Barrier
Serum 02
Most serums are sold on what they might do in twelve weeks. This one is sold on what it stops doing on day one: it stops water leaving your skin faster than it should. Everything else follows from that.
- Volume
- 30 ml clear glass, 1.5 ml dropper
- pH
- 5.4 ± 0.2
- Actives
- Niacinamide 4% · Panthenol 3%
- Ceramide
- NP / AP / EOP at 1%
- Unit price
- £1.60 per ml
- Batch
- 24-11, filled 06.06.26
£2 under the free-delivery threshold on its own, which we know is irritating. Delivery is £3.95 otherwise, Royal Mail Tracked 48. Leaves Rugby within one working day.
Shot in the Oslo studio, single north window, no fill.Fig. 02 · 30 ml
- Free UK delivery
- on orders over £50
- 3–5 working days
- Royal Mail Tracked 48
- Ships from Rugby
- filled in Warwickshire
- 30 days to return
- opened or not
If your skin is irritated, the answer is almost never another product.
A compromised barrier looks like a lot of things: tightness after cleansing, stinging from products that used to be fine, a flush that takes twenty minutes to settle, patches that flake under makeup. It is very rarely a deficiency of one more active. It is usually too much exfoliation, too much surfactant and not enough of the lipids that hold the whole structure together.
So the range is built around subtraction. One cleanser that does not strip. One serum that reduces water loss. One moisturiser structured like the thing it is replacing. Two actives, on a schedule that leaves three nights a week clear. And a sunscreen, because everything above is undone without one.
Fewer products, used properly, for longer.
01 through 06, photographed together in one frame at the same exposure. Nothing here is a render.
Six products.
Not seven.
We have turned down two eye creams, a toner mist and an overnight mask, all of which would have sold. None of them did anything the existing six did not already do. The range covers cleanse, treat, exfoliate, moisturise and protect, and stops.
01Cleansing Milk 01
£26Non-foaming, pH 5.2. Removes SPF without stripping.
In stock
02Barrier Serum 02
£484% niacinamide, 3% panthenol, 1% ceramide complex.
In stock
03Ceramide Cream 03
£42Night cream. 1.2% ceramide, 4% shea, no silicone.
In stock
04Acid Toner 04
£306% lactic acid at pH 3.8. Two nights a week, printed on the carton.
In stock
05Retinal 05
£560.1% retinaldehyde, amber glass, encapsulated.
Low stock, 37 left
06Mineral Screen 06
£38SPF30, 12% non-nano zinc. Back 19 August.
Back 19 August
Buying more than one? There is no bundle discount and there never will be. The prices above are what the products cost to make plus what it costs to keep nine people employed. A bundle price would just mean the single prices were wrong.
Every percentage,
including the
boring ones.
An INCI list tells you the order, not the amount. Anything under 1% can be listed in whatever sequence flatters it most, which is how a serum sells on an active it contains 0.02% of. Below is the actual formula sheet, rounded to one decimal place.
Drawdown at 75 µm. This is the finish it dries to: matte, with nothing left on the surface for sunscreen to slide off.
- Glycerin6.0%
The most-studied humectant there is. Above about 8% it turns tacky, so we stopped at 6.
- Panthenol (pro-vitamin B5)3.0%
Converts to pantothenic acid in skin. 3% is the concentration used in the wound-healing literature.
- Sodium hyaluronate, three weights0.6%
1.5 MDa, 300 kDa and a hydrolysed fraction. One weight sits on top; three do different jobs at different depths.
- Sodium PCA1.0%
Part of skin's own natural moisturising factor. It has been in cosmetic chemistry since the 1970s and costs almost nothing.
- Ceramide NP, AP and EOP1.0%
Three ceramides, not one, in roughly the 3:1:1 ratio found in healthy stratum corneum.
- Squalane (olive-derived)2.0%
Olive, not shark. Stable to oxidation, non-comedogenic in the standard rabbit-ear assay.
- Cholesterol + phytosphingosinetrace
Trace, within the ceramide complex. Listed for completeness.
- Niacinamide4.0%
4%, not 10%. The barrier and sebum data plateaus around 4 to 5%, and on SkinSort 29% of the 324 reviewers of the best-selling 10% serum tag it irritating.
- Beta-glucan (oat-derived)1.5%
Film-forming and measurably calming in patch tests. It is also why the serum feels slightly slippery.
- Allantoin0.5%
Saturated at 0.5% in water. Any more precipitates out.
- Bisabolol0.3%
Alpha-bisabolol isolated from candeia, not chamomile extract, so there is no fragrance load.
- Citric acid / sodium hydroxide0.6%
pH adjusters. Finished product tests at 5.4 ± 0.2, which is where ceramide synthesis is happiest.
- Phenoxyethanol0.9%
Below the 1% EU cap. Challenge-tested to ISO 11930 criterion A by a lab in Nottingham.
- Ethylhexylglycerin0.1%
Boosts the phenoxyethanol so we can use less of it.
Full INCI, as printed on the carton
Aqua, Glycerin, Niacinamide, Propanediol, Panthenol, Squalane, Sodium PCA, Beta-Glucan, Allantoin, Sodium Hyaluronate, Hydrolyzed Sodium Hyaluronate, Sodium Hyaluronate Crosspolymer, Ceramide NP, Ceramide AP, Ceramide EOP, Phytosphingosine, Cholesterol, Sodium Lauroyl Lactylate, Bisabolol, Carbomer, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Hydroxide, Citric Acid, Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin.
What is deliberately not in it
- Fragrance or parfum, of any kind
- Essential oils sold as a fragrance under another name
- Alcohol denat.
- Silicones, which did nothing here the lipids were not already doing
- Colourants
- Botanical extracts below 0.1%, added for the label
Percentages are of the finished bulk, w/w. The declared groups come to 21.5%. Water and the propanediol carrier are the other 78.5%, which is true of almost every serum you own. Safety assessment under Regulation (EC) 1223/2009 by Marit Sørhaug, chartered chemist, Oslo. CPNP and UK SCPN notification numbers are on the carton.
What to actually
do with them.
- 01
Rinse only, or 01 if you slept in sunscreen
Most mornings water is enough. Skin has not got dirty overnight.
- 02
Four drops of 02 on damp skin
Press it in with flat fingers. Rubbing warms the emulsion and it absorbs before it has spread.
- 03
Two fingers' length of 06
Roughly 1.2 ml for a face and neck. Less than that and you are not getting SPF 30.
Morning set · 3 products
- 01Cleansing Milk 01£26
- 02Barrier Serum 02£48
- 06Mineral Screen 06back 19 Aug£38
£24 clear of the £50 free-delivery line, so UK delivery is free. No bundle discount. See the note above the range.
Formulated on
Thorvald Meyers gate.
Filled in Rugby.
Halden started in a second-floor flat in Grünerløkka in 2021, after Ingrid Halden spent eleven years as a formulation chemist for two contract manufacturers whose clients she is still not allowed to name. She had watched the same base emulsion go out under four different brands at four different prices, and got tired of it.
The lab work still happens in Oslo. Manufacture and fill happen at a family-run facility outside Rugby that we chose because they would run batches of 2,000 units rather than insisting on 20,000. It costs us roughly 40p more per unit. It also means we can reformulate in eight weeks instead of a year.
- 2021
- Founded, Oslo
- 6
- Products, total
- 2,000
- Units per batch
- 9
- People, two countries
Batch check, Oslo, June 2026. Every batch is retained for 36 months in case we need to go back to it.
4.5 from 188
reviews.
- 5121
- 444
- 316
- 25
- 12
All 188 are published, including the 7 that came in at one or two stars. Nothing is offered in exchange for writing one, which is why the number is 188 and not several thousand.
About our photography: we do not retouch skin. No frequency separation, no texture smoothing, no dodging out pores. Colour and dust removal only.
It finally stopped pilling under SPF
I have four half-used niacinamide serums in a drawer because every one of them balled up under sunscreen. This does not. That is genuinely the whole reason I reordered. The dropper is stiff for the first week and then loosens up.
Ffion EllisCardiffCombination, mid-thirties4 months of use12 July 2026
Smells faintly of porridge and I have made my peace with it
Nobody warned me about the oat smell, although to be fair the site does mention it. It goes in about a minute. Three months in my cheeks stopped going tight after cleansing, which is the only thing I was measuring. I keep it next to the sink and use it twice a day.
Hannah OkoroLondonCombination3 months of use5 July 2026
Good. I only noticed when I ran out.
I cannot honestly tell you my face looks different. What I can tell you is that I ran out for ten days in May and by the end of it my forehead was flaking again, so something was working. Four stars because I am not sure I would have noticed if I had never stopped.
Tom WhitcombeBristolNormal3 months of use3 June 2026
4% was the right call
10% niacinamide gives me a flush across the cheeks within twenty minutes, every time. This does not, and I still get the barrier benefit. Somebody there understood the difference between a dose and a claim.
Marta KowalczykGlasgowSensitive, rosacea-prone5 months of use19 May 2026
Fine product, irritating company to buy from
The serum is good and my skin is calmer. Three stars is for everything around it. The sunscreen has been out of stock since I placed my first order, the dropper draws up about half a pipette so you are squeezing it three times, and 30 ml at £48 goes faster than you think when you are using four drops twice a day. Sort the bottle out.
Rhiannon PierceSheffieldDry2 months of use2 May 2026
Ordered Tuesday, here Friday, no marketing emails since
The card in the box tells you which products not to use together, which is the opposite of how this normally goes. One gripe: the outer carton is glued so firmly I took a knife to it. Skin is less shiny by the afternoon than it was, though six weeks is not long enough for me to swear to that.
Ade SanyaoluLondonOily6 weeks of use14 April 2026
Showing 6 of 188, in the order support pulled them off the queue. Reviews are requested by email fourteen days after delivery and are only published if the order can be matched to the delivery address.
Questions,
answered
at length.
These are lifted from the support inbox, in order of how often they arrive. If yours is not here, hei@halden.no reaches two people and one of them will reply within a working day.
No. Alternate them: 05 on Monday and Thursday, 04 on Tuesday and Saturday is the schedule printed on both cartons. Using both together does not double the result, it doubles the irritation, and irritated skin makes less of its own ceramide. Three nights a week with neither is deliberate.
05 Retinal is not. Retinoids are contraindicated in pregnancy and while breastfeeding, and we will not soften that. The other five have no ingredient flagged for pregnancy at the concentrations we use. Take the carton to your midwife or GP if you want a second opinion; every percentage they would need is printed on it.
Because a seventh would have to be a duplicate of something already here with a different marketing angle on it, and we would rather not. Six covers cleanse, treat, exfoliate, moisturise and protect. If we find something genuinely missing we will make it; so far we have turned down two eye creams, a toner mist and an overnight mask.
Fragrance-free. Nothing is added to make the product smell of something, and nothing is added to mask what it smells of. 02 has a faint cereal smell from the beta-glucan and 03 smells slightly of shea. That is the raw material and it fades within a minute of application.
No, and no third party does it on our behalf. We do not sell into mainland China through channels that require it. Safety assessment is done on human volunteer panels in Oslo and by in-vitro assay.
Thirty months unopened, twelve months once you have opened it. Every bottle has a batch code and a fill date printed on the base, not stamped on the outer carton that you throw away. If you find a bottle at the back of a cupboard you can check it against our batch list.
Free UK delivery over £50, otherwise £3.95, Royal Mail Tracked 48. Orders leave Rugby within one working day and arrive in three to five. Thirty days to return anything, opened or not, and we pay for the label. Ireland and the EU are shipped DDP from £6.50 with duties paid at checkout, five to eight working days.
Not yet, and we have missed our own deadline on it twice. The problem is not the bottle, it is preservative efficacy once a customer decants at home. We have a pouch system in test with the lab in Nottingham and we are not shipping it until challenge testing passes on a decanted sample.