Brickell Men’s Products Review – A Night Cream That Claims UV Protection

What Brickell Sells

Brickell is a Portland, Maine men’s grooming brand selling face washes, moisturisers, anti-aging creams, eye creams, shampoos, body washes, deodorant and shave products, with a plant-based positioning. Individual products run about $35 to $40, and the Signature Anti-Aging Routine is $165.

Informational only, not medical advice. Checked 8 August 2026.

What They Do Better Than Most Skincare Brands

We want to start here, because these are real and they are not universal.

• They publish the full ingredient list on the product page, in proper INCI naming, with organic ingredients asterisked. Plenty of skincare brands make you find this on the packaging after purchase.
• They flag that formulations change: “the ingredients listed here may differ from those on the product packaging depending on the date and region of purchase.” That is an unflattering admission most brands omit.
• They answer the retinol question honestly. Asked whether the anti-aging cream contains retinol, the answer is a flat “This anti-aging night cream does not contain retinol” — plus the useful note that it is safe to layer with products that do.
• They say it is not vegan — it contains beeswax — rather than fudging it, and they confirm it contains no nuts for allergy sufferers.
• They explain that separation in the product is cosmetic and does not affect efficacy, which pre-empts a support ticket instead of hiding a quirk.
• A 30-day money-back guarantee.

That is a brand comfortable being looked at closely. Which is what we are about to do.

Reading the Ingredient List Properly

Because they publish the full list, you can do something you usually cannot: work out roughly how much active ingredient is in there.

The rule is this. Ingredients are listed in descending order of concentration — but only down to 1%. Below 1%, they can appear in any order. So if you can find an ingredient whose typical use level you know, everything after it is present at less than that.

Here is the Revitalizing Anti-Aging Cream list, with the marker highlighted:

So the “exclusive combination of the most advanced de-aging ingredients” is present at sub-1% concentrations.

To be fair, that is not damning in itself. Hyaluronic acid is genuinely used at fractions of a percent and works fine there — it is a humectant, not a dose-dependent drug. But it does mean nobody should imagine these are concentrated treatment levels, and no percentage figures appear anywhere in the catalogue to tell you otherwise.

The base of the product is a well-made emollient moisturiser — aloe, sunflower oil, glycerin, shea and cocoa butter, jojoba. That is a perfectly good moisturiser, and moisturising genuinely improves how skin looks and feels. It is just not the same thing as anti-ageing treatment.

We Counted the Studies

The two ingredients Brickell leads with for anti-ageing are DMAE and MSM. So we searched PubMed for each, and for the comparison that matters.

The last row is the one to sit with. Tretinoin is a retinoid — and it is the ingredient Brickell explicitly tells you this cream does not contain.

Search counts are a crude instrument and we should say so — they measure attention, not truth, and some of those hits will be unrelated. But an order-of-magnitude gap like that is not noise. It is the difference between an ingredient the dermatology literature has studied for decades and two it has barely looked at.

The DMAE claim on the page is also a large one: that it “improves skin firmness by helping the underlying facial muscles contract.” A cream causing facial muscles to contract is a substantial physiological assertion, and one paper is not much to hang it on.

A Night Cream Cannot Protect You From UV

This is our strongest objection, and it is the only one where the marketing could actually cause harm.

The same product page says both of these things:

Two problems, and the second is the serious one.

First, a product applied at bedtime cannot protect you from ultraviolet light, because you are asleep and indoors. The two sentences are simply incompatible.

Second, and more importantly: antioxidants are not sunscreen. Topical antioxidants may help mop up some oxidative damage, but they do not block or absorb UV, and describing them as “essential protection from UV radiation” invites exactly the wrong conclusion.

Brickell does sell sun protection — it appears in their own search suggestions — so the fix here is simply to stop implying a night cream does that job.

The Claims We Would Push Back On

None of this makes Brickell unusual — this is how nearly all cosmetic marketing reads. But a brand that publishes its full ingredient list and admits its formulas change has clearly decided to be straight with people, which makes the gap between that transparency and this copy more noticeable, not less.

What Actually Works for Skin Ageing

Since we have spent this long on what the evidence does not support, here is the useful version — the short list of things with genuinely strong backing, none of which is expensive:

• Sunscreen, daily. UV drives most visible skin ageing. Broad-spectrum, every morning, is the highest-value thing in skincare and it is not close.
• A retinoid. Over-the-counter retinol or prescription tretinoin — this is the category with 51 randomised photoaging trials behind it. Brickell sells a retinol eye cream, so it is available from them too.
• Moisturiser. Genuinely improves skin appearance, comfort and barrier function. This is what Brickell’s cream mostly is, and it does that well.
• Not smoking, and sleeping properly. Free, and more effective than most bottles.

The $40 Subscription That Gives You $40 Back

Brickell offers a Platinum VIP membership at $40 a month, charged every 30 days, which includes $40 in monthly shop credit, $300+ in free gifts, always-free shipping, no-hassle returns and VIP support. Cancellable anytime.

The real value is the gifts, shipping and support. So the question is simple: would you spend $480 a year at Brickell anyway?

If yes, the perks are effectively free and this is a good deal. If no, you are committing $480 a year to a shop you do not use that much, and accumulating credit is not the same as saving money.

To their credit, the cancellation language is clear — “quickly and easily cancel your subscription anytime” — and the $40-for-$40 structure is stated openly rather than hidden. Just do the sum before signing up.

Thirty Days, Money Back

The refund policy, last modified April 2025, offers money back within 30 days of purchase for customers who are “not totally satisfied.”

We test guarantees against one question: does it cover the failure that actually happens? For skincare, that failure is that you use it for a few weeks and see nothing. A satisfaction-based 30-day guarantee covers exactly that, which is more than a lot of policies we read manage.

One practical note: their own guidance says to “allow up to 2 weeks to see initial results.” So start the product promptly and judge it inside the window, rather than leaving the box on a shelf for a month.

Who Should Buy This

Reasonable if you:

• Want a pleasant, well-formulated moisturiser and value plant-based positioning and published ingredients
• Prefer buying a whole routine from one brand that is designed to work together
• Are starting from no skincare routine at all, where almost anything is an improvement
• Will actually spend $480 a year with them, making the VIP maths work

Look elsewhere if you:

• Are buying specifically to reverse wrinkles. Buy a retinoid and sunscreen instead, and the cream as a moisturiser if you like it
• Want disclosed active concentrations. None are published
• Are price-sensitive. $35–$40 per item is premium for what is largely a good emollient base
• Would take “protection from UV radiation” on a night cream at face value

How It Compares

The fair conclusion is that Brickell is a good moisturiser company being sold as an anti-ageing company. As the former it is perfectly decent and pleasant to use. As the latter, the ingredient list does not support what the copy promises.

Pros and Cons

Limitations of This Review

Our general web search was unavailable, so this review is built from Brickell’s own site, product data and refund policy, plus direct PubMed searches. We did not check Trustpilot, the BBB, Reddit or independent testing.

We have not used any of the products, so we cannot tell you how they feel, smell, absorb or perform — which for skincare is a large part of the answer. Plenty of people may love these creams, and a moisturiser you enjoy using is a moisturiser you actually use.

On the study counts, we should be precise. Raw PubMed result counts measure research attention rather than efficacy, our search terms were our own choice, and we read none of the underlying papers for this review. The counts establish a large disparity in how much these ingredients have been studied — they do not prove DMAE or MSM do nothing.

Our inference about concentrations comes from ingredient-list ordering conventions, not from testing, and phenoxyethanol’s typical use level is a general figure rather than a disclosure from this brand. We examined one product’s ingredient list in detail, and prices and formulations change.

Frequently Asked Questions

Verdict

Brickell is more open than most of its category. Full ingredient lists on the product page. An admission that formulations change. A straight answer that the anti-aging cream does not contain retinol. A statement that it is not vegan. A 30-day money-back guarantee that covers simply not liking it. None of that is standard, and all of it counts.

That transparency is also what lets you check the claims — and they do not hold up as well as the honesty does.

Every advertised active sits below the preservative in the ingredient list, so all of them are present under about 1%, and no percentages are published anywhere. The two ingredients the marketing rests on returned 1 and 6 PubMed results, while the retinoid the product openly does not contain returned 51 randomised photoaging trials. And “clinically proven” appears with no study attached.

The line we would most want removed is the one telling men that antioxidants give “essential protection from UV radiation” — on a cream to be used at night, while asleep. Antioxidants are not sunscreen, and anyone who reads that and skips their SPF has been made worse off by a product sold to help them.

So buy it for what it is. It is a well-made, pleasant emollient moisturiser from a brand that will tell you what is in it and refund you within 30 days if you dislike it. That is a perfectly good reason to buy a $40 face cream.

Just do not buy it to remove deep wrinkles while you sleep. For that, the boring answer remains the right one — sunscreen every morning and a retinoid at night — and Brickell will sell you both of those too.