Absolue Nurturing & Brightening Oil-in-gel Cleanser With Grand Rose Extracts
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Lancôme Absolue Nurturing & Brightening Oil-in-gel Cleanser With Grand Rose ExtractsIngredients explained
A super common, medium-spreading emollient ester that gives richness to the formula and a mild feel during rubout. It can be a replacement for mineral oil and is often combined with other emollients to achieve different sensorial properties.
Good old water, aka H2O. The most common skincare ingredient of all. You can usually find it right in the very first spot of the ingredient list, meaning it’s the biggest thing out of all the stuff that makes up the product.
It’s mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.
Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin (hello long baths!) is drying.
One more thing: the water used in cosmetics is purified and deionized (it means that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed). Like this, the products can stay more stable over time.
- A natural moisturizer that’s also in our skin
- A super common, safe, effective and cheap molecule used for more than 50 years
- Not only a simple moisturizer but knows much more: keeps the skin lipids between our skin cells in a healthy (liquid crystal) state, protects against irritation, helps to restore barrier
- Effective from as low as 3% with even more benefits for dry skin at higher concentrations up to 20-40%
- High-glycerin moisturizers are awesome for treating severely dry skin
A super common emollient that makes your skin feel nice and smooth. It comes from coconut oil and glycerin, it’s light-textured, clear, odorless and non-greasy. It’s a nice ingredient that just feels good on the skin, is super well tolerated by every skin type and easy to formulate with. No wonder it’s popular.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Propanediol is a natural alternative for the often used and often bad-mouthed propylene glycol. It's produced sustainably from corn sugar and it's Ecocert approved.
It's quite a multi-tasker: can be used to improve skin moisturization, as a solvent, to boost preservative efficacy or to influence the sensory properties of the end formula.
A sugar ester (sucrose + lauric acid) that works as an emulsifier and oil thickener. It's a great ingredient to make oily gel cleansers that turn to milk on contact with water.
It's also 100% natural and combined with glycerin and oils (trade name Sucragel), it gives the basis for a gentle, yet effective, moisturizing oily gel cleansers. According to the manufacturer's 20 person study, skin is twice as hydrated 2 hours after using a Sucragel based cleanser compared to using a moisturising Sodium Laureth Sulfate cleanser.
A sugar ester (sucrose + palmitic acid) that works as a natural emulsifier (helps oil and water to mix). According to the manufacturer, it has a great skin-feel, improves smoothness, emolliency and even hydrates the skin.
Combined with another sugar ester, sucrose stearate, it can improve high temperature stability of Sucragel based oily gel cleansers.
- Primary fat-soluble antioxidant in our skin
- Significant photoprotection against UVB rays
- Vit C + Vit E work in synergy and provide great photoprotection
- Has emollient properties
- Easy to formulate, stable and relatively inexpensive
Simply alcohol refers to ethanol and it's a pretty controversial ingredient. It has many instant benefits: it's a great solvent, penetration enhancer, creates cosmetically elegant, light formulas, great astringent and antimicrobial. No wonder it's popular in toners and oily skin formulas.
The downside is that it can be very drying if it's in the first few ingredients on an ingredient list.
Some experts even think that regular exposure to alcohol damages skin barrier and causes inflammation though it's a debated opinion. If you wanna know more, we wrote a more detailed explanation about what's the deal with alcohol in skincare products at alcohol denat. (it's also alcohol, but with some additives to make sure no one drinks it).
A mild cleansing agent that's used mainly next to other cleansing agents (co-surfactant) to improve foam density and regulate viscosity.
The unfancy name for it is lye. It’s a solid white stuff that’s very alkaline and used in small amounts to adjust the pH of the product and make it just right.
For example, in case of AHA or BHA exfoliants, the right pH is super-duper important, and pH adjusters like sodium hydroxide are needed.
BTW, lye is not something new. It was already used by ancient Egyptians to help oil and fat magically turn into something else. Can you guess what? Yes, it’s soap. It still often shows up in the ingredient list of soaps and other cleansers.
Sodium hydroxide in itself is a potent skin irritant, but once it's reacted (as it is usually in skin care products, like exfoliants) it is totally harmless.
A "green chemical" developed by L'oreal in 2006. It comes from the sugar molecule, xylose that can be found in beechwood.
According to L'Oreal's claims, Pro-Xylane can boost the production of important skin-building blocks called GAGs (aka glycosaminoglycans, important NMFs) in the extracellular matrix (the goopy stuff between our skin cells) that results in better hydrated and firmer skin.
A clear pale yellow liquid that works as a highly effective but mild surfactant. According to the manufacturer, Peg-20 Glyceryl Triisostearate can create microemulsion facial cleansers (microemulsions are a mixture of water, oil, and surfactants) that are crystal clear, gentle to the skin and can easily be rinsed off leaving no oily residue.
If you like oil cleansers but do not like to remove them with a washcloth, look out for this ingredient to find the perfect emulsifiable, water-rinsable oil cleanser.
- It's one of the gold standard ingredients for treating problem skin
- It can exfoliate skin both on the surface and in the pores
- It's a potent anti-inflammatory agent
- It's more effective for treating blackheads than acne
- For acne combine it with antibacterial agents like benzoyl peroxide or azelaic acid
A super common and cheap fragrance ingredient. It's in many plants, e.g. rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender, lemongrass, peppermint and it's the main component (about 50-90%) of the peel oil of citrus fruits.
It does smell nice but the problem is that it oxidizes on air exposure and the resulting stuff is not good for the skin. Oxidized limonene can cause allergic contact dermatitis and counts as a frequent skin sensitizer.
Limonene's nr1 function is definitely being a fragrance component, but there are several studies showing that it's also a penetration enhancer, mainly for oil-loving components.
All in all, limonene has some pros and cons, but - especially if your skin is sensitive - the cons probably outweigh the pros.
Linalool is a super common fragrance ingredient. It’s kind of everywhere - both in plants and in cosmetic products. It’s part of 200 natural oils including lavender, ylang-ylang, bergamot, jasmine, geranium and it can be found in 90-95% of prestige perfumes on the market.
The problem with linalool is, that just like limonene it oxidises on air exposure and becomes allergenic. That’s why a product containing linalool that has been opened for several months is more likely to be allergenic than a fresh one.
A study made in the UK with 483 people tested the allergic reaction to 3% oxidised linalool and 2.3% had positive test results.
An easy-to-formulate, commonly used, nice to have ingredient that’s also called pro-vitamin B5. As you might guess from the “pro” part, it’s a precursor to vitamin B5 (whose fancy name is pantothenic acid).
Its main job in skincare products is to moisturise the skin. It’s a humectant meaning that it can help the skin to attract water and then hold onto it. There is also research showing that panthenol can help our skin to produce more lovely lipids that are important for a strong and healthy skin barrier.
Another great thing about panthenol is that it has anti-inflammatory and skin protecting abilities. A study shows that it can reduce the irritation caused by less-nice other ingredients (e.g. fragrance, preservatives or chemical sunscreens) in the product.
Research also shows that it might be useful for wound healing as it promotes fibroblast (nice type of cells in our skin that produce skin-firming collagen) proliferation.
If that wasn’t enough panthenol is also useful in nail and hair care products. A study shows that a nail treatment liquide with 2% panthenol could effectively get into the nail and significantly increase the hydration of it.
As for the hair the hydration effect is also true there. Panthenol might make your hair softer, more elastic and helps to comb your hair more easily.
- It's a helper ingredient that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products
- It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer
- It has a bad reputation among natural cosmetics advocates but cosmetic scientists and toxicology experts do not agree (read more in the geeky details section)
The caramel in cosmetics is pretty much the same one that you know from the kitchen. It is derived by controlled heat treatment of food-grade carbohydrates (sugars) and works as a brown colorant.
We are big fans of all kinds of roses as ornamental plants but when it comes to skincare, it is a mixed bag. Before we list out the good and the not so good, here is an interesting thing.
The oil content in rose is very, very low so distilling rose essential oil requires huge amounts of rose flowers. It has such a wonderful scent that there are no comparable synthetic alternatives. You can probably guess that this means rose essential oil is expensive.... very very expensive.
So the good things: thanks to its wonderful scent the high-end perfume industry loves rose oil. Also, we (humans :)) love rose oil. We love its scent so much that it can heal headaches, depression, stress, and even grief.
Rose oil contains more than 95 compounds, among them flavonoids, anthocyanins, vitamin C, and quercetin that are all known for their medicinal properties and great antioxidant effects. Similar to many other essential oils, it has antimicrobial properties too.
Now, the not-so-good thing? Out of the 95 compounds, the major ones are citronellol and geraniol, fragrant components that might irritate sensitive skin.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Citronellol is a very common fragrance ingredient with a nice rose-like odor. In the UK, it’s actually the third most often listed perfume on the ingredient lists.
It can be naturally found in geranium oil (about 30%) or rose oil (about 25%).
As with all fragrance ingredients, citronellol can also cause allergic contact dermatitis and should be avoided if you have perfume allergy. In a 2001 worldwide study with 178 people with known sensitization to fragrances citronellol tested positive in 5.6% of the cases.
There is no known anti-aging or positive skin benefits of the ingredient. It’s in our products to make it smell nice.
Exactly what it sounds: nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. Fragrance in the US and parfum in the EU is a generic term on the ingredient list that is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average (but it can have as much as 200 components!).
If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it.
Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).
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| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 2-4 |
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | solvent | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| irritancy, com. | 0-3, 0-3 |
| what‑it‑does | antimicrobial/antibacterial | solvent | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | cell-communicating ingredient |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying |
| what‑it‑does | exfoliant | anti-acne | soothing | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | colorant |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant | perfuming | antimicrobial/antibacterial |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |