Honey Is Trending Again in Skincare. Here Is What a Real Trial Measured

Honey Is Back in Your Feed

Honey has been showing up across skincare shelves and roundups again this year, framed as a buzzy, back-to-basics ingredient worth a second look [1]. The pitch is usually the same: a natural humectant, gentle enough for daily use, with a long folk-medicine history behind it. What rarely makes it into those roundups is a real trial measuring what a honey-based product actually does to skin over time, using instruments rather than impressions. One exists, and its results are more specific, and more mixed, than the trend pieces suggest.

What a Humectant Actually Does

Honey is mostly a concentrated mix of fructose and glucose, both of which are hygroscopic - they attract and hold onto water molecules. On skin, that gives honey a humectant effect: it pulls moisture from the air and from deeper skin layers toward the surface, similar in principle to how glycerin or hyaluronic acid work, though through different sugar chemistry [2] [3]. A humectant's job is specifically to draw water in. Sealing that water in and slowing its escape through the skin barrier is a separate function, usually handled by emollients and occlusives like oils or petrolatum. That distinction turns out to matter a lot once you look at actual measurements.

The Study That Measured It

In December 2024, researchers at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland published a trial in the journal Pharmaceuticals testing a honey-based hand cream at four concentrations: 0 percent (placebo), 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent multifloral honey [2]. Twenty-four volunteers used the creams for four weeks while researchers tracked skin hydration with a Corneometer, water loss with a Tewameter, elasticity with a Cutometer, and surface smoothness and wrinkle depth with imaging tools [2].

The 15 percent honey cream produced the largest hydration gain of the group, close to a 30 percent increase in Corneometer readings after four weeks [2]. Wrinkle depth also dropped by roughly 10 to 12 percent across the honey concentrations, compared with a slight increase in the placebo group [2].

The Part the Trend Pieces Skip

Here is the detail that gets lost in the enthusiasm: at 15 percent honey, the cream showed no statistically significant improvement in transepidermal water loss, the measure of how much moisture escapes through the skin barrier [2]. The plain placebo cream, meanwhile, still reduced water loss on its own, likely from its base moisturizing ingredients and the simple act of applying an occlusive layer [2]. In other words, the strongest evidence in this trial was for honey pulling water into the skin, not for honey keeping it there. If a barrier-support claim is the reason you are reaching for a honey product, the same study suggests you likely still need an emollient or occlusive layered on top to lock that moisture in, rather than expecting honey alone to do both jobs.

Manuka's Different Chemistry

Most honey has mild antibacterial activity because bees add an enzyme called glucose oxidase to nectar, which slowly generates hydrogen peroxide once the honey is diluted, including by moisture on skin [4]. Manuka honey, sourced from Leptospermum trees in New Zealand and Australia, works differently. It produces very little hydrogen peroxide; its antibacterial reputation instead comes from methylglyoxal, a compound that interferes with the glucose oxidase enzyme itself and does not break down with the heat or dilution that would weaken a peroxide-based effect [4] [5].

That gives manuka honey a genuinely distinct chemical profile from your average jar of clover or wildflower honey, which is part of why it commands a higher price and its own rating systems.

What the Label Numbers Actually Mean

Manuka honey is typically sold with a Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) rating or a direct methylglyoxal (MGO) figure in milligrams per kilogram, both meant to signal potency. A 2022 laboratory audit published in PLoS One tested 29 commercial manuka and Leptospermum honeys from Australia and New Zealand and compared their labeled MGO values against what was actually measured [5]. The gap was substantial in both directions - some jars measured as much as 503 mg/kg below their labeled amount, others as much as 399 mg/kg above it [5]. The same study found that MGO content correlated strongly with antibacterial activity against some bacteria and barely at all against others, meaning a higher number on the jar does not translate uniformly into stronger activity across the board [5].

Using Honey Without Overpaying for It

For a plain hydration boost, the data points toward regular honey working through simple sugar chemistry rather than anything exotic, which makes standard, well-formulated honey-based moisturizers a reasonable pick without needing a manuka premium. If you specifically want manuka honey for its distinct chemistry, a UMF rating tends to be a more standardized measure than an MGO number alone, though neither guarantees the label matches the jar given how much variation the 2022 audit found. And regardless of concentration, pairing a honey-based product with a separate moisturizer that contains an emollient or occlusive ingredient addresses the water-loss side that the hydration-focused hand cream trial did not show honey handling well on its own.

The Takeaway

Honey's hydrating reputation holds up under real measurement, with the clearest gains appearing around a 15 percent concentration in the one controlled trial that tested a range of doses. What that same trial did not show is honey meaningfully slowing water loss through the skin barrier, so treat it as a humectant to add to a routine rather than a full barrier-repair product on its own. If you reach for manuka honey specifically, know that its antibacterial reputation rests on methylglyoxal rather than the peroxide mechanism in ordinary honey, and that label numbers on manuka jars have been shown to vary widely from what independent testing measures.