The INSIDER Summary:

A new digital beauty tool at Sephora measures the level of moisture in customers' skin to help them choose products that will work with their skin type.

The Moisture Meter pulls up a number between 0 to 99 to determine skin's dryness.

The gadget is available at Sephora stores in the US.



If you've ever been asked your skin type — and have zero idea whether your skin is dry, dry to normal, or oily — there's now a clever beauty tool at Sephora that can tell you.

The Moisture Meter is a white stick with a sensor that measures the amount of moisture in your skin. The number on the meter indicates how hydrated (or dehydrated) your skin is, and helps you figure out the kind of products that you should be using on your skin.

The digital tool made its debut at the new Sephora store on New York City's 34th Street, the beauty giant's biggest store in North America, which opened on March 31. The gadget is also available at other Sephora stores in the US.

Makeup artist A.Love showed INSIDER how the product works. Here's what it looks like:

Sephora's "Moisture Meter" reads the levels of moisture in your skin. Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

When A.Love first showed me the meter, my first impression was that it's pretty basic-looking, and surprisingly not as sexy as other Sephora beauty tech tools, like its "Tap and Try" tablets, which show you what makeup will look like without you physically trying it on. Weirdly, the Moisture Meter looks a bit depressing, like a pregnancy test, except, of course, it offers less life-changing results.

Thankfully, it's smarter than it looks. To use the tool, A.Love touched the stick to the skin on her arm. The meter quickly pulled up the number 41, which indicates a normal moisture level.

The meter shows a number from 0 to 99, with 0 indicating the lowest and 99 indicating the highest moisture level. Results from 0 to 40 mean you have dry skin that needs more moisture; from 40 to 70, your skin is deemed "normal"; and from 70 to 99, your skin is oilier, with plenty of moisture.

A.Love explained that different body parts have different moisture levels, so if you're looking for a new hand cream, your face probably isn't the best place to measure dryness. Depending on what you need, whether it's a face or body cream, you'll want to test your skin's moisture in different places to figure out what you're working with.

The makeup artist tested the Moisture Meter on my hand and face, to demonstrate the difference in dryness. While the moisture levels in my face fall in the sweet spot of "normal" at 57, my hands could use some extra hydration, just making it to "normal" at 40. And that was an hour after I'd put on some hand cream!