The 2025 Esquire Grooming Awards

Best Face Cleanser

This lightly foaming gel might feel gentle on your skin, but the witch hazel in the formula goes to town to suck out dirt and oil from inside your pores as well as on the surface of your skin.

Best Night Cream

This gel-cream might look bonkers, with little balls suspended in a transparent gel like tapioca pearls, but when you rub it in, the balls melt, providing your skin with a combination of retinol, collagen, and panthenol that make this the perfect one-and-done night product.

Best Facial Scrub

This scrub contains a combination of ultra-fine scrubbing particles, oil-controlling salicylic acid, and mattifying glacial clay. Using it once a week is our newest secret to clearer skin.

Best Exfoliator

A few swipes of this gently exfoliating salicylic acid is enough to deep clean pores and reduce the appearance of blackheads and breakouts. The flavonoids in the formula act like superchargers to the salicylic acid, making it even more effective while keeping it from being too harsh on your skin.

Best Facial SPF

Wearing your daily sunscreen is a breeze when you can use this crystal clear, lightweight gel that protects your skin with SPF 50 and hydrates at the same time. It’s so simple that you’ll forget you’re wearing it.

Best Tinted SPF

With a new range of tints designed to work on even the darkest skin tones, that pesky white cast is a thing of the past. Not only that, but the formula also contains antioxidants that help to fortify your skin from the inside.

Best Mask

When your skin needs a little extra attention, apply this mask twice a week to allow the salicylic acid and polyhydroxy acids to exfoliate away built up skin, leaving your face looking smoother and brighter.

Best LED Mask

LED light has been proven to stimulate collagen production, reduce the signs of aging, and even kill the bacteria that can lead to breakouts. But our favorite thing about it is the cooling cryo pads under the eyes which can be used with or without the light to tighten and depuff tired or saggy eyes.

Best Sheet Mask

Slap on this sheet mask for 10 minutes to revitalize, hydrate, purify, and protect your skin. Not only does it make your skin look brighter and healthier right away, but the ingredients work overtime to improve your skin overall. Since it’s in two parts, you can even use it if you have a beard.

Best Acne Product

This euro-favorite brand just hit U.S. shores and its blemish-reducing spot treatment has quickly become our go-to for its ability to zap zits quickly and exfoliate away clogs. Plus, unlike other treatments, it reduces redness.

Best Eye Treatment

This botanical powered serum reduces the look of puffiness, dark circles, fine lines, and generally tired eyes the more you use it. The slight tint helps cover up the signs you were out all night when you really need it—right away.

Best Eye Patches

We like to keep a pack of these in our refrigerator and stick them on during our morning coffee to instantly reduce puffiness and perk up our tired-looking eyes faster than any eye cream could hope to accomplish.

Best Lip Balm

This lightweight lip balm uses the power of meadowfoam oil to deeply hydrate even the gnarliest lips without leaving them feeling greasy.

Best All-Around Serum

The main event of this daily serum is EGF, or epidermal growth factor, an ingredient that encourages skin rejuvenation. It also contains antioxidant Vitamin B5 to further moisturize your skin but still maintains a silky-smooth gel texture that sinks into your skin quickly and leaves a matte finish.

Best Vitamin C Serum

This antioxidant serum is packed with a massive amount of Vitamin C to help protect your skin from damaging free radicals alongside a healthy dose of niacinamide, which helps the Vitamin C work better while soothing skin.

Best Pads

Consider these pads a full skincare routine in a single container. After cleansing, swipe one of these over your face to exfoliate, brighten, and infuse your skin with anti-aging ingredients like ceramides and peptides.

Best Hydrating Toner

When your skin is feeling stressed out, a few spritzes of the magnesium- and amino acid-laced spray is enough to reduce redness and hydrate your skin so it feels, and looks, refreshed.

Best Retinol

Dermatologists agree that retinoids are some of the most important skincare ingredients to have in your routine, but so many of them can cause irritation. This ultra-gentle nighttime product uses different forms of retinoids to increase efficacy while reducing potential side effects.

Best Face Tool

Power up this handheld wand to either cool down the metal tip, allowing you to instantly depuff swollen eyes and soothe red or overheated skin. Or heat it up for lymphatic drainage or prime your skin for better absorption of your other products.

Best Self Tanner

Look, we get it—the idea of using a self tanner can be scary, but all it takes is a few sprays of this clear spritz to give your skin a natural, just-got-back-from-vacation glow even in the doldrums of winter.

Best Blackhead Clearer

Trying to extract your own blackheads and pimples is a recipe for disaster—and scarring. Instead, use this ultrasonic wand to gently clear out blackheads, clogged pores, and pesky blemishes without damaging the skin around them.

Best Body Wash

One tube of this concentrated body wash lasts twice as long as a jumbo bottle of traditional wash. A tiny bit blooms into a rich lather that cleanses, balances, and moisturizes skin thanks to ingredients like squalane, Vitamin E, and prebiotics.

Best Bar Soap

This extra-large, sulfate-free cleansing bar clears away dirt and oil from your skin while still leaving it moisturized thanks to the coconut, shea, and oat butters in the formula. It’s so moisturizing that you can even use it as a shampoo.

Best Best Mineral Body Sunscreen

Even though this sunscreen uses zinc oxide to protect your skin from the sun’s harmful UV rays, it doesn’t leave a white cast on your skin. What we love most about it is the addition of anti-aging peptides and antioxidants, so it improves your skin from the inside out while protecting it. $54

Best Body Lotion

This niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, and aloe vera packed lotion is so lightweight it sinks into your skin in seconds with no greasiness left behind. Not only does it moisturize your skin but it helps firm it up, too. $55

Best Deodorant

Designed to be used anywhere from your neck down, this deodorizing cream helps keep you fresh even when you’re sweating your butt off. That’s because instead of blocking sweat, like your traditional aluminum antiperspirant, it absorbs it while also neutralizing odor.

Best Antiperspirant

Sometimes you have to bring out the big guns to control sweat, which means antiperspirant, but you don’t want to smell like a high school locker room. This may just be the best-smelling antiperspirant we’ve ever tried.

Best for Your Butt

Struggling with TikTok Tush? Sitting on the toilet scrolling for too long could lead to irritation, hemorrhoids, and other butt-related issues. Using this daily serum on the area keeps that delicate butt skin healthier and stronger, and can help alleviate those uncomfortable issues.

Best Body Sunscreen

The powerful yet shockingly lightweight UV protection is only the tip of the iceberg with this marvel of sunscreen technology. There are also hydrating and anti-aging ingredients that help strengthen and improve your skin the more you wear it, plus SynchroShieldRepair Technology, which creates an extra layer of sun protection when you start to sweat.

Best Scrubbing Bar Soap

When you need a deeper scrub, reach for this bar soap that uses wheat bran particles to exfoliate your skin, but won’t leave it overly dry thanks to the coconut and olive oils in the formula.

Best Multi-Use

This stuff comes out of the bottle looking like a green juice but explodes into a rich, cedar-scented lather that can cleanse your hair and body in a flash, leaving both perfectly soft and clean (it’s the shea butter and hyaluronic acid).

Best Hand Cream

When your hands are extra dry and cracked, use this rich salve instead of your usual petroleum product. It delivers major moisture but since it’s made from Manuka honey, it also has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. In fact, just put it on now, don’t wait until your hands crack.

Best Body Scrub

Forget the harsh body scrubs you may know. This ultra-gentle scrub uses plant-based cleansers to gently remove dirt and contains charcoal to absorb oil so you have to scrub less to get a truly deep clean.

Best Body Groomer

There are few trimmers we’d be comfortable using on both our beards and body, but given that this one allows you to trim at 20 different lengths and features a long 60-minute battery life, it delivers exactly what we need for every part of our bodies.

Best Anti-Chafe Product

We were impressed that a few swipes of this stick helped prevent the chafe that we normally see after long workouts, but even more impressed that the chamomile, cica, and niacinamide in the formula also helped calm and soothe the irritation that was already there.

Best Tattoo Product

The weird-but-good texture of this hydrating gel is a little like rubbing a slushy on your skin, but without leaving it feeling gross and sticky the way rubbing an actual slushy on your skin would be. It instantly cools, refreshes, and hydrates skin and makes even old ink pop like it’s brand new.

Best Body Tool

The benefit of laser hair removal is that you don’t need to trim or shave your hair. The downside is that it’s time consuming and expensive. This at-home device uses similar light pulses to reduce hair anywhere on your body that you want to use it. Best of all, the SkinSensor technology automatically adjusts the strength to allow it to be used on a variety of skin tones and even over tattoos (but you’ll still want to do a patch test first).

Best Shampoo

This innovative shampoo takes multi-tasking to new level. Sure, it cleanses strands and balances scalp, but it also adds texture to prepare your hair for styling after the shower—and allows you to use less product to achieve your look.

Best Conditioner

Powered by the brand’s proprietary ingredient, TFC8, this thick, creamy conditioner helps restore health to damaged hair. It’s so effective that only a couple of uses a week are enough to give your hair unmatched shine and softness.

Best Scalp Serum

Some studies have shown that rosemary oil can help curb hair loss and this is packed with the stuff, in addition to rosemary water and extract. Apply the clear, quick-drying serum to your scalp once a day to help balance your scalp and maybe even grow thicker, healthier hair.

Best Cream Pomade

The silica and clay mix in this lightweight cream soaks up oil throughout the day and leaves your hair with a natural matte finish, all while giving short to medium styles a cool, piecey texture.

Best Thinning Treatment

Consider this a one-two punch for hair loss prevention. It contains topical minoxidil and finasteride, which work in tandem to help prevent hair shed and facilitate new growth. The lightweight spray formula won’t leave your hair greasy or drip in your face like some other hair growth products.

Best Hair Treatment

Created by one of the most sought-after celebrity men’s groomers, this clay-based treatment is designed to be used oncee a month to deep cleanse and detox your hair, rebalance the pH of your scalp, and bring sad, flimsy hair back to life.

Best Multi-Use

This two-in-one doesn’t contain any minoxidil, but it is specifically designed to be used in combination with the effective (and common) hair loss treatment. It helps cleanse, balance, and prime the scalp so your classic Rogaine foam can penetrate better and hair can grow more easily.

Best Styling Cream

There is a light touch of hold in this cream, so it’s not going to keep your style locked in all day, but that’s the point. Smoothing it through your hair gives it a natural finish that looks like your own hair, only way better.

Best Paste

Thicker than a styling cream, but easier to work with than a pomade, this light-hold paste gives a non-greasy, matte finish to your hair with enough hold to keep it in place all day without looking shellacked.

Best Dry Shampoo

Most people use this to soak up dirt and oil from your scalp between washes or after workouts without leaving white powdery residue on your shoulders. But if you’re not also using it to add volume and texture to your hair before styling, then you’re missing out on half the fun.

Best Gel

This gel controls frizz and prevents frizz with crunch-free ease, but also contains a bond-strengthening ingredient that helps make curls more resilient and less prone to stretching out.

Best Texturizer

Salt-based products are great for giving you that just-got-back-from-the-beach texture we all want, but they can often leave your hair feeling rough or crunchy like it’s coated in, well, salt. This cream gives you the beachy look you want, but is more moisturizing than your typical salt spray.

Best Volumizer

Don’t call it a mousse. Apply this lightweight foam to damp hair and let it air dry to give your hair a pump of volume that makes it look fuller. For even more lift, hit it with a blow dryer at the roots for a sky-high ‘do.

Best Leave-In

Until now, the best way to hydrate extremely dry hair was to slop on a thick, goopy leave-in conditioner. Not anymore, thanks to this lightweight yet deeply moisturizing conditioning spray. It keeps your hair hydrated all day, plus delivers UV protection to keep the sun from drying it out even more.

Best Clipper

It might seem weird at first, but this trimmer is specifically designed for DIY haircuts. The blade head is repositioned based on how people hold clippers when they cut their own hair and we can confirm it makes home buzz cuts way easier and much faster.

Best Blow Dryer

The addition of infrared technology in this futuristic hair dryer means it uses less heat to dry your hair, which means less damage, but also achieves fully dry hair in a fraction of the time it takes a traditional dryer. Plus, it uses less energy from both you and the environment.

Best Shaving Cream

This cream smells damn good, which is the first thing we noticed. It’s also packed with shea butter for an ultra-smooth, hydrating shave and menthol to instantly cool and refresh your skin without redness.

Best Razor

If you’ve ever wanted to use a single-blade razor but can’t leave behind the comfort and ease of a cartridge, this is the razor for you. With the easy-to-reload design, you get the closeness of a single blade shave alongside the pivoting head and familiarity of a cartridge razor. It’s the best of both worlds.

Best Beard Oil

What doesn’t this beard oil do? It softens and moisturizes both your whiskers and the skin beneath your beard, but also naturally deodorizes to prevent beard stink and contains lavender oil to increase circulation to the hair follicles which, just saying, could lead to better beard growth.

Best Beard Moisturizer

Jojoba, squalane, and avocado oils all work together in this formula to help keep your beard soft and styled without feeling, well, oily. But the real reason we love it is the subtle yet elegant spiced hinoki fragrance.

Best Beard Trimmer

Perhaps the easiest to use beard trimmer we’ve ever tried, it allows you to toggle between 20 different lengths with the turn of a dial (no loose guards here). Plus, it’s waterproof with a long battery life and an ultra-sharp, titanium-coated blade.

Best Electric Razor

Not only do the three compact heads of this high-end shaver hug your face to deliver one of the closest shaves we’ve found, but they actually lift your whiskers away from your face to allow for an even closer cut. It’s so effective you can shave a seven-day beard in a single pass.

Best Travel Razor

Forget taking up room in your suitcase with your bulky electric razor. This uses the iconic and effective ARC5 head (one of our all-time favorite electric razor heads) but repackages it in a tiny casing that can literally fit in the palm of your hand.

Best Beard Wash

This coconut-based wash is effective enough to remove all the dirt, grime and (gross) food buildup from your beard but still gentle and moisturizing enough that you can use it on your face without stripping your skin.

Best Toothpaste

Your typical whitening toothpaste uses abrasive materials to scrub stains from your teeth, but this new paste actually dissolves the bonds that attach them to the surface. It’s so effective that we can confirm our teeth looked whiter after only a couple of uses.

Best Mouthwash

Old-school mouthwashes use alcohol to kill bacteria in your mouth, which sounds great, but can lead to an unbalanced microbiome. This prebiotic wash helps preserve good bacteria while still freshening your breath and moisturizing your mouth.

Best Whitening Product

You may have used whitening strips before, but we promise you haven’t used any like these. Just leave them on for 10 minutes a day to whiten your teeth quickly. You don’t even need to pull them off; they dissolve into nothing.

Best Toothbrush

This sleek silicone brush features a cool LED slider that lets you adjust the strength with the flick of your finger and a snap-on head that’s way easier (and cleaner) to replace than your average brush head. Our favorite thing about it, however, is the wildly long battery life. We used it for months without a single charge.

Best Manual Toothbrush

The specially designed bristles of this brush help toothpaste foam up in your mouth for a deeper, cleaner feeling and have floss-like tips that help remove buildup between your teeth and gums (but you should still floss).

Best Water Flosser

Perfectly designed for smaller spaces, this water flosser also features an electric toothbrush so you don’t have to fuss with (or store) multiple devices. With three modes including cleaning, stain removal, and gum care, this is as close to having a dentist in your bathroom as you can get without kidnapping one.

What’s a “coltrait,” you ask? Linguistically, it’s cologne plus extrait. Practically, think of a fresh, citrusy summer cologne but dialed way up into bold territory. This ultra-concentrated petitgrain, lime, orange flower, and verbena concoction may be the most grown-up fresh scent we’ve ever smelled.

Harking back to the heavy chypres of the 1980’s, this modern version of your classic cologne has all the green, citrus, leathery vibes of a vintage sport scent but is lighter weight and way cooler than the one your dad wore.

It’s hard to classify this bold parfum as a floral or a wood because both are so well balanced that they seem to be completely inseparable. The result is an ultra-cool play on your traditionally masculine scent that twists itself into a versatile and surprising everyday fragrance.

Spices and leather make this cologne feel traditional and nostalgic, but the addition of smooth, nutty pistachio gives it an unexpected quality that keeps people on their toes. It’s the perfect scent for a date or a dinner party where you want to be the most interesting person in the room.

Mandarin rind adds a brightness to smokey guaiacwood which opens to reveal deeper notes of amber, tea olive and vanilla in this complex and sophisticated scent. While other Fulton & Roark fragrances feel more nature inspired, this one is definitely for the city dweller.

Of course, any scent inspired by Havana is going to include smoky and spicy tobacco, but this new fragrance mixes it with sweet licorice and earthy leather that instantly transports you to the coolest cigar bar in existence.

The energetic zing of citrus from lemon, yuzu, and mandarin is the star in this ultra-fresh scent, but we love it most when it dries down and the freshness mixes with earthy vetiver and smoky frankincense for a sophisticated daytime vibe.

There’s a lighthearted quality to this aldehyde and coconut fragrance that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but jasmine petals, incense, and musk keep it anchored to your skin. It’s like the perfect white T-shirt—well suited to every occasion.

Deep, dark, and undeniably sexy, this layered scent conjures images of sweaty nightclubs, leather bars, and raucous nights thanks to notes like latex, leather, patchouli, shoe polish, and oud. This is the scent you put on when you want to get down and dirty.

Somehow both fresh and warm, this ginger- and leather-based fragrance is modern and innovative. It strikes the perfect balance between spicy ginger and smooth, masculine leather, making it ideal for every occasion.