[Best Foot Creams For Dry Cracked Feet
Christel Malden
Eucerin is known as one of the best brands for giving your body hydration. Not only does this foot cream contain moisturizing sunflower seed oil and healing ceramides, but this cream also contains urea, which helps slough off dead skin cells.
Skin care lovers know that when it comes to drugstore brands, CeraVe is unmatched. But while we love their gentle face products, their body line is just as stunning. This version uses skin care ingredients like salicylic acid and hyaluronic acid to hydrate and exfoliate dry skin.
If your feet need some serious T.L.C., this affordable tube of lotion is packed with ingredients that tackle a slew of issues. From reducing dryness to softening texture to soothing irritated feet, this cream can do it all.
Foot creams can be cute, too! This version hydrates, exfoliates, and helps soften feet, thanks to its combination of active ingredients. Not to mention, this cream is also lightly scented, so you can stop worrying about stinky feet.
O'Keeffe's foot cream was formulated not just quickly to heal cracked, dry feet, but to do so with gentle, healing ingredients. This balm creates a barrier around your feet, which helps soothe the skin and prevent future issues.
You might notice that many foot creams contain invigorating ingredients like peppermint, and that's because those ingredients help stimulate blood flow in the feet. This version from Mary Kay can be used both on the feet and the legs, and helps wake them up for the day.
If you prefer natural products, this organic balm is packed with extracts that can heal and revive tired feet. There's a lot to love about this cream, especially its refreshing and bright balm smell, and its natural extracts and oils that invigorate and soothe.
This foot cream by Aveda is packed with hydrating and nourishing oils to reduce scaly feet. Along with moisturizing, this product also uses lactic acid to gently exfoliate the feet, reducing dry patches after just a few uses.
Tatjana Freund is Hearst's Fashion & Luxury Commerce Editor, covering beauty, fashion and more across multiple brands. Previously, she worked at ELLE.com and Marie Claire. She's a fan of whiskey neat, podcasts that give her nightmares, and one time Zo Kravitz laughed at a joke she made.
The reason our feet tend to feel rougher than the rest of our body often boils down to simple physics, according to Hillary Brenner, DPM, a New York City-based podiatrist. "Every time we walk, we exert [a lot of] pressure from our body weight, and the friction between our feet and the ground can cause them to become dry," she tells Allure.
Another culprit behind crustiness and thick calluses is some of us don't shed keratin as quickly as others. If you suspect you may be one of these people, "use a heel file in the shower to slough away dead skin and soften calluses [before reaching for foot cream]," advises New York City-based nail artist Rita Remark. Exfoliating first with a pumice stone and following up with a moisturizer is the best way to ensure the hydration needed to keep your feet soft isn't blocked.
Remark loves L'Occitane's Shea Butter Foot Cream for more than just its chic packaging. "[The formula] absorbs quickly, deeply moisturizes, and doesn't leave a sticky residue," she says. Along with moisturizing shea butter and herbaceous lavender essential oil, it's laced with arnica, a natural skin healer, Remark notes.
For when you want to keep the whole "having thick skin" thing strictly proverbial, New York City-based podiatrist Emily Splichal, DPM, loves CeraVe's SA Cream for Rough & Bumpy Skin, which she notes is great for busting through calluses and tough skin. "This was voted one of the best foot creams by my patients," she adds. "[They often] prefer it over most prescription foot creams." The skin-softening properties in this formula are all thanks to moisture-sealing ceramides, hydrating hyaluronic acid, and exfoliating salicylic acid.
What do you get when you combine the nourishing, moisture-replenishing powers of shea butter, coconut oil, vitamin E, and jojoba oil? Gold Bond's Softening Foot Cream, an intensive lotion that soothes cracked feet and dry skin instantly, resulting in a velvety-smooth feel.
The Peach & Lily KP Bump Boss Smoothing Body Lotion is technically a treatment for keratosis pilaris, but Allure commerce editor Sarah Han says its glycolic acid-infused formula works just as well for shedding dead skin cell buildup on rough heels. This intensive body lotion also targets cracked skin with moisture-replenishing urea, calming cica, and hydrating hyaluronic acid.
O'Keeffe's Healthy Feet Foot Cream does a number on highly distressed, super-dry skin on feet and heels with a combination of glycerin, allantoin, and paraffin. Because feet are more prone to dryness and getting calloused, look for urea, an ingredient that simultaneously moisturizes and exfoliates the skin. "Urea is an essential component of skin maintenance, serving as a natural moisturizing factor that binds water and pulls it into the skin (where it belongs) and kicks cracked, dead skin cells to the curb," board-certified dermatologist Adam Friedman, MD, previously told Allure.
Elevate your foot-care routine with Sol de Janeiro's Samba 2-Step Foot Fetish Cream. This two-piece set comes with a smoothing board to gently buff away dry patches along with the brand's Samba Foot Fetish Cream, a rich moisturizer containing conditioning skin saviors like coconut oil, aa oil, and cupuau butter.
Los Angeles-based nail artist Sigourney Nuñez waxes poetic about the OPI Pro Spa Moisture Whip Massage Cream. "It has a really nice balance between slip and absorption," she tells Allure. The decadent, souffle-like cream is made with hydrating glycerin and avocado oil, as well as shea and cocoa seed butters, to restore moisture. The formula also features collagen-building peptides that keep the skin looking soft and supple over time.
On the run? Don't forget to take Tenoverten's The Sole Mate Skin-Softening Foot Balm with you. This compact stick easily fits in your tote or carry-on so you can smooth and condition your roughest parts with vitamin E, manuka oil, jojoba oil, and coconut oil anywhere, any time.
Dr. Brenner swears by cocoa butter as a softening, hydrating ingredient for dry feet. We're really into Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula Foot Magic, a creamy cocoa butter-based formula that truly lives up to its name. We're not complaining about the infusion of cooling peppermint oil, either, which feels like a sigh of relief for fatigued feet.
We'll be damned if we let dry cuticles rain on our pedicure parade. Remark recommends The Body Shop's Intensive Cooling Foot Rescue for softening toes up, stat. She's also into the formula's cooling effect, which soothes achy feet on contact.
Remark attests Eucerin's Advanced Repair Foot Cream can tackle dryness, cracked heels, and tough calluses in one fell swoop, thanks to a combination of exfoliating lactic acids and 10 percent urea. We love how the formula has a lightweight, non-greasy feel to boot and a fragrance-free formulation that sensitive skin types can enjoy.
The lactic acid in AmLactin Foot Repair hydrates and breaks down ultra-dry, callused feet. Layer the soothing formula on your feet before bedtime, throw on some socks for good measure, and you'll wake up to significantly softer skin.
AmLactin's fragrance-free cream is laced with lactic acid, an alpha hydroxy acid exfoliant often used in anti-aging skincare products that works to increase cell turnover, sloughing off dead skin to leave it soft, smooth, and younger-looking. "This stuff is amazing! It will make even the worst feet super soft in just a few days," a reviewer raved. "I put it on ... and wake up with feet that feel softer than they do after a pedicure."
Tackle stubborn cracked heels (and elbows, too!) with this targeted Glytone cream, which contains high levels of skin-sloughing glycolic acid. "The only thing that will truly make a difference on dry cracked heels," a Dermstore reviewer said. (Note that the potent formula is made to be rinsed off, per packaging instructions.)
From a GH Beauty Lab gold-standard brand for body skin moisturization, this Eucerin formula made with smoothing urea and lactic acid earned high marks on Walmart for its almost-instant results in softening dry feet. "We have tried every cream, even some prescription creams, and Eucerin Intensive Repair Foot Cream out-lasted them all," one reviewer noted. "It made my feet feel silky smooth in just one day! It did away with the rough, cracked calluses and dry, flaky skin."
Made with the dead skin-sloughing ingredient salicylic acid often found in facial skincare products, this fragrance-free CeraVe foot cream is also top-rated with consumers. It's infused with the brand's signature ceramides, lipids that naturally occur in skin, making it a great choice for smoothing roughness. "I have notoriously rough feet...and it has drastically changed my feet," a reviewer marveled. "They are so much softer."
A novel moisturizer plus exfoliator hybrid, Arm & Hammer's formula gets rid of rough, flaky foot skin with glycolic acid to help turn over dead skin cells and a hands-free massaging brush applicator to further smooth. "The little soft scrubbing nubs help get the cream into any cracks around your heel and feels great," one Amazon reviewer said.
Made with calming aloe, cooling menthol, antibacterial tea tree oil, and exfoliating salicylic acid, Ahava's foot cream, a best-seller, is like a spa treatment for your feet. Two reviewers called it the best foot cream they've ever used. "We have hard water, hence very dry and cracked feet," one raved. It "smooths the skin so they feel like a baby's."
A line of skincare products created just to treat feet, Footnanny's collection offers foot creams in an array of scents, from florals like jasmine and rose to calming aromas like lavender and tea tree. The formula is made with skin nourishers like cocoa and shea butters and vitamin E, and the tea tree oil in this variant also has antibacterial properties.
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