About Patch Test

Patch Test is an independent English-language guide to skincare, focused on American products and the people who use them far from the United States: in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, and anywhere a move or a new climate makes a routine stop working.

What we publish

Guides in four areas: ingredients, routines by skin type, US and Asian skincare (formulation, regulation and sunscreen), and climate and relocation. A few guides read the published ingredient list of a specific US product line by line, because those are the products readers most often ask about.

How guides are researched

• Primary sources first: regulators (the US Food and Drug Administration, the European Commission and its CosIng database, Malaysia's National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency, Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the World Health Organization), professional bodies such as the American Academy of Dermatology, and peer-reviewed studies.
• Sources are listed at the end of every guide, with a few links to public, non-commercial sources.
• Product guides use only published information: the ingredient list and statements on the brand's own pages, dated, and the research on those ingredients.
• Uncertainty is stated. Where evidence is thin, sponsored or observational, we say so.

What we don't do

• We don't sell anything, and there are no shop pages, prices or affiliate links.
• We don't test products, publish ratings or reviews, or describe experiences we haven't had.
• We don't accept payment from brands or retailers to cover products.
• We don't give medical advice. Skin conditions need a doctor or a dermatologist.

Brand and product names are used only to identify the products discussed. Patch Test has no relationship with any brand mentioned, and no logos or packaging photos are used. Photographs are free-licence images of ingredients, textures and places, credited on our photo credits page.

Publisher

Patch Test is its own publisher: the guides are written and maintained by its editorial team. If a guide gets an ingredient or a rule wrong, or you have a factual question, say so; the legal notice explains where such requests go.

About this domain

From around 2021 until 2026, the address beautyvaultmy.com was used by an online shop, BeautyVault Malaysia, which resold American beauty products. That shop is not connected to this publication. Patch Test is a new, independent site under new ownership: we don't sell products, we can't process orders or returns placed with the former shop, and we hold no customer data from it.

Old shop addresses (product, collection, cart and account pages) now lead to the closest guide on this site, or to the home page. A few former product addresses lead to guides about the same product's ingredients, written independently from published information. If you were a customer of the former shop with a question about an order, we are unfortunately unable to help.