Puffiness, Meet Your Match: The Ice Roller
Puffiness, or a face that appears bloated, swollen, and tired, happens to the best of us—and often after having the most fun (like some kind of karmic curse for enjoying yourself). Whether because of one too many cocktails, not sleeping enough, or OD’ing on salt, it sucks to wake up looking like an inflated blowfish. But a girl’s gotta have her french fries! And red wine, and sushi, and late night Netflix marathons.
Luckily, there’s a new beauty tool that solves the puffiness problem in seconds, and happens to be really, really enjoyable and fun to use, too. Keep scrolling to meet “the ice roller,” and find out why you need one in your life!
You may have heard about the benefits of ice-cold water, ice cubes, or frozen spoons on the skin. Supermodels like Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, and Candace Swaneopoel, and actresses who age in reverse, like Eva Mendes, have all said they splash their face with ice-cold water each morning to wake it up and de-puff skin. Our celebrity contributor Julianne Hough always uses an ice cube to reduce redness and swelling on an inflamed zit—a trick she learned from a dermatologist. Many people place frozen spoons under their eyes to minimize puffy under-eye bags. And then, of course, there’s the first thing you learn about inflammation in grade school: that putting an ice pack on anything swollen will bring it down.
This is the concept behind the handy, magical little tool that our most puffy-prone skincare addicts at the office now swear by. Developed by Hansderma, a Southern California-based skincare company, the “Skincool Ice Roller” is a hand-held tool that makes your tired skin look taut and firm with a few cool rolls. It contains a gel roller head that stays cold through use, and the rolling motion helps to drain fluid beyond what placing (and even pressing and massaging) a stationary object—like an ice cube or spoon—can do. It’s basically like if an ice cube was a wheel that rolls around to self-massage and minimize bloat. And that’s not all it can do, either.
The tool is incredibly simple, intuitive, and low-effort. The fun part is that it lives in your freezer, so you just keep it in there to ensure that the roller head is always cool. Each morning, when you want to wake up and energize your skin, roll it over your cheeks, eye area, and neck. The tightening effect makes your face and jawline look slimmer, like a great contouring job in the form of a pleasant and cooling spa-like experience.
But the beauty of the tool extends beyond bloat-banishing; it can reduce irritation, redness, and the inflammation of a breakout (those painful, swollen blemishes you can feel under the skin). Many spas and aestheticians use ice rolling post-procedure to help calm redness after facial extractions and to cool skin if it feels hot from a laser or peel. You can also use it to calm skin after a wax (upper lip, eyebrows, etc.), if you’re red and hot after exercising, and if you have a burn from the sun or a chemical procedure. Celebrity makeup artist Robin Black has said she uses the roller to prep clients before shoots and red carpet events, and skin guru Kerry Benjamin recommends the ice roller for when sensitive skin is over-reactive to something. So we guess the real question would be: what doesn’t the ice roller do?
