This Brightening Eye Cream Combines Two Derm-Fave Ingredients—Caffeine and Vitamin C—To Make You Look Instantly More Awake

We all do our best to get enough sleep, but when getting those eight hours in isn’t an option, reaching for a brightening eye cream can help you fake a well-rested look. And the Wake Up Honey Eye Cream—new from Farmacy—is made with caffeine and vitamin C, two ingredients dermatologists love for perking up the skin around your eyes.

Caffeine works as a vasoconstrictor (meaning it reduces blood flow) so “it does an excellent job reducing puffiness, redness, and inflammation,” says board-certified dermatologist Dennis Gross, MD, and instantly perks up your skin. Vitamin C, however, works overtime to brighten under-eye discoloration, explains Marisa Garshick, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in New York City. The under-eye is “an area where we often deal with hyperpigmentation, and so what that basically means is that there’s the brown discoloration that sometimes contributes to dark circles, ” says Dr. Garshick. By pairing these two powerful ingredients, Farmacy Wake Up Honey Eye Cream ($45) is your secret weapon for looking more vibrant in the mornings.

Farmacy Wake Up Honey Eye Cream — $45.00

Plus, caffeine and vitamin C do more than just brighten and depuff. They’re both potent antioxidants that help protect the skin from free-radical damage. Free radicals are molecules in the environment that make previously healthy skin cells unstable and less functional. This leads to damage that causes discoloration, fine lines, and wrinkles—all of which these ingredients can help stave off.

The eye cream also is made with peptides extracted from cranberries upcycled from the food industry and a proprietary buckwheat-honey blend. The cranberry peptide aids the caffeine in reducing puffiness while also smoothing fine lines and fading dark circles. The buckwheat-honey blend provides soothing and plumping hydration.

Shea butter, hyaluronic acid, and ceramides make this eye cream supremely moisturizing. And glycerin—the unsung hero of winter hydration—gives this eye cream its buttery texture and will flood your under eyes with moisture. It has a barely there fresh and light scent and leaves your skin feeling nurtured and ready for the day ahead.

Here’s more info to help you manage dark circles:

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