Students splash out more than £1000 on beauty products a year

Female students at Lancaster University were the vainest in the UK, spending £1,109 each on make-up, fragrances and skin products in the last year.

This equates to £370 per term and roughly 20% of their £5,500 yearly student loan, placing them top of a league table of beauty spending at more than 200 colleges in the UK.

Although the cost of studying means that debt is a fact of university life, it’s clear that some students refuse to give up on their beauty regime.

New figures have shown that undergraduates starting university this academic year will leave with debts of £53,000.

Students risk getting into more debt for the sake of their beauty regimes.

The second-most beauty conscious students in the UK are at the University of York, with an average yearly spend on beauty products of £968.

Durham University was third with spending of £895. They favoured more high-end brands than Lancaster, splashing out on luxury products from Clarins and Dior.

The most popular beauty product across all universities was the Avene Eau Thermale Spring Water Spray, with students spending a total of £14,382 on the French pharmacy product in the past year.

Students at the University of Southampton (£741 per year), the University of Manchester (£691 per year) and the University of Bristol (£653 per year) were also in the top 10 of luxury beauty spenders.

Some of the beauty products university students purchase.

Popular products purchased include La Roche-Posay’s Effaclar Duo, and the cult favourite Bioderma Sensibio H2O Micelle Solution.

Online beauty retailer Escentual.com assessed spending patterns at all higher education institutions in the UK.

The high levels of online beauty spending indicate a heightened interest in beauty and grooming amongst UK university students, particularly from students in the Russell Group of elite universities.

70% of the top 10 spending universities are in the Russell Group, and five other Russell Group institutions made the top 20.

The convenience of online shopping is a big hit with busy students.

Escentual chief executive Rakesh Aggarwal said: “Gone are the days of student life meaning living on ready meals and lying-in until past midday.

“Despite their reputation for being cash-strapped and lazy, more and more students nowadays are taking the initiative to find part-time work alongside their studies, so they have more funds to spend on the little luxuries.

“Students are the businessmen and women of the future; we will one day be relying on them to keep our economy afloat, so it’s refreshing to see they’re taking an enterprising approach during their university years and aren’t solely relying on their student loans.”

Students at Derby and Bath Spa universities were among the UK’s lowest beauty spenders.