About

The standards I live by did not come cheap. Neither does this.

I have built a life out of refusing to choose. I have hiked in Bhutan and felt entirely at peace, and a few months later swam in the warm waters of the Maldives and felt just as much myself. I bike across the city in jeans in the mornings to drop off my son at school and sit down that evening for a beautiful meal at my favorite restaurant. My working days are relentlessly analytical, my weekends given over to spas and shopping that undoes all of it. I believe a life well-lived should have range and one should have the confidence to move through all of it without explaining oneself.

I am a public health scientist by training, with fifteen years of research and numerous published papers behind me. Science is the cornerstone of every decision I make about how I take care of myself. But I have never accepted that a serious mind and a love of beautiful things belong to two different people. They are both me. 

Living this way has taught me what looking after yourself actually is. It is not a project, a regimen, or a performance. The version of self care that exhausts or wastes precious time is not self care at all. 

What I expect of the things I let into my life came from where I have lived. Five countries, each very different, each leaving me with a standard I cannot unlearn. From Canada, that people deserve to be treated with authenticity and warmth. From Germany, that anything worth making is worth engineering properly. From Japan, that beauty and quality are not indulgences, but should permeate every aspect of life. 

Ordinary skincare kept failing these tests. The premium brands were lovely, but relied on marketing over science. The clinical ones were effective, but joyless. Nobody had built skincare that met my high standards. 

So I made it myself.

Skincare that meets busy women fully wherever they are, on a busy work morning, at dinner with their girlfriends, or on a beach with their children. Skincare that is effective, beautiful, convenient, and precise and enhances every facet of their lives by giving them their time and attention back. No compromises or sacrifices anymore.

If you are ready to live a well-lived life without compromises, I think you will understand exactly what BalmIQ is. 

— Nita Perumal
Founder, BalmIQ