Salt or sugar: which scrub for which skin

Salt crystals are angular. Under any magnification they have edges and corners, and those edges do not soften as you work them — salt stays sharp until it dissolves, which in a scrub takes longer than the time you spend scrubbing.

Sugar is rounded, and it starts dissolving almost immediately on wet skin. By the end of thirty seconds you are working with something closer to a paste than an abrasive. It effectively cannot over-scrub, because it stops being a scrub partway through.

So: sugar for anywhere you have shaved, anywhere thin-skinned, and for anyone who scrubs a little too enthusiastically. Salt for feet, and for genuinely rough patches on heels and elbows where you want the edges to last.

We only make the sugar one. The salt in our range goes in the bath, where the point is the magnesium rather than the abrasion.