost Eye Cream

This cream advertises a concentrated vitamin C eye cream that precisely targets common under-eye concerns to improve discoloration, dullness, and firmness through the use of 5 percent stabilized Vitamin C, peptides, hyaluronic acid and zerumbone, a concentrated ginger extract.

However, their stabilized Vitamin C consists of 3 Vitamin C derivatives, 3-O- Ethyl Ascorbic Acid, Ascorbyl Glucoside, and Ascorbyl Palmitate. You already know ascorbyl palmitate doesn’t really increase levels of ascorbic acid in the skin. And, this Vitamin C eye cream contains no extra sunscreen.

While the cosmetic industry seems to have become inundated with new Vitamin C derivatives, and there is some evidence to support claims that they absorb into the skin, there is no substitute for pure Vitamin C (L – ascorbic acid) in a truly stable form.