Highlights
Other Ingredients
Skim through
| Ingredient name | what-it-does | irr., com. | ID-Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aqua | solvent | ||
| PEG-8 | moisturizer/humectant, solvent | ||
| Poloxamer 188 | emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing | ||
| Sorbitol | moisturizer/humectant | 0, 0 | |
| Panthenol | soothing, moisturizer/humectant | 0, 0 | goodie |
| Dipotassium Phosphate | buffering | ||
| Potassium Phosphate | buffering | ||
| Methyl Paraben | preservative | 0, 0 | |
| Phenoxyethanol | preservative | ||
| Propylparaben | preservative, perfuming | 0, 0 | |
| Ethylparaben | preservative | ||
| Parfum | perfuming | icky |
RoC Lotion Tonique PerfectiveIngredients explained
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 smallish polymer molecule (created from repeated units of Polyethylene glycol, aka PEG) that's used as a solubilizer and viscosity control agent.
It is a clear, colorless liquid that is water-soluble and water-binding (aka humectant) and can help to solubilize sparingly-water soluble things (e.g. vanilla, perfumes) into water-based formulas. Thanks to its water-binding ability, it also prevents the drying out of formulas, especially when combined with the fellow hygroscopic agent, sorbitol.
A synthetic big copolymer molecule that is used as a solubilizer, mild cleansing agent and foam booster or stabilizer.
If you want to understand poloxamers more, we have a shiny description at Poloxamer 184 and Poloxamer 407. This particular poloxamer, the 188 is quite similar to the 184 version, but it is more water-soluble (80% water-soluble parts) so it can act more as a solubilizer helping to dissolve oil-loving things in water-based formulas. Similar to 184, this one also works as a mild cleansing agent, but while 184 is claimed to be more effective at cleansing, the 188 is better at foaming.
It's a sweet tasting sugar substitute that helps your skin to hold onto water when used in cosmetic products. It also helps to thicken up products and give them a bit more slip.
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.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.It’s a little helper ingredient that helps to set the pH of a cosmetic formulation to be just right.
The most common type of feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason parabens. It's a cheap, effective and well-tolerated ingredient to make sure the cosmetic formula does not go wrong too soon.
Apart from the general controversy around parabens (we wrote about it more here), there is a 2006 in-vitro (made in the lab not on real people) research about methylparaben (MP) showing that when exposed to sunlight, MP treated skin cells suffered more harm than non-MP treated skin cells. The study was not done with real people on real skin but still - using a good sunscreen next to MP containing products is a good idea. (Well, in fact using a sunscreen is always a good idea. :))
It’s pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, but even more importantly, it’s not a feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben.
It’s not something new: it was introduced around 1950 and today it can be used up to 1% worldwide. It can be found in nature - in green tea - but the version used in cosmetics is synthetic.
Other than having a good safety profile and being quite gentle to the skin it has some other advantages too. It can be used in many types of formulations as it has great thermal stability (can be heated up to 85°C) and works on a wide range of pH levels (ph 3-10).
It’s often used together with ethylhexylglycerin as it nicely improves the preservative activity of phenoxyethanol.
A very common type of feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason parabens. It's a cheap, effective and well-tolerated ingredient to make sure the cosmetic formula does not go wrong too soon.
A very common type of feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben. It's a cheap, effective and well-tolerated ingredient to make sure the cosmetic formula does not go wrong too soon. Read more about parabens here >>
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!).
You may also want to take a look at...
| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | buffering |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | preservative | perfuming |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | perfuming |