We all want healthier, younger looking skin.
That’s what most of us are after (and one of the reasons this site exists in the first place). But after being fed so many different skin care “health secrets”, it’s hard to find something worth your time and actually know that it’s going to work.
I don’t have to convince you, here: you can do independent research and gather your own information.
Copper peptide serums are proven to work by increasing collagen production and elastin production, and actually getting rid of damaged collagen and elastin in your skin and scar tissues to help with fading/blending.
They’re powerful, they’re useful, and regardless of what you need them for, we’re going to find you the best copper peptide serums for your skin right now.
Best Copper Peptide Serum – Reviews & Buying guide for 2021
Best Overall: Jack Black Protein Booster Skin Serum
- Size: 2 fl oz
- Type: All Skin Types
- Ingredients: Green tea extract, glycerin, aloe leaf juice, coconut, jojoba seed oil, palmitate, and more
No, not like the actor. Jack Black is an independent cosmetics line, and they’ve made one of the best copper peptide serums on the market. It’s not cheap, and it’s not shying away from what it needs to do: nourish your skin.
Jack Black keeps their choice of wording and labeling pretty straightforward. It’s all about skin age control, and with these ingredients, they’ve basically created a melting pot of all the top-of-the-line materials from around the globe that do wonders for your skin.
With the inclusion of ingredients such as green tea extract and aloe leaf juice, you’re basically adding caffeine to your skin to help tighten it, and aloe vera to soothe any abrasions or inflammation that you may have.
On top of that, you also have jojoba seed, coconut oil, and palmitate to leave your skin feeling soft and smooth.
The whole point of copper peptides is to remove fine lines and wrinkles, and truly smooth your skin out. Jack Black doesn’t contain any acids to pull away dead skin cells, but what this beautiful serum does is even better. It’s like a bombardment of nutrients for your skin that it can’t help but absorb.
This also makes Jack Black the best copper peptide serum for acne scars since it nourishes the skin so deeply, and while the lineup is designed for men (hence the heavy inclusion of jojoba oil), it works wonders for women as well.
Within about three weeks, many users saw decreased prominence in the fine lines on their face and arms. You could be next.
Runner Up: PCA Skin ExLinea Peptide Smoothing Serum
- Size: 1 oz
- Type: All Skin Types
- Ingredients: Acetyl hexapeptide-8, rice bran wax, squalene, sodium hyaluronate, and more
We love peptides, we love what they can do, but we need them to come from reputable sources. Companies that are hell-bent on giving you the best results.
If you want a more leisurely and regal experience, PCA Skin and their ExLinea peptide lineup will do the most for your skin in the least amount of time.
The goal should be adding as many peptides to the skin as possible as quickly as you can, right?
Well, yes and no. Your skin needs to be receptive to peptides in the first place, and the best copper peptide serums from PCA Skin are chock full of important ingredients such as rice bran wax and squalene to help your skin actually absorb everything properly.
This is a pricier copper peptide serum, and in total you’re only getting one ounce of this outstanding product. With PCA Skin, you don’t have to apply it every single day if you don’t want to. It’s strong enough to be a once-a-week application, stretching your dollars a bit farther.
It’s worth the money, but we’re focusing on results more than anything else. As one of the best rated copper peptide serums on the market, PCA Skin helps minimize wrinkles and fine lines after the first application.
After being absorbed into your skin, you can see a noticeable difference in about five minutes (best to take a quick before and after photo so you can spot the changes).
Now, it’s always important to be careful with terms like “Anti-aging,” especially when a company is expecting you to trust them.
This gives you the look of anti-aging in that short time frame, but it’s not a permanent solution for your skin that will leave lasting effects from one application. Just keep that in mind.
What PCA Skin will do for you is make you feel pampered. It isn’t easy to pull off, but they managed to make a truly non-greasy formula that doesn’t sit on top of your skin and get sticky. It absorbs quickly, giving you the time you need to feel briefly pampered before continuing with your day.
Alternative: Paula’s Choice Boost Peptide Booster Serum
- Size: 0.67 oz
- Type: Combination Skin
- Ingredients: Palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7, hexanoyl dipeptide-3, myristoyl pentapeptide-17, citrate buffer, dextran, hydrolyzed silk, and more
Somewhere in between the price point of Jack Black and PCA Skin, we have Paula’s Choice. We don’t know who Paula is, but she certainly knows how to choose peptides.
To start, you’re getting a 0.67 ounce volume, so you definitely have to make this stretch to the best of your abilities. That being said, you can make twenty milliliters go a long way if you’re careful about it.
It may not be the best value copper peptide serum in terms of volume, but it’s powerful enough to deliver the results you’re hoping for.
The entire design is intended to smooth out fine lines and wrinkles, and after enough applications, you can see serious lifting. It only takes one use to see small immediate wrinkle reduction as well, so you get short-term and long-term gratification from using this.
As one of the best serum with copper peptide on this list, you’re getting a slew of other benefits besides just having copper peptide. Hydration, moisturization, and toning are also part of Paula’s Choice, so you’re getting an all-in-one serum. The thing is, with the 0.67 ounce volume, you have to use it sparingly.
Users reported enjoying Paula’s Choice first when they woke up a few weeks into use, and noticed visible decreases in forehead and under-eye wrinkles, shaving years off of their visual appearance.
They’ve awoken feeling young and refreshed, and looking their best – when you look your best, it’s hard not to feel your best, you know?
Last but not least, Paula’s Choice is a non-greasy formula that blends into the skin quickly. Don’t worry when your skin absorbs it in an instant; you don’t need to apply more!
Just let the magic do its job. Above everything else, Paula’s Choice does exactly what it markets itself to d, and that’s extremely important when you’re dealing with skincare products that are well above the bottom shelf.
Alternative: Derma-E Advanced Peptides and Collagen Serum
- Size: 2 fl oz
- Type: Sensitive Skin
- Ingredients: Glycerin, organic green tea extract, acetyl hexapeptide-8, palmitoyl tripeptide-38, and more
Copper peptides are the star of the show here, but there’s something else we need to discuss as well: collagen serum.
That’s what makes Derma-E as powerful as it is, because not only does it temporarily remove fine lines and wrinkles with those copper peptides, but it feeds collagen to your skin to promote better skin elasticity.
As the best copper peptide serum for wrinkles, you’re actually feeding your skin exactly what it needs, and what it’s been unable to produce on its own.
As your skin ages, you produce less collagen, which is where Derma-E comes in to the rescue. Unlike others on this list, you get a plentiful amount of Derma-E without having to pay competitor prices.
Two ounces per bottle may not sound like much, but in terms of the best collagen boosting copper peptide serum, it’s a lot of bang for your buck. In fact, this is one of the most affordable copper peptides on our list period.
Take in the value, grab an extra bottle to build your stockade, and soak in the benefits of matrixyl synthe’6 – a multi-peptide serum composure that helps with collagen, and makes your skin appear more vibrant without forcing blood to rush to the surface.
It doesn’t just expand blood vessels to give you that rosy-cheeked look; it goes deep and provides nutrients to lower levels of your skin. It goes as deep as it can without an injection, and that’s saying something.
One thing that’s important to note, especially for anyone reading this with allergies or sensitive skin, is that all the collagen is derived from plant-based sources.
There is no animal product collagen located in Derma-E in the slightest. This actually has additional benefits apart from user preference, because it’s more gentle on the skin, and helps moisturize your skin better than animal-derived collagen supplements found in some peptide serums.
Alternative: Olay Regenerist Retinol Face Serum
- Size: 1.3 oz
- Type: All Skin Types
- Ingredients: Pentapeptide-4, niacinamide, propionate, retinol, glycerin, and more
You might be surprised to find this well-known brand sitting at the bottom of our list, but keep in mind this is a very elite list, so fifth place is still fantastic (especially out of the dozens of products we sifted through).
You can expect excellent copper peptide serum benefits from Olay Regenerist, although they admittedly don’t have the same potency as some of the other formulas that we’ve reviewed so far.
That being said, you’re going to see a huge supply of retinol here, which is a collagen-boosting kickstarter for your skin. Your skin produces more collagen, it stays younger-looking for longer, and the world keeps on spinning.
That’s the main benefit, but some of the skin-quenching aspects of the serum are pretty heavily chemically derived (which is one of the reasons we had to knock this down a few notches on the list).
The claim that it properly hydrates your skin for twenty-four hours seemed to lack a bit, as we arrived at around seventeen hours during testing before our skin felt dry and like the serum had worn off.
You’ll be reapplying it in the morning, so the seventeen hours is still a favorable amount of time, but we have to cut through that red tape in the way that these companies market themselves.
That being said, Olay makes this fairly affordable for the 1.3 ounces that you get. It’s not the cheapest on the list, but it’s definitely a powerful formula that most of us can afford, even if this is your first month using copper peptide serum. Is Olay the best?
It offers wrinkle reduction, has vitamin B3, and retinol, and a ton of other benefits, it’s just not in the ranks of ExLinea and Jack Black.
Copper Peptide Serum FAQ
Do Copper Peptides Really Work?
Yes. While some of the evidence is new, copper peptides have been proven to make your skin more firm, and enact better collagen and elastin production within the skin. Those are the two key parts of your skin that actually make it stretchable, and what make it bounce back.
However, copper peptides have their limitations. Don’t assume they’re all-powerful; they have to be mixed with the right ingredients in order to be rendered effective.
You have side effects that you have to keep in mind. Such as itching, hives, burning sensations, tingling sensations lasting longer than ten minutes, and redness of the skin (inflammation). Overall, things can look pretty dodgy if copper peptides irritate your skin.
Copper peptide serums are not going to give the exact same effect on everyone’s skin. If you have an oily skin type, your body is producing extra oils that could interfere with your ability to absorb copper peptide, and your results will then differ from someone else with a different skin type.
At the end of the day, they’re proven to work and boost collagen and elastin production, and there’s no harm in trying them. Sensitive, allergy-prone skin is definitely going to be a hurdle for some people (and it may turn out that copper peptides serums are not for you), but you’ll never know unless you try it.
Please note: Some individuals may have extreme allergies to copper that may result in anaphylactic shock and potential hospitalization. It is recommended to have an allergy panel done to check for this allergy before applying copper peptide serum to your skin.
What Can You Not Mix With Copper Peptides?
If you mix certain things with copper peptide serums, it could either make them less effective, or render them completely ineffective. You could basically be buying expensive peptides just to have them do nothing for your skin.
These are what you need to avoid.
- Vitamin C: This one sucks, because vitamin C is great for hydrating your skin, reducing redness, and even tightening skin since your body uses it to protect against UVA and UVB rays.
- Retinol: Retinol is this hyped-up drug that, while proven effective, isn’t worth 100% of the hype that it gets. Retinol will interfere with copper peptide application.
- AHAs: These are commonly found in skin toners. AHAs are in glycolic acid (chemical peels), and will directly interfere with the way copper works on your skin.
Avoiding these can actually be harder than you think. Vitamin C is in a ton of skincare products, retinol is becoming more widely-used, and AHAs are in cosmetics and skin cleansers. Be attentive to the ingredients lists on your cosmetic shelf items.
How Often Should I Use Copper Peptides?
Surprisingly, for the power that they offer, you can use them twice per day. Most of the time, skin tightening products require longer spans of time in between use, but copper peptides are gentle on your skin – if you use them properly.
What I mean by that is only using a very small amount at a time. Usually, one single drop up to two small drops is all you need to begin using copper peptide serum.
You don’t want to apply too much to your skin at once. If you notice, a lot of these peptides come in 2 oz or smaller containers for this reason. You’re expected to milk it for all its worth.
Copper peptides have been called “Nature’s botox” because of the effect it has on visibly tightening your skin. If you’re using a lot of cosmetics (chemical peels, toners, foundation), consider how much copper peptide you’re using and if you need to scale it back.
Do Peptides Help Hair Growth?
Peptides do, yes, but copper peptides are a slightly different story.
Peptides are found throughout the body. Much like proteins in the body, peptides are made up of amino acids. These can be found everywhere in your body, in all your organs, and even in your hair follicles.
When you introduce peptides to your body, you instigate the growth cycle of new hair. That being said, it’s not as easy as rubbing copper peptide serum on your head and hoping for a miracle.
Peptide therapy is something that’s been used for years to help bring back the luster of thinning and receding hairlines, when administered by a professional. It’s also not just some serum that you buy online and apply to areas that you want hair to grow.
Now, when it comes to copper peptides specifically, it may have a different effect to peptide treatment. Copper peptides do block DTH in the scalp, improve microcirculation (small, non-critical blood vessels), and they promote collagen production and skin restoration.
They’re fantastic, although applied at the surface level, you’re only going to see so much of the desired effects.
You can purchase separate at-home peptide serums and ointments to promote hair growth if you wish. We just wouldn’t recommend using the copper peptide serum that you’re planning on buying for your face on the area of the body for hair growth.
Please keep in mind that this could lead to increased hair production in areas of your body such as your legs and arms, but it does not bring hair production to the face.
Can I Use Copper Peptide Serum Underneath My Eyes?
Yes, you can. Copper peptides can be irritating if they get in your eyes, but you can use them beneath your eyes to smooth out and tone dark spots, crepey skin, and tighten everything for a more youthful, rested look.
There is risk, of course, but as long as you have a steady hand and do not apply copper peptide serum underneath or around your eyes when you’re fatigued or in an altered state, you should be okay.
Copper peptides help with skin restoration, although you should keep in mind that the skin under your eyes is one of the hardest areas on your body to repair elastin and collagen in.
Can I Use Copper Peptide Serum With Skin Peels?
You need to space out the usage, but yes, you should be able to do that without a problem. Skin peels can remove crepey, loose, or excess dead skin and leave a smoother, softer layer of skin behind.
Couple that with what copper peptide serum does for your skin, and you’ve got a match made in heaven.
Because peptides can cause redness of the skin and mild irritation, do not use these directly after chemical peel treatment. Give your skin the necessary time to rest in between treatments.
Copper Peptides: A Miracle in Skincare
The jury is out: copper peptides are fantastic for your skin, beneficial for reducing the visibility and actual damaged collagen in scars, and they can even help your skin look young and vibrant for years beyond what you were expecting.
All that’s left to do is pick the right copper peptide for your needs, make sure it’s the right strength, and begin applying it. Whether it’s crepey skin, scar tissues, or any of the other issues that plague your life right now, copper peptides could be the solution.