What is double cleansing?

Have you noticed how BB Cream is TOUGH to remove? I did not believe what I had read about it, but I found that during my nightly skincare routine, my toner cottons were always dirty even after I had scrubbed my face clean with my cleansing foam. *Sigh*

This spurred me to hunt for better cleansing products and methods, which led me to discovering an essential part of the Korean skincare routine: Double Cleansing.

Korean "double cleansing" in a nutshell is...
Step 1: Cleanse your face with a creamy/oily cleanser to remove all the make up on your face.
Step 2: Wash your face using a foam cleanser to cleanse away the oil.

Result: Ta-da! Your face is supposed to be perfectly clean!

I was like, "What?!" when I saw the word "oily". I had thought that adding more oils to your face would just make your face worse. After all, cosmetics and skincare products are always going on about "Oil control", "Oil-free", bad oily T-zones, etc. So it's natural to think "Oil on face" = Bad!

Cleansing OIL as cleansers? O.O

As it turns out, washing your face and stripping your face of all its "dirty" oils till it's squeaky clean is bad for your face because it sends an alarm signal to your skin that it needs to produce more oil to moisturize your face. So it goes into crazy oil producing mode which leads to white heads, black heads, clogged pores, and all those horrible things.

Soon after reading up on cream/oil cleansers, I got to see my Korean cousin using it. She took a generous portion of the cream (the size of the top half of your thumb), slathered it all over her face, and massaged it in. It looked like her face was melting before my eyes. It was actually just a lot of her eye-make up dissolving away. It makes sense. Oil dissolves oil.

So, oil is great cos it is the number 1 thing to combat waterproof make up, and even if you're not wearing make up, it dissolves all the dirty oils away and replaces it with good oil, leaving your face protected.

Just a little warning: 
Some people in the random forums I've visited have said that they found cleansing oils drying. I find that very strange indeed because I did not experience that myself. I can only assume it must be because of the type of cleansing oil they use. I haven't look much into the uses of different oils, so I won't say much for now because I don't want to mislead you. Just be warned.

You use the foam cleanser after using the cleansing oil to carefully wash away the oil on your face. After all, the cleansing oil you used is now a mixture of good oil, bad oil, and dissolved make up. Use a gentle foam cleanser that cleans your face and doesn't totally strip all the oils from your face. From my experience, a combination of cleansing oil + foam wash leaves your face soft like a baby's butt!

If you have experience using cleansing creams/oils, good or bad, please let me know!