You have probably seen argan oil for aging skin on a label before you ever learned what it does. It shows up in hair oils, cuticle creams, body lotions, sometimes with nothing more than a gold accent on the bottle to hint that it is special. Somewhere along the way it picked up a reputation for being good for skin, and most people never found out why.
Argan oil comes from a tree that grows almost exclusively in one region of Morocco, and it was used there for generations before it reached a cosmetics shelf. What is worth knowing now is not just where it comes from, but what is inside it, and whether the reputation holds up against a real study instead of a bottle claim.
Where Argan Oil Comes From
Argan oil is one of the most expensive oils in the world, sometimes selling for close to $300 a liter, and the price traces back to how little of it exists and how much work goes into making it. It comes from the kernel inside the fruit of the argan tree, a species that grows almost nowhere else on earth outside a narrow strip of land between Morocco's Atlantic coast and the Atlas Mountains.
For generations, Amazigh women in the region have made argan oil using a process that has changed very little over time. The fruit is sun dried, peeled by hand, and the hard nut inside is cracked open one at a time to reach the kernel. It is slow, physical work, and for most of its history the oil was sold locally for just a few dollars a liter, made mainly for cooking rather than skincare.
That changed once women-run cooperatives began organizing production and exporting internationally, turning a household staple into a global cosmetic ingredient. The shift opened up income these women had not had access to before, though wages in the region still often fall short of what the growing international demand for the oil would suggest.
It is also worth knowing that the popularity has a downside. Because pure argan oil is expensive and slow to produce, a lot of what gets sold as pure argan oil is cut with cheaper oils or synthetic compounds without saying so on the label. That is part of why sourcing and certification matter, not just for the tree and the communities that depend on it, but for whether what is in the bottle matches what it claims to be.
What Is In Argan Oil?
Fatty acids that overlap with the skin's own barrier. Argan oil is roughly 80 percent oleic and linoleic acid, the same fatty acids the skin barrier is already built from, which is part of why it tends to absorb without feeling heavy.
Tocopherols at a higher concentration than most plant oils. Tocopherol is a form of vitamin E, and argan oil carries meaningfully more of it than oils like olive oil. Tocopherols work by neutralizing free radicals before they can damage skin cells, which is part of what an antioxidant is doing on a cellular level [1].
Squalene and plant sterols. These round out the antioxidant profile and help the oil sit compatibly with what skin already produces on its own, rather than sitting on top of it like a coating.
How Argan Oil For Aging Skin is Made
How Argan Oil Compares to Olive Oil and Jojoba Oil
Argan oil often gets grouped in with other plant oils as if they are interchangeable. They are not, and the differences matter depending on what your skin needs.
Olive oil is the closest comparison chemically, since both are rich, antioxidant-carrying oils. But when researchers tested the two directly against each other on aging skin, only the argan oil group showed a measurable change. More on that study below.
Jojoba oil is not technically an oil at all, it is a liquid wax ester, and its structure closely resembles human sebum. That similarity is what makes jojoba good at regulating oil production and working well for oily or reactive skin. Argan oil takes a different approach. Instead of mimicking sebum, it leans on its fatty acid and antioxidant content to support skin that has started to feel drier or less resilient, which tends to describe aging skin more than oily skin. Neither oil is better across the board, they are built for different jobs.
The Study on Argan Oil and Skin Elasticity
Most ingredient claims in skincare come from a lab measuring an isolated compound, not from watching how skin responds over weeks of real use. Argan oil has an actual controlled study behind it, and it was done on postmenopausal women specifically, since declining estrogen during this stage is what drives much of the change in skin elasticity.
Sixty postmenopausal women were split into groups over a 60 day period. One group consumed argan oil daily, one group consumed olive oil as the control, and every participant also applied argan oil topically to a section of skin on the forearm. The women using argan oil, through diet and topical application, showed a measurable improvement in skin elasticity. The olive oil group did not show the same result [2].
That comparison is what makes the study worth paying attention to. Olive oil is also a fatty, antioxidant rich plant oil, so the fact that argan oil outperformed it points to something specific in its composition, not just the general benefit of putting any oil on skin.
How to Use Argan Oil For Aging Skin in Your Morning Routine
Oil based products go on last, after your moisturizer, since oil sitting on skin too early blocks whatever comes after it from absorbing. The Uplifting Face Serum follows that same order, it is the final step that seals everything in underneath it.
If you want the fuller breakdown of why product order changes how well your skin absorbs what you apply, I wrote about it in Skincare Layering Order. And if you are trying to figure out how an oil based serum fits alongside a water based one, Water Based Serum vs Oil Based Serums walks through that in more detail.
A simple morning routine looks like this. Cleanse, tone, apply a water-based serum first if that is part of your routine, then a moisturizer like the Anti-Aging Turmeric Cream, and finish with 2 to 3 drops of the Uplifting Face Serum pressed gently into skin as your last step before SPF.
Conclusion About Argan Oil For Aging Skin
Argan oil is not a miracle ingredient, and it is not automatically better than every other oil on a shelf. What it has is a real composition worth understanding, and a controlled study that specifically measured its effect on aging skin against another oil, not just against nothing. That is more than most ingredients on a label can claim.
If you are not sure whether this serum fits where your skin is right now, the skin quiz is a fast way to find out, or you can go straight to the Uplifting Face Serum itself.
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Sources
- National Library of Medicine | Argan Oil: A Natural Bioactive Lipid Modulating Oxidative Stress and Inflammation
- National Library of Medicine | The Effect of Dietary and/or Cosmetic Argan Oil on Postmenopausal Skin Elasticity
