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Health

How Do I Choose the Best Black Eye Cream?

By Rhonda Rivera
Updated Jan 26, 2024
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For the most part, no black eye cream is guaranteed to work, and what does work usually has a subtle effect on bruised and puffy eyes. Lightening agents, such as some natural acids, can help reduce the blackness of the eye. Vitamin K also is good for bruising when applied in a topical cream. Retinol is a chemical that is derived from vitamin A and helps the skin produce collagen, which makes bruising less obvious. In addition, the best black eye cream has no ingredients that could further irritate your eyes.

Lightening agents are common additions to black eye creams. For example, kojic acid and vitamin C are used as skin whitening ingredients. Kojic acid is derived from a fungus and is often used as treatment for age spots. Vitamin C is relatively unstable, and many beauty products that contain it do not have an effective form of the vitamin, so it does not penetrate the skin deeply enough. In a black eye cream, these additions can reduce the blackness of the eye, but it is unusual for such a cream to eliminate black eyes.

Some studies show that topical vitamin K might reduce bruising, so you might consider choosing a black eye cream that contains vitamin K. Since this discovery, beauty product companies have developed black eye creams with vitamin K. The best products of this kind contain a minimum of 5 percent vitamin K. Other vitamins, such as E and A, also might be beneficial when it comes to reducing the darkness around your eyes.

Retinol applied in cream form can help the skin around your eyes produce collagen. Collagen is basically a bunch of proteins found in connective tissue. As a person ages, he or she loses collagen in all sorts of places, including the skin around the eyes. This makes the blood vessels and bruising around your eyes more apparent, but bulking up the skin with collagen produces the opposite effect. Retinol is also used to treat wrinkles in much the same way.

A good black eye cream does not have irritants. You will be putting the cream under and around your eyes, so fragrance and alcohol should be avoided. Fragrance can make eyes water, sting or even have a mild burning feeling most of the day. Alcohol can irritate and dry the thin skin of the eyelids and under your eyes. Some plant oils also can be irritating to skin and, of course, you should avoid ingredients that have irritated your skin in the past.

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Discussion Comments

By lighth0se33 — On Feb 14, 2012

I made the mistake of using a black eye cream with both fragrance and alcohol, and I ended up throwing the cream away. I don't know how the company that made it managed to market it as a black eye cream, because it made my eye itch and water so badly that it got even darker.

It really hurts when you scratch a black eye, but it is hard not to when something is irritating it. The smell didn't bother my nose, but my eyes burned because of it, and the alcohol dried my skin out so much that more lines and wrinkles appeared while I had it on.

I have learned my lesson. I now will only buy a black eye cream if it is totally free of both scent and alcohol.

By StarJo — On Feb 14, 2012

@Perdido – I have no doubt that vitamin K is effective at healing the bruising involved with a black eye. I also believe in the power of vitamin E to help lessen the puffiness.

Generally, you have to deal with puffiness right away. The bruising persists much longer than the swelling. It's great to have a black eye cream with both of these vitamins in it, so you get to deal with both issues at once.

I think that vitamin E is also good for reducing dark circles, so that is an added benefit. The combination of vitamins E and K is a powerful tool to help you get over your black eye as quickly as possible.

By Oceana — On Feb 14, 2012

My sister got a black eye when she ran into an open cabinet door, and she got an eye cream with lightening agents in it. I personally would have been afraid to use it, because who knows how much it would lighten the skin?

She had a summer tan at the time, and though she was slightly afraid the cream might bleach it out, she knew that even that would look better than a shiner. She put it on, and I guess since it had so many layers of darkness to lighten, it never got to the bleaching point.

Once the area turned more yellow than black, she stopped using the cream. She figured it was far enough along to lighten up the rest of the way without help, and she didn't want to risk discoloring the area around her eye.

By Perdido — On Feb 13, 2012

I believe that vitamin K has to be the most effective ingredient in this type of eye cream. I used to bruise very easily, but after I started taking a vitamin K supplement, I noticed far less bruises on my body.

So, I always look for the cream with the highest percentage of vitamin K available. My faith in what it can do is well established, and to me, all the other ingredients are just helpers in the process. Without vitamin K, their effect would be barely noticeable, if detectable at all.

I got hit in the face by a tennis ball last summer, and I applied this cream a couple of times a day. The black eye went away so much faster than it would have on its own. I know, because I had a black eye years ago, before I knew that such a cream existed.

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