Trust

Town Hall

Who we are, how the town works, and the rules we keep. Tap a building to step inside.

TOWN HALLOUR STORYOur storyWhy we existHOW IT WORKSHow it works8 districtsVERDICTSVerdictsEvidence firstHOUSE RULESHouse rulesWhat we refuseFind your wayTours & help
Our story

Skincare you can actually trust, matched to your skin

The skincare industry has a transparency problem. Marketing budgets dwarf research spending, “dermatologist recommended” is often a paid line, and it is genuinely hard to tell whether a product works or simply went viral. Dermington exists to answer that with evidence rather than advertising.

Honest assessment is only half the job. The other half is finding what suits your skin, and knowing when products aren’t the answer. Most skincare sites are shops with articles attached, and they answer “what’s popular?” This one is built for a harder question: “what is likely to work on my skin, and how would I know?”

So Dermington is built like a small town. Each district does one job, and once you tell it about your skin, every one of them works around you.

Why “Dermington”?

Derm, as in dermatology. The name is built the way English towns are. Kensington, Paddington, Washington: the old -ton is a tūn, a town, and -ing names the people it belongs to. Dermington is the town of derm, for everyone looking after their skin.

What it was built against

In skincare the buyer is structurally outmatched. Five ways:

  1. The label is not the product

    “Brightening” is at least five clinical claims wearing one word: post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, melasma, sun spots, photodamage, or optical shine. “Retinol” on the front can mean an ester a hundred times weaker on the back.

  2. Ratings measure popularity, not suitability

    A 4.7-star average says a product pleased people. It can’t say the product is a poor fit for rosacea, that its active is under-dosed, or that a large share of those reviews came from seeded promotions. On some products we found a third to half of them did.

  3. Advice is generic; skin is not

    A rich ceramide balm is a gift for eczema and a liability for fungal acne. A single score has to average that difference away, and that difference is the whole point.

  4. Nobody remembers anything

    Which product caused that reaction in March? When did the flare start? It’s exactly what a clinician asks, and it lives unreliably in memory and a camera roll.

  5. And products have a ceiling

    Some conditions don’t respond to anything sold without a prescription. Saying so ends the sale, so few shops do, and people spend years and hundreds of dollars on something that needed a prescription in month two.

The town in numbers

Counted fresh on every build.

Products assessed
11,814

from 813 brands, in 18 categories

Skin concerns
26

each judged separately

Evidence rows
231

one ingredient, one claim, its studies

Ingredient references
312

one page per molecule

Curated rankings
208

ordered by the verdict for the concern

Gazette articles
522

every citation checked against its source

Questions answered
2,287

in 18 libraries

Routines
68

built by the routine engine

Therapy guides
18

163 therapies documented

Tools
42

free, no account needed

How it works

One town, built around your skin

Each district does one job: decide what to use, check it’s safe for you, use it properly, track whether it worked, and know when the answer isn’t a product at all.

Every page in town

The site rearranges itself around your skin

You describe your skin once. Everything after is filtered through it, with the reason shown in words.

The profile takes about a minute: skin type, up to three concerns, how reactive your skin is, pregnancy, and optional refinements (age band, sun-response type, experience with actives, ingredients you never want to see). Every question is skippable. From then on:

  • Product pages speak to you. “Good choice for your rosacea”, or “You listed eczema; this one isn’t for it”, with the reasoning written out.
  • Every card carries your verdicts, in listings, rankings, brand pages and routines: up to two chips for your concerns, and a poor fit can’t hide behind a good one.
  • My Skin becomes your dashboard: picks for each concern, the guide each connects to, your routine, your shelf, and reading chosen for you, each labelled with why it’s there.
  • Exclusions are hard filters. An ingredient you ruled out is checked against the actual ingredient list, not the front of the box.
  • Your history overrides everything. A product you logged a reaction to is flagged for you everywhere, however well it does for everyone else.

Personalization without surveillance

Your profile is never sent anywhere in order to personalize anything. The matching runs inside your browser, against small public files that are the same for everyone, so the server never learns who wants what. There is no behavioural profile, no advertising identity and no data broker.

42 tools, in six families

Every tool is free, needs no account and saves nothing to a server unless you ask. They share one profile and one library, so each makes the others smarter.

When products aren’t enough

Over-the-counter skincare has a limit, and for some conditions it arrives early. The responsible thing is to say so, and to map what lies beyond it. That is what the therapy guides in the Clinic do.

Dermington does not diagnose or treat. We show where over-the-counter care stops, and how to find the people who go further.

  1. Over the counter

    One regimen, built up as tolerance allows, with realistic timeframes in weeks and months.

  2. Where OTC stops

    What shop-bought care can achieve, for whom, and the red flags that mean skipping ahead.

  3. Beyond the shelf

    The prescription and procedure rungs, each on the same card: evidence, use, what to expect.

  4. Finding care

    Who to see, how to get seen, and what to bring, paired with Derm Visit Prep.

There are 18 guides, documenting 163 therapies. Each is anchored to the current recommendations of the bodies that set practice (26 guideline and review sources across the set) and says so plainly where no formal guideline exists. Psoriasis, Actinic keratosis, Acne scarring are published as clinician territory instead, because no honest self-directed route exists for them.

Guides are written from the guidance they cite. Our Chief Medical Reviewer reads published pages afterwards as style and quality control; that review is not a gate on publication, and no one is named on a rule or a verdict.

One rule governs the commercial boundary: prescription and procedure cards never carry product links. Where products genuinely help alongside a prescription, they appear as supporting care, in their real role. The site that tells you when to stop buying is the one worth believing when it tells you what to buy.

See the therapy guides →

Your data, and why it has to survive

A system that forgets isn’t a system. Everything you build here is inventoried in one place, portable, and yours to take or destroy.

Your data lists everything held for you: profile, shelf, wishlist, diaries, scores, patch tests, mole checks, schedules, photos and appointment briefs. Each row links to the tool that owns it, shows whether it’s backed up, and can be cleared on its own; the whole library exports to one file and re-imports safely. It answers “what do you have on me?” completely, with a delete button beside each answer.

There is no signup wall, on anything. Every tool works anonymously. An account exists because browsers delete data, which would silently erase months of tracking. Sign up and everything you made as a visitor merges in, then follows you to any device you sign into, photos included. Diaries merge entry by entry, so an offline phone can’t overwrite a laptop, and a deleted entry stays deleted. Because browsers can delete data, the whole library exports to one file you keep, and restores on any browser. A small chip always tells you whether your data is on this device only or backed up.

How storage works, browser by browser →

Verdicts

How a product earns a verdict

Most ratings pick a number and justify it afterwards. This runs the other way: evidence first, reasoning in the open, and the verdict last.

Every rule, in full

  1. The label

    The ingredient list as declared: which actives, at what dose, in what base.

  2. An evidence row

    One ingredient, one claim, its studies. 231 rows so far.

  3. Three questions

    Right active for this concern? In a form that can work? Likely tolerated?

  4. A published rule

    A numbered rule maps the three answers to one word. Every rule is public.

  5. A verdict per concern

    • Strong choice
    • Good choice
    • Supporting role
    • Promising
    • Unproven
    • Falls short
    • Not for this

Evidence dots show how strong the trials are, beside the verdict, never blended into it.

A receipt under every verdict names the document, the dose, the date the row was checked and the rule, and opens into a full receipt page; where no row exists yet, the research queue says so.

Judged per concern

Nobody asks whether a product is good in the abstract; they ask whether it’s good for their melasma. So a product gets a separate verdict for each concern it claims to help, and every curated ranking is ordered by the verdict for its concern. A verdict is our view of how well the formula fits, never a claim that a product treats anything.

Read from the primary literature

Each evidence row pairs one ingredient with one specific claim, and is built from controlled trials and systematic reviews read paper by paper. Its tier is derived from what was found, not typed in, and a study of one condition is never borrowed for another.

Cited precisely

Every citation is checked against the source database before it publishes, so the link under a claim opens the paper it names: same title, journal and year.

What readers report, beside it

Review text is read for what people said about their concern rather than counted as stars, and undisclosed promotions are flagged. Reader polls on every product page add what people say happened to them. Both sit beside the verdict, never inside it.

House rules

What we refuse to do

Constraints enforced in code and process, not promised in a paragraph. The same evidence bar applies to every claim, from a brand, a regulator or a trend.

  • No paid placementNo brand can pay to be listed, featured or ranked. No sponsored seals, no house brand.
  • No sponsored reviewsNo free products in exchange for coverage, and no softened assessment for a partnership.
  • No hidden conflictsAffiliate links are disclosed, and they never move a verdict or a ranking.
  • No popularity scoringStar averages and sales rank never feed a verdict.
  • No citation without its studyEvery reference is confirmed against the source database before it publishes.
  • No treatment claimsA verdict says how well a formula fits a concern. It never says a product treats anything.
  • No marketing language“Revolutionary”, “miracle”, “breakthrough”: we describe what ingredients do, with the evidence.
  • No brand politics as product qualityCruelty-free status and ownership are shown as facts. They never move a verdict.
  • No selling your dataNothing about you is sent anywhere to personalize a page, and nothing is sold, shared or used to target you.
  • No walls, no popupsNo signup wall on any tool. No unprompted modals, interstitials or countdown timers.
  • No medical adviceClinical tools are educational and point toward a professional. Nothing here assesses anyone’s skin.
  • No pretending the shelf is enoughWhere over-the-counter care stops, we say so, and show what lies beyond it.

The small print, in plain words

Find your way

New in town?

Be shown around, try it with someone else’s skin first, or tell us what we got wrong.

Where the town goes next

The system is built to widen, not to be finished. All of this is in progress:

  • More therapy guides, one condition at a time, each with an honest over-the-counter first line.
  • A deeper evidence table. Every new row sharpens every verdict that depends on it, across the whole catalogue at once.
  • Broader real-world reports, as reader polls fill up and more review sources come in.
  • More tools, each inheriting the profile and the library for free.
  • The Academy, short programs with certificates. The first is being tested by early students before it opens to everyone.
  • A growing catalogue, every new product judged by the same engine on arrival.

Every other skincare site tells you what people liked.This one tells you what your skin is likely to do, and then remembers what it actually did.