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Our Methodology

When compared to other things you buy for your home, beauty and personal care products are much smaller purchases. Even items like hair dryers and electric toothbrushes pale in comparison to the cost of a refrigerator or oven. However, nothing is more valuable than the overall health of you and your loved ones, making personal care purchases extremely important.

But with so many different versions of whatever product you’re trying to buy, deciding can be complicated. If you’re looking for a good nighttime moisturizer, you may not know the difference between those with retinol, peptides and special oils, especially if you have a particular skin type. If you’re searching for the best bathroom scale, you’ll notice all manufacturers promise accuracy, but are they telling the truth?

Reviews can be a big help as you’re trying to choose between products. But you’ll also find no shortage of reviews for each product. That’s where Don’t Waste Your Money comes in. Our team of expert reviewers makes it our mission to give you the information you need on every product you’re considering buying. If you’re looking for a new flat iron, for instance, you can come to DWYM and find the best four products in that category, along with our own summary of all of the reviews out there.

When you consult DWYM before buying, you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that our experts have combed through all the reviews out there to bring you the top four. Not only do we gather what other experts are saying, but we provide our own input on each product, based on our research. You can narrow down which products have the features you need based solely on the information we provide.

Our reviewers realize that each consumer has unique needs when it comes to buying beauty and personal care products. One item may be better than another at moisturizing, while another may have a more pleasant scent or no scent at all. Two consumers reading the same information can easily choose completely separate products because their needs are so diverse.

In each category, DWYM issues two awards: The Best Overall and The Best Bang for Your Buck. If you’re looking for the best possible product for the money, pay close attention to the latter. However, if you’re interested in the best across the board, our overall winner is worth considering. Still, reviewing all four products can be very helpful in making sure you’re getting the features that matter most to you.

As you browse the four products, you’ll see a summary of the features mentioned by expert reviewers. Product pages will make all kinds of promises as to quality and results, but our experts put those claims to the test. We let you know if a curling iron gets too hot or a bathroom scale shatters easily so that by the time you spend your hard-earned money, you’ll have information beyond the sales copy the brand provides.

Checking DWYM before making a purchase saves you time and money. You’ll be able to get the best value for your dollar without having to spend hours scouring reviews across the internet to do so. Our experts are passionate about the beauty and personal care market and are eager to help consumers find the products they need.

Our Trusted Process

More than 20 product experts make up the Don’t Waste Your Money review team, dedicating themselves to finding the best products in each category. For beauty and personal care products, this means combing through reviews on items like razors and bathroom scales to find the best four on the market today. As new products are released, our team updates its findings to ensure you’re getting the best possible items available.

Our reviewers start with 15 products in each category, researching them until we find the top four. This means carefully reviewing the many reviews out there and pulling out the information that’s most important to our own readers. We consider not only reviews from top online publications like Consumer Reports and The New York Times, but also small, independent sites that specialize in beauty and personal care products. Consumer reviews are also taken into consideration.

Using their unique expertise, our review team reads all the information out there on a product, paying particular attention to observations that are mentioned more than once. We also use our own expertise to review various beauty and personal care products to ensure you get the best item for you. If both professional reviewers and customers are reporting that a tooth-whitening system isn’t effective at removing stains, we dive deeper into that and report the results to you, the reader.

Once we’ve chosen the top four products in a category, we award both a Best Overall and Best Bang for Your Buck designation to one to two of the items. It’s important to note that one product can win both awards. We also include pros and cons for each product, including excerpts from some of the best reviews we’ve found. After we’ve done all of that, we wrap it up with an informative summary of the products, as well as tips to keep in mind when you’re shopping for items in that category.

Often you won’t know if a beauty and personal care product lives up to its promise until you’ve already purchased it. We help prevent unpleasant surprises by uncovering all of an item’s benefits and flaws and sharing them with our readers. Our expert reviewers get to know what today’s consumers want from various products and look for those features when researching.

Chances are, you regularly search for beauty and personal care products for your own home. DWYM is always on the hunt for the best new items in each category, from both top brands and up-and-coming manufacturers. We narrow down options to the best of the best and research each of our top four products carefully, to make sure we give you the full picture. As products are updated, we keep our reviews updated, as well, so that the next time you’re searching for a personal care product in that same category, you’ll know you’re getting the latest and greatest.