Simple and VR are skincare brands offering thoughtful daily formulas designed for distinct complexions. Simple provides gentle moisturizers, makeup removers, cleansers, and toners featuring niacinamide and glycerin that suit oily and acne-prone skin best, while VR delivers sensory moisturizers tailored for combination, sensitive, and dry skin. Both labels refine their offerings for specific concerns, yet they differ primarily in their ingredient profiles and ideal skin types.
Simple is a British skincare brand founded in 1960 and owned by Unilever PLC since 2011.
This page compares some of the most popular Simple and VR products; for every product of both brands, with a fit score for your own skin, use the Lovi app.
Simple is the better choice on this page because it offers a wide variety of affordable cleansers, makeup removers, and moisturizers, whereas VR only features a single cream. Lovi gives Simple's Kind to steroid Soothing Facial Toner a Superior fit for mature skin and High fits for several other skin types, while the products on this page generally have no fragrance and rely on key ingredients like glycerin to help maintain skin hydration.
Simple offers a broad range of fragrance-free cleansers, makeup removers, and moisturizers featuring niacinamide and glycerin, where Lovi rates its Kind to Skin Soothing Facial Toner as Superior for mature skin. In contrast, VR is a newer independent brand with only one product on the page, the PDRN CREAM, which Lovi rates as High for sensitive skin. Glycerin helps provide moisture, and niacinamide may help control skin aging and pigmentation.
Simple offers a wider variety of moisturizers on this page, which reviewers describe as lightweight and value-friendly, whereas VR features only the PDRN Cream. Glycerin helps provide hydration in the products on this page.
Simple offers budget-friendly moisturizers, while VR features a single cream without specific value highlights on the products on this page.
Which causes fewer breakouts, Simple or VR?
Simple products on this page are sometimes noted by reviewers to cause breakouts or irritations, while the VR page products do not have user data on breakouts.
How do the founding years and ownership structures of Simple and VR compare?
Simple was founded in 1960 in the United Kingdom and has been owned by Unilever PLC since 2011, whereas VR was founded in 2018 and is independently owned.
Which brand offers more product options for sensitive skin, Simple or VR?
Simple offers significantly more product options for sensitive skin, with several items achieving a High Lovi fit level for this skin type, whereas VR features only one product on the page, the PDRN Cream.
What are the key ingredients shared across Simple products?
The products on this page from Simple share niacinamide and glycerin as their key ingredients. Niacinamide helps control skin aging and pigmentation, while glycerin hydrates the skin.
5-ceramide complex · Skin Pharmacology and Physiology, 2026
Behind this comparison
Lovi compares products by their fit scores, calculated from the full ingredient list with brand-independent rules our dermatologists and cosmetic chemists build and review, and personalizes every pick with AI trained on the real results of millions of users. Lovi trains its fit score models on a proprietary dataset built from more than 10,000 expert-labeled products and more than 100,000 simulated examples, following an internally consistent methodology presented at Cosmoprof, AMWC, and Skin of Color Update.
