What the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser is

The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser is a 120 g pink cleanser with an unusual texture — it comes out of the tube like stretchy marshmallow, clings to skin, then breaks into foam when you add water. Medicube calls it a mask-to-foam. It is the cleanser step of their PDRN Pink line.

Sixty-seven ingredients, made in Korea. And there is a number printed on the front of the tube that we need to deal with before anything else.

Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser key ingredients: salmon DNA PDRN, niacinamide, hyaluronic acid and ceramides — Medicube names salmon DNA PDRN, niacinamide, hyaluronic acid and ceramides. Two of those four are present in quantity.

The “99% PDRN” on the tube is not what you think

The front of the tube carries a large 99% with the word PDRN under it. Almost everyone reads that as the product being 99 percent PDRN, or at least containing a great deal of it.

It is not what the number means. The 99 percent refers to the purity of the PDRN raw material Medicube buys in — their own copy describes it as “99% purity Salmon DNA PDRN”. It says nothing whatsoever about how much of it is in the tube.

How much is in the tube is also printed, in the ingredient list, where far fewer people look. Sodium DNA is declared at 50 ppm — 0.005 percent — at position thirty-seven of sixty-seven.

So: a 99 percent badge on a product containing five thousandths of one percent of the ingredient. Both figures come from Medicube. Only one of them is on the front.

We are not calling it a lie. Purity claims are legitimate and 99 percent purity is genuinely good raw material. But a shopper looking at that tube is not being helped to understand the difference, and the arrangement of the two numbers is not accidental.

The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser niacinamide, on the other hand, is real

Now the good news, and it is properly good.

Niacinamide is declared at 20,000 ppm — two percent — and it sits seventh of sixty-seven. That is a genuine, disclosed, working concentration, and it is far more than most cleansers bother with.

The honest caveat is the format. Two percent niacinamide in a serum you leave on works. Two percent in a product you rinse off after thirty seconds does considerably less, because contact time is most of what determines whether an active reaches anything. The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser is not a substitute for a niacinamide serum.

What it does mean is that if you are going to use a cleanser anyway, this one is doing more than nothing on your way past. That is a reasonable thing to pay a little extra for. It is not a reason to skip a leave-on step.

The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser is a true soap, and that matters more than the actives

Look at ingredients three to six and ten: myristic acid, stearic acid, potassium hydroxide, lauric acid, palmitic acid.

That is a saponified soap base. Fatty acids reacted with an alkali to make soap, exactly as soap has been made for centuries. It is what gives the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser its dense, squeaky, satisfying foam, and it is the single most important fact about how this cleanser will behave on your face.

Soap-based cleansers run alkaline — typically pH 9 to 10 — while healthy skin sits around pH 4.7 to 5.5. Washing with a soap raises your skin’s pH temporarily, and repeated daily that can weaken the barrier, particularly on dry or sensitive skin. It is why most dermatologists steer people toward syndet cleansers instead.

Medicube does not publish a pH figure for this product, and we will not guess one. What we can tell you is what the base is, because the base tells you most of what you need to know.

If you have oily, resilient skin and you like the squeaky-clean feeling, a soap base is not a problem and this is a very well-dressed one. If your skin is dry, tight after cleansing, or reactive, a soap-based cleanser is the wrong starting point regardless of what is dissolved in it.

Five Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser ceramides in a cleanser you rinse off

Here is the tension at the heart of this formula, and it is genuinely interesting.

The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser contains five different ceramides — ceramide NP at forty-nine, then AS, NS, AP and EOP scattered from sixty-one to sixty-six — plus madecassoside at fifty and a long run of hyaluronic acid derivatives.

Those are barrier-repair ingredients. They are in a soap-based cleanser, which is a format that stresses the barrier. And they sit in the last third of a sixty-seven-item list, in a product that spends thirty seconds on your face before going down the drain.

Charitably: Medicube added them to offset the soap base. Realistically: five ceramides at those positions in a rinse-off product are a label feature. If your barrier needs ceramides, they need to be in something that stays on.

Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser stretchy marshmallow texture transforming into foam — The marshmallow texture is the genuinely distinctive thing here, and it comes from the soap base.

The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser ingredient list — all sixty-seven

From Medicube’s Korean legal filing, with both declared concentrations.

Water, Glycerin, Myristic Acid, Stearic Acid, Potassium Hydroxide, Lauric Acid, Niacinamide (20,000 ppm), Glyceryl Stearate SE, Glycol Distearate, Palmitic Acid, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Potassium Cocoyl Glycinate, Sodium Polyacrylate, Sorbitan Olivate, Sorbitol, Allantoin, Potassium Cocoate, Polyquaternium-10, Sodium Chloride, Polyquaternium-7, Butylene Glycol, Caprylyl Glycol, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Tetrasodium EDTA.

Chamomile Flower Oil, Pear Extract, Damask Rose Flower Water, Peach Extract, Thuja Orientalis Extract, Cyanocobalamin, Jasmine Flower Water, Bitter Orange Flower Extract, Rosemary Leaf Oil, Melon Extract, Hedera Helix Leaf/Stem Extract, 1,2-Hexanediol, Panthenol, Sodium DNA (50 ppm), Sodium Benzoate, Coptis Root Extract, Ethylhexylglycerin, Gluconolactone, Glutathione, Capryloyl Salicylic Acid, Salicylic Acid.

Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Baobab Seed Oil, Hydrogenated Lecithin, Pentylene Glycol, Ceramide NP, Madecassoside, Molokhia Leaf Extract, Carum Petroselinum Extract, Okra Fruit Extract, Decyl Glucoside, Dimethylsilanol Hyaluronate, Hydrolyzed Hyaluronic Acid, Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate, Sodium Hyaluronate, Potassium Hyaluronate, Hyaluronic Acid, Ceramide AS, Ceramide NS, Hydroxypropyltrimonium Hyaluronate, Sodium Hyaluronate Crosspolymer, Sodium Hyaluronate Dimethylsilanol, Ceramide AP, Ceramide EOP, Sodium Acetylated Hyaluronate.

The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser acids, glutathione and botanical middle

Three acids at forty to forty-three

Gluconolactone (PHA), capryloyl salicylic acid (LHA) and salicylic acid (BHA). Same pattern we found in Medicube’s mud mask — the acids named in the marketing sit near the bottom of the list. In a rinse-off soap they are doing very little.

Glutathione, forty-first

Popular, poorly absorbed topically at the best of times, and forty-first of sixty-seven in a cleanser. Treat it as a name.

Nine botanicals and florals, twenty-five to thirty-five

Chamomile flower oil, pear, damask rose water, peach, thuja, jasmine water, bitter orange flower, rosemary leaf oil and melon. There is no “fragrance” or “parfum” entry in the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser — the scent comes from these instead.

That is not automatically gentler. Chamomile oil, rosemary oil and bitter orange flower are essential oils and are among the more common botanical sensitisers. If you have reacted to essential oils before, “no added fragrance” on this formula does not mean what you would hope.

The pink is vitamin B12 again

Cyanocobalamin at thirty, exactly as in the PDRN serums. No CI pigment anywhere in the list.

How to use the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser: apply a pea-sized amount, add water, lather and rinse — Apply to dry skin, massage, then add water to foam. The dry-skin first step is what the mask-to-foam texture is for.

Soap or syndet — how to tell in ten seconds

This is the most useful thing on the page and it works on every cleanser you will ever pick up, not just this one.

Look for a fatty acid paired with an alkali near the top of the list. The fatty acids are myristic, stearic, lauric and palmitic acid. The alkalis are potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide. If you see both groups in the first ten ingredients, you are holding a soap, whatever the packaging says.

The Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser has myristic acid third, stearic acid fourth, potassium hydroxide fifth, lauric acid sixth and palmitic acid tenth. That is about as clear as it gets.

A syndet looks completely different. Synthetic detergent cleansers use ingredients like sodium cocoyl isethionate, sodium cocoyl glycinate, sodium methyl cocoyl taurate, cocamidopropyl betaine or decyl glucoside as the main cleansing agents, and they are formulated near skin’s own pH. Every Arencia cleanser we stock is built this way.

Neither type is universally better. Soap gives a cleaner rinse and a squeakier finish that a lot of people prefer, and oily skin often does fine on it. Syndets are gentler on the barrier and are the safer default for dry, sensitive or acid-using skin.

What matters is knowing which you have bought. A tube covered in ceramides, hyaluronic acid and a pink PDRN badge reads as gentle. The base underneath is soap, and the base is what your skin reacts to first.

Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser marketed to melt away clogged pores, dirt and dullness with PDRN and niacinamide — Medicube markets the cleanser on PDRN and niacinamide. The base underneath is a potassium soap, and that is what your skin meets first.

Where the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser sits against our other cleansers

We now stock six cleansers and they are genuinely different products rather than variations. Briefly.

Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser — soap base, foaming, 2% niacinamide, for oily skin that likes a squeaky finish.
Arencia Rice + LHA — syndet, no scrub, salicylic acid and LHA, fragrance-free. The one for congestion.
Arencia Black Tea — syndet plus charcoal and clay, physical scrub. Strongest oil control.
Arencia Calendula — syndet, gentlest of everything we carry.
Medicube Blackhead Mud Mask — not a daily cleanser, a weekly clay reset.

If you are choosing between the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser and any of the Arencia ones, the deciding question is not which brand you prefer. It is whether your skin does better on soap or on a syndet, and the ten-second test above answers it.

How to use the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser

Apply a pea-sized amount to dry skin. Do not wet your face first — the stretchy texture only works dry.
Massage gently for twenty to thirty seconds, concentrating on congested areas.
Add a little water and keep working until it turns to foam.
Rinse thoroughly with lukewarm water.
Follow with toner and moisturiser promptly — soap-based cleansers leave skin more permeable and more prone to tightness if you wait.

Medicube’s instructions stop at rinsing. We are adding the fifth step because with an alkaline base it matters.

How often to use the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser, and who should be careful

Once daily, at night, is our recommendation for most people. Twice daily only if your skin is genuinely oily and shows no tightness.

If you find the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser leaves your face squeaky and tight, that is the soap base talking and it is a signal to reduce frequency, not to buy more moisturiser. Squeaky is not the same as clean.

Take particular care if you use a retinoid, an acid toner or benzoyl peroxide. A soap cleanser plus a nightly active is a combination that produces a lot of the irritation people blame on the active.

How the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser suits this climate

Reasonably well for oily skin, less well for everyone else.

Dhaka heat and humidity raise sebum output and a foaming cleanser genuinely clears more than a milky one. Through the summer, oily skin will get on with this and enjoy the finish.

But the same climate also means air conditioning drying skin indoors while humidity strips it outdoors, and a soap base pushes in the same direction. If your skin has ever felt tight in a cold office, this is not the cleanser for the dry months.

The Arencia Calendula cleanser and the Arencia Rice and LHA cleanser both use mild coconut surfactants rather than a soap base, and either is gentler if that describes you.

Who the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser suits

Good fit: oily and combination skin, people who want a proper foaming cleanser, anyone building a full Medicube PDRN routine, and anyone who genuinely enjoys the squeaky-clean finish and does not react badly to it.

Poor fit: dry skin, dehydrated skin, a compromised barrier, rosacea-prone or reactive skin, anyone sensitive to essential oils, and anyone using strong actives nightly.

Also note: sodium DNA is salmon-derived according to Medicube’s own marketing. If you avoid animal-derived ingredients, that applies here too, at 50 ppm.

What 120 g of the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser works out to per wash

A pea-sized amount is roughly one gram, so a 120 g tube gives around a hundred and twenty washes — about four months once daily.

That puts the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser at a little under fourteen taka a wash. For a cleanser with two percent disclosed niacinamide, that is fair. Against a plain gentle cleanser it is a premium you are paying largely for the texture and the brand.

Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser shelf life

Medicube’s Korean filing gives 30 months unopened and 12 months after opening. Made in Korea by Megacos for APR Corporation, Medicube’s parent company.

Twelve months comfortably covers a four-month tube. Keep the cap clean and store it out of direct heat.

Questions we get asked

Does the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser really contain 99% PDRN?

No. The 99 percent is the purity of the PDRN raw material. The amount in the tube is 50 ppm — 0.005 percent — declared in the ingredient list.

Is 2% niacinamide in a cleanser worth anything?

Something, but not what 2 percent in a serum is worth. Contact time is short. Think of it as a small bonus on a step you were doing anyway.

Is the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser fragrance-free?

There is no fragrance or parfum entry, but there are nine botanicals and florals including chamomile oil, rosemary oil and bitter orange flower. It is scented, by essential oils. If you react to those, avoid it.

Will the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser dry out my skin?

It might. It is a soap-based cleanser and those raise skin pH. Oily skin usually copes; dry and reactive skin often does not.

Is the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser vegan?

No. The sodium DNA is salmon-derived per Medicube’s own marketing.

Can I use it with the PDRN serums?

Yes, that is the intended routine — cleanser, then Ultra Light PDRN serum or the original. Just be aware you are paying for PDRN three times and getting a meaningful amount in none of them.

Is the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser safe in pregnancy?

There is salicylic acid in it, low in the list and in a rinse-off product. Ask your doctor rather than a shop.

How we store and ship the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser

Stock sits in air-conditioned storage in Dhaka until it goes out. Your tube is sealed when it leaves us and it is stock we imported ourselves, not a unit bought from another local seller and passed along. If it arrives damaged or split, raise it with us the day it lands and we will replace it.

Where the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser fits in your routine

First step at night, on dry skin, before everything else. In the morning, water alone suits most people in this climate.

If you wear sunscreen or makeup, use an oil or balm first and this second — the mask-to-foam texture is not a makeup remover despite the marketing.

Buying the Medicube PDRN Whip Cleanser in Bangladesh

Sealed 120 g tube, imported by us, in stock in Dhaka with nationwide delivery. Every ingredient and both declared concentrations come from Medicube’s Korean legal filing, and you can check any ingredient name against the EU CosIng database yourself.

Browse our other cleansers, or see everything we stock from Medicube.

PDRN whip cleanser

Medicube PDRN Pink Niacinamide Whip Cleanser 120g