J-beauty versus the 10-step routine: why the number is the wrong metric

For ten years, the reference point was the ten-step Korean routine. For the past couple of years, the answer has been called J-beauty, the Japanese approach, and it has been presented as its opposite: few products, slow gestures, no excess. Two opposing philosophies, the narrative says.

They are two export products, built for two different moments in the Western market. Korean women did not, on average, perform ten steps every evening, and Japanese women do not necessarily perform three. And the number is still the wrong metric: you don’t judge a routine by how many steps it has, but by what’s in it and how many days out of thirty you actually follow it.

Cover image generated with the support of artificial intelligence.

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The ten steps were never a daily routine

The ten-step sequence spread in the West around the middle of the 2010s, driven by the first retailers bringing Korean cosmetics outside Asia. It was an effective way to present an entire catalog: each step is a product category, and ten steps are ten products to sell.

This doesn’t mean it was invented out of thin air. Layering lightweight textures is a real practice, and some individual steps serve a precise purpose. It means that the complete, mandatory list emerged as a commercial format, not as the average habit of a population.

J-beauty came later, when Western audiences had started to grow tired. It sold simplification to the same audience that had bought into accumulation. This too is a positioning exercise, done very well, and I don’t criticize it: I find it healthier than the previous one. But it remains a story, not an anthropology.

What’s true about the Japanese approach

Several things, and it’s worth separating them from the narrative.

Cleansing treated as a serious step

Double cleansing stems from a practical problem: sunscreens and water-resistant cosmetics don’t come off with a rushed swipe of micellar water. First, an oil-based step that dissolves what’s greasy, then a gentle cleanse that removes the rest.

It makes sense in the evening if you used sunscreen or makeup during the day. It makes no sense in the morning, and it makes no sense on skin that already feels tight: in that case, double cleansing is one cleanse too many.

Lightweight textures applied in sequence

The Japanese lotion is not the astringent toner many of us came to know in the 1990s. It is a fluid hydrating step that prepares the skin for what comes next. It is the idea that several thin layers work better than one heavy layer. And dermatologically, this holds up.

Sunscreen as a habit, not a summer product

This is the part that matters more than all the others put together, and I will discuss it in two paragraphs.

“You do not need to choose between ten steps and three. You need to choose between a routine you follow and one you admire.”

Why products cannot be copied, only habits

Here is the technical point that is rarely explained: Europe, Japan, and the United States do not have the same rules, so they do not have the same products.

In Europe, cosmetics are governed by Regulation 1223/2009, which establishes a positive list of permitted sunscreens. Japan has an intermediate category, the so-called quasi-drugs, which allows the use of certain approved active ingredients with recognized claims. These are different regulatory frameworks, with ingredient lists that overlap only partially.

The practical consequence is that a sunscreen texture you saw in a Japanese video may not exist in an equivalent European version, and not because European companies are behind: because they have a different list of filters available to them. The systems for indicating UVA protection also differ: in Europe, the UVA protection value must be at least one third of the declared SPF, and this is indicated by the circled UVA symbol on the label.

What can be imported, then, is not the product. It is the behavior.

The only thing I would really copy

Wearing sunscreen and reapplying it throughout the day, all year round, as you do with lipstick. Not as a vacation measure: as an ordinary Wednesday-in-November habit.

It is the single habit with the greatest documented impact on skin aging, and one of the few about which there is no real debate among skincare schools of thought. In Italy, the problem is not that people do not know it is necessary. It is that the sunscreen stays in the bathroom while the person goes out.

That’s why we made it in a format that fits in your wallet: reapplication happens when the product is on you, not when it’s on the right shelf.

And the second thing: do less, but every day

Consistency beats intensity, and on this point Japanese aesthetics are right even when the narrative is constructed. A simple cream used every evening for six months produces better results than a sophisticated routine maintained for three weeks and then abandoned because your skin started to burn.

It’s the same reasoning behind why skin cycling works: it doesn’t add anything, it redistributes. And it matters even more for reactive skin, where the best product is often the one that makes nothing happen.

How to build your own, instead of importing one

1. Cleansing in the evening, double cleansing only if you’ve worn sunscreen or makeup. In the morning, water or a very gentle cleanser is enough.
2. A moisturizer you enjoy using. Texture isn’t an aesthetic detail: it’s the variable that determines whether you’ll use it in December.
3. One active ingredient at a time, introduced and evaluated for at least four weeks before adding another.
4. Sunscreen every morning, and a second application if you’re outside. This is the step that isn’t negotiable.
5. Everything else is optional, and it’s fine that it is.

They are five lines, and they belong to no country. If you want to see how they translate into a real day, I wrote about them in the day and night routine and in the minimalist routine.

And if the point is figuring out which texture you’ll actually stick with through March, that’s an assessment you make by touching the products: at the pharmacies and beauty stores that distribute LeLang, you can try them on your hand and choose based on your skin and your season, not on what worked for someone else in a different climate.

What I really think

That the opposition between ten-step routines and Japanese simplicity is a debate between two advertising campaigns, and that it has kept us occupied for years with an irrelevant question.

The real question isn't how many products you use. It's whether your skin barrier can withstand what you're asking of it, and whether what you do today is something you'll still be doing six months from now. A two-product routine followed consistently is worth more than any national philosophy, and it doesn't need a country to certify it.