Ingredients

what‑it‑does

solvent

Normal (well kind of - it's purified and deionized) water. Usually the main solvent in cosmetic products. [more]

what‑it‑does	skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant
irritancy, com.	0, 0

A real oldie but a goodie. Great natural moisturizer and skin-identical ingredient that plays an important role in skin hydration and general skin health. [more]

what‑it‑does

emollient

A very common emollient that makes your skin feel nice and smooth. Comes from coconut oil and glycerin, it’s light-textured, clear, odorless and non-greasy. [more]

what‑it‑does	emollient | viscosity controlling | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing
irritancy, com.	1, 2

A super common multitasker ingredient that gives your skin a nice soft feel (emollient) and gives body to creams. [more]

what‑it‑does	emollient | viscosity controlling
irritancy, com.	2, 2

A fatty (the good, non-drying kind of) alcohol that makes your skin feel smooth and nice (emollient), helps to thicken up products and also helps water and oil to blend (emulsifier).

what‑it‑does

buffering

It’s a little helper ingredient that helps to set the pH of a cosmetic formulation to be just right. [more]

what‑it‑does

skin-identical ingredient

Ceramides make up 50% of the goopy stuff that's between our skin cells and play a super important role in having a healthy skin barrier and keeping the skin hydrated.  [more]

what‑it‑does

skin-identical ingredient

A type of ceramide that can be found naturally in the upper layer of the skin. Ceramides make up 50% of the goopy stuff that's between our skin cells and play a super important role in having a healthy skin barrier and keeping the skin hydrated.  We have written way more about ceramides at ceramide 1, so click here to know more. [more]

what‑it‑does

skin-identical ingredient

Ceramides get quite a lot of hype recently and good news: there is a reason for that. But before we go into the details, let's just quickly define what the heck ceramides are: They are waxy lipids that can be found naturally in the outer layer of the skin (called stratum corneum - SC). [more]

what‑it‑does	viscosity controlling
irritancy, com.	0, 1

A handy white powder that magically converts a liquid into a nice gel formula. [more]

what‑it‑does	emollient
irritancy, com.	0, 1

A very common silicone that gives both skin and hair a silky smooth feel. It also forms a protective barrier on the skin and fills in fine lines. Also used for scar treatment. [more]

what‑it‑does	emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing
irritancy, com.	3, 2

A common functional ingredient that helps to keep the oil-loving and water-loving ingredients together (emulsifier), stabilizes and thickens the products.  [more]

what‑it‑does

surfactant/cleansing

An antistatic, hair conditioning and softening ingredient used mainly in haircare products. Otherwise, it's probably next to Cetearyl Alcohol to form a great emulsifier duo. [more]

what‑it‑does	preservative
irritancy, com.	0, 0

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) sho [more]

what‑it‑does

emulsifying

A helper ingredient that's used as a co-emulsifier and as a stabilization agent for foams. [more]

what‑it‑does	skin-identical ingredient | emollient
irritancy, com.	0, 0

It's one of the important lipids that can be found naturally in the outer layer of the skin. About 25% of the goopy stuff between our skin cells consists of cholesterol. [more]

what‑it‑does

chelating

Super common little helper ingredient that helps products to remain nice and stable for a longer time. It does so by neutralizing the metal ions in the formula (that usually get into there from water) that would otherwise cause some not so nice changes. [more]

what‑it‑does

buffering

what‑it‑does	preservative | perfuming
irritancy, com.	0, 0

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. [more]

what‑it‑does

moisturizer/humectant

Hydrolyzed Hyaluronic Acid is a low molecular weight, chemically chopped up version of the naturally big molecule and current IT-moisturizer, Hyaluronic Acid (HA). The TL; [more]

what‑it‑does

skin-identical ingredient | cell-communicating ingredient | anti-acne | antimicrobial/antibacterial

A type of lipid that can be found naturally in the skin. Has antimicrobial and cell-communicating properties and is considered to be part of the skin's natural defence system. [more]

what‑it‑does

viscosity controlling

A super commonly used thickener and emulsion stabilizer. [more]

what‑it‑does	emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing
irritancy, com.	0, 0

It's a common little helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix together. Also, it can help to increase the solubility of some other ingredients in the formula. 

what‑it‑does	emulsifying
irritancy, com.	0, 4

A natural emulsifier that brings a soft and powdery feel to the formula. It's also very gentle and is recommended for sensitive or baby skin products.

what‑it‑does

solvent | moisturizer/humectant

A natural corn sugar derived glycol. It can be used to improve skin moisturization, as a solvent, to boost preservative efficacy or to influence the sensory properties of the end formula. [more]

what‑it‑does

emollient

Shea butter that's considered to be a magic moisturizer and emollient. It is also soothing and rich in antioxidants. [more]

what‑it‑does

emollient | solvent

It's a super commonly used water-thin volatile silicone that gives skin and hair a silky, smooth feel.  [more]

what‑it‑does

emollient | viscosity controlling

what‑it‑does

emollient | solvent

A light-feeling, volatile silicone that gives skin a unique, silky and non-greasy feel. It has excellent spreading properties and leaves no oily residue or build-up. 

what‑it‑does

emollient

An odorless and colorless emollient ester that gives a velvety and silky feel to the skin. [more]

what‑it‑does

emollient | surfactant/cleansing

what‑it‑does

viscosity controlling

A helper ingredient that's good at stabilizing water-based formulas and also serves as a thickener. [more]

A 100% vegetable origin emulsifier that helps to create ultra-soft, light textures. [more]

what‑it‑does

emollient | viscosity controlling

A fatty alcohol (the non-drying type with a long oil loving chain of 20 carbon atoms) that is used to increase the viscosity of the formula and it also helps the oily and the watery parts to stay nicely mixed together (called emulsion stabilizing).  [more]

what‑it‑does	emollient | viscosity controlling
irritancy, com.	0, 2-3

A common multi-tasker fatty acid that works as an emollient, thickener and emulsion stabilizer. [more]

what‑it‑does	emollient | emulsifying
irritancy, com.	0, 1

Waxy, white, solid stuff that helps water and oil to mix together and leaves the skin feeling soft and smooth. [more]

what‑it‑does	skin-identical ingredient | emollient | emulsifying
irritancy, com.	0, 2

A fatty acid that can be found naturally in the skin. It can make the skin feel nice and smooth in moisturizers (emollient) or it can act as a foam building cleansing agent in cleansers. [more]

what‑it‑does

emollient | viscosity controlling

A fatty alcohol (the non-drying type) that is used to increase the viscosity of the formula and stabilize emulsions. [more]

what‑it‑does

preservative

A natural multi-functional ingredient that has emollient and moisturizing properties, can work as a co-emulsifier and has a strong antimicrobial activity. [more]

what‑it‑does	moisturizer/humectant | solvent
irritancy, com.	0, 1

An often used glycol that works as a solvent, humectant, penetration enhancer and also gives a good slip to the products. [more]

what‑it‑does

emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing

A 100% vegetable origin emulsifier that usually comes to the formula with its buddy called C14-22 Alcohols. The duo is called Montanov L and two together help to create ultra-soft light formulas.

what‑it‑does

emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing

An ingredient that is created from the attachment of the water-loving sugar molecule, glucose, and an oil-loving 20 carbon long fatty chain. This makes it a partly water- and partly oil-soluble material, meaning it functions as an emulsifier helping oil and water to mix.   Most often, it comes to the formula coupled with two fatty alcohol friends, Arachidyl and Behenyl alcohol, to make [more]

what‑it‑does

preservative

It can boost the effectiveness of phenoxyethanol (and other preservatives) and as an added bonus it feels nice on the skin too. [more]

what‑it‑does	emulsifying
irritancy, com.	0, 1-2

A handy helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix nicely together. [more]

what‑it‑does

emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing

A common little helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix together, aka emulsifier.

what‑it‑does

soothing | skin brightening

You might know licorice as a sweet treat from your childhood, but it's actually a legume that grows around the Mediterranean Sea, the Middle East, central and southern Russia. [more]

what‑it‑does

antioxidant | moisturizer/humectant

Beetroot is a natural moisturizer, colorant, and antioxidant. [more]

what‑it‑does	surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying | perfuming
irritancy, com.	0, 3

A 14 carbon length fatty acid that can be naturally found in nutmeg, palm kernel oil, coconut oil and butter fat. It's used as a foam building cleansing agent. [more]

what‑it‑does

skin-identical ingredient | emollient

A bio-mimetic ceramide molecule that is claimed to be similarly effective as ceramide 3 at moisturizing the skin and helping the barrier function. We have more about ceramides here.  The advantages of Hydroxypropyl Bispalmitamide MEA are a lower melting point and hence easier formulation and better price point than real ceramides. [more]

what‑it‑does

moisturizer/humectant

A type of sugar molecule, that has water-binding properties and helps to keep your skin hydrated.  [more]

what‑it‑does	anti-acne | surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying
irritancy, com.	1, 4

A fatty acid that can be found in coconut milk and human breast milk. It can be used as an emulsifier or as a cleansing agent. There are also promising studies about lauric acid being an effective anti-acne ingredient. [more]

what‑it‑does

viscosity controlling

A white powdery thing that can mattify the skin and thicken up cosmetic products. [more]

what‑it‑does	antioxidant
irritancy, com.	0-3, 0-3

Pure Vitamin E. Great antioxidant that gives significant photoprotection against UVB rays. Works in synergy with Vitamin C. [more]