Cornerstone: Start Your Day Right

Cornerstone is an ingenious subscription box – all of the ingredients for a smooth, comfortable shave delivered right to your door! Tailored for the main male in your life, the box allows you to combine necessity with luxury for hassle free shaving.

So, how does the subscription work? You start off by fully customising your plan – you get to choose a combination of products and delivery schedule to match your personal shaving routine. Cornerstone recommends a new box every 6 weeks if you’re a daily shaver, every 12 weeks for someone who shaves 2-4 times a week or every 18 weeks if you shave once a week or less. This personalisation means you’re not going to be hoarding unused products nor wasting your money if you ensure you select the right options for you.

Once your box regularity is chosen, you can then choose what products you want in your box – take your pick from pre-shave face scrub, shave gel or shave cream, 6 razor blades to refill the chrome-plated razor handle included in your first delivery of razor blades, and post-shave balm. You can include all the products, or maybe you have a skincare routine you swear by and only need the blades – whatever you want, Cornerstone will deliver.

To make things even more personalised, you can even customise your razor – Cornerstone will engrave up to three initials on the handle of your razor. Perfect for a gift for a loved one, or to ensure your brother doesn’t steal your razor – this added little extra ticks the box for me! Cornerstone kindly engraved my boyfriend’s initials – TJ – into the razor handle. He was chuffed!

Price wise, I was expecting Cornerstone to break the bank a tad – I mean, come on, razors are expensive! However I couldn’t have been more wrong. If you decide to go for the full treatment (thats face scrub, shave gel, blades AND balm), your box will be £30. Just want the razors each month? You’ll only pay £14! Seeing as good quality razor refills in a high street drugstore tend to be more than that, this box is definitely a steal. But would that mean quality is sacrificed?

Before we get on to reviewing the products, I just need to talk about the packaging – my oh my it was probably the best packaged subscription box I have ever seen! Every product has it’s own individual place in the box, enveloped in high quality, matte finish boxes. The design is simply grey and red – clean, crisp and luxurious. You can really tell that such care has gone into the branding of Cornerstone and I was obsessed with literally feeling the boxes and tubes of product – the matte finish just feels so smooth!

The box includes plenty of helpful things to read – including clear step by step instructions on how to achieve a smooth, comfortable shave – something my boyfriend has always struggled to attain. Let’s see how Taylor got on with his first Cornerstone shave…

To start off a shave, Taylor normally takes a shower – the steam and heat helps to soften his skin and open his pores to hopefully get that smooth shave. For his first shave, he decided not to do this, to see how the range worked if this step was missed out.

The first product to be used was the pre-shave face scrub. This step is supposed to prevent nicks, cuts and shaving bumps – the exfoliating grains help release ingrown hairs, unblock pores and lift dead skin cells for smoother, clearer skin. Taylor thought the scrub was extremely invigorating, and that his skin definitely felt a lot cleaner after massaging the scrub into his face.

Taylor normally uses clippers for his moustache and chin, to attack the longer hairs and hopefully reduce the possibility of the shave aggravating his stubborn, thicker hairs, but to test out the Cornerstone shave, he thought he’d try a full, clean shave, and follow Cornerstone’s step by step instructions to a T. Step two is to apply the shave gel, which is especially formulated for sensitive skin – perfect for Taylor who does indeed suffer from sensitive skin. It lathered up well, and had a lovely clean scent.

It was then time to follow the main instructions and go for a steady, slow shave on his first use. He had left his moustache and chin to grow for 4-5 days and yet still the blades had no problem attacking it! He found the overall result was a really good shave and even with his sensitive skin, he still found there was absolutely no irritation. He also loved that the blade itself comes with a blade cover which stop the blades from becoming dirty and clogged when storing.

Sticking to the routine, he then applied the shave balm afterwards which he found had a lovely mint scent, and was refreshing and cool on the skin.

To top it all off, Cornerstone’s range is alcohol-free, BPA-free, paraben-free, free of plastic microbeads and also not tested on animals. So not only does Cornerstone supply a great quality shave at a great price, but it’s also pretty environmentally friendly, too! Plus, they give you a ton of discounts and offers off of subsequent boxes – it’s honestly nothing but a win-win!