House of Hur

Matcha Calming Gel Cream

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 really multi-functional helper ingredient that can do several things in a skincare product: it can bring a soft and pleasant feel to the formula, it can act as a humectant and emollient, it can be a solvent for some other ingredients (for example it can help to stabilize perfumes in watery products) and it can also help to disperse pigments more evenly in makeup products. And that is still not all: it can also boost the antimicrobial activity of preservatives. 

• A multi-functional skincare superstar with several proven benefits for the skin
• Great anti-aging, wrinkle smoothing ingredient used at 4-5% concentration
• Fades brown spots alone or in combination with amino sugar, acetyl glucosamine
• Increases ceramide synthesis that results in a stronger, healthier skin barrier and better skin hydration
• Can help to improve several skin conditions including acne, rosacea, and atopic dermatitis

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. 

An odorless and colorless emollient ester (cetyl alcohol + ethylhexanoic acid) that gives a velvety and silky feel to the skin. It has great spreadability and a non-oily feel. It's a popular ingredient in makeup removers.

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

An extremely common multitasker ingredient that gives your skin a nice soft feel (emollient) and gives body to creams and lotions. It also helps to stabilize oil-water mixes (emulsions), though it does not function as an emulsifier in itself. Its typical use level in most cream type formulas is 2-3%.  

It’s a so-called fatty alcohol, a mix of cetyl and stearyl alcohol, other two emollient fatty alcohols.  Though chemically speaking, it is alcohol (as in, it has an -OH group in its molecule), its properties are totally different from the properties of low molecular weight or drying alcohols such as denat. alcohol. Fatty alcohols have a long oil-soluble (and thus emollient) tail part that makes them absolutely non-drying and non-irritating and are totally ok for the skin.

A type of sugar that has water-binding properties and helps to keep your skin hydrated. 

A big molecule created from repeated subunits (a polymer of acrylic acid) that magically converts a liquid into a nice gel formula.  It usually has to be neutralized with a base (such as sodium hydroxide) for the thickening to occur and it creates viscous, clear gels that also feel nice and non-tacky on the skin. No wonder, it is a very popular and common ingredient. Typically used at 1% or less in most formulations.

A semi-essential (infants cannot synthesize it, but adults can) amino acid that is one of the primary building blocks of hair keratin and skin collagen. It's a natural moisturizing factor, a skin hydrator and might also help to speed up wound healing. 

Arginine usually has a positive charge (cationic) that makes it substantive to skin and hair (those are more negatively charged surfaces) and an excellent film former.  Thanks to the positive charge, it also creates a complex with AHAs (AHAs like to lose a hydrogen ion and be negatively charged, so the positive and the negative ions attract each other) that causes a "time-release AHA effect" and reduces the irritation associated with AHAs. 

A super common, waxy, white, solid stuff that helps water and oil to mix together, gives body to creams and leaves the skin feeling soft and smooth.

Chemically speaking, it is the attachment of a glycerin molecule to the fatty acid called stearic acid. It can be produced from most vegetable oils (in oils three fatty acid molecules are attached to glycerin instead of just one like here) in a pretty simple, "green" process that is similar to soap making. It's readily biodegradable.

Expand to read more

A copolymer is a big molecule that consists not of one but of two repeating subunits. This particular copolymer is a handy helper ingredient to form nice gel textures.

It usually comes to the formula combined with emollients (such as  C13-14 Isoparaffin, Isohexadecane, Isononyl Isononanoate or Squalane) and can be used as an emulsifier and/or thickener to produce milky gel emulsions with a soft and non-tacky skin feel. 

A polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) that's used as a gloss improver for lipsticks and lipglosses. Its stickiness also helps lip products to stay on longer. 

Combined with polyacrylate-13 and polysorbate 20, it forms a very effective tickener-emulsifier trio.

Glyceryl stearate citrate is similar to the super common skincare ingredient glyceryl stearate, and is similarly used to help combine waters and oils (emulsifier) and to make your skin feel nice and soft (emollient). 

The main difference between glyceryl stearate citrate and its cousin glyceryl stearate is that this one has a citric acid molecule also attached to its glycerin. This makes it what chemists call a diacylglycerol, which is a fancy word for two acids (in this case, citric acid and stearic acid) attached together with a glycerin bridge. But when it comes to cosmetics, all you need to know is that both glyceryl stearate citrate and glyceryl stearate are safe, tried and true emulsifiers. Expect to see them in formulas with both water-based and oil-based ingredients (think moisturizers and lotions).

If you have spotted ethylhexylglycerin on the ingredient list, most probably you will see there also the current IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol. They are good friends because ethylhexylglycerin can boost the effectiveness of phenoxyethanol (and other preservatives) and as an added bonus it feels nice on the skin too.

Also, it's an effective deodorant and a medium spreading emollient. 

It's one of the most commonly used thickeners and emulsion stabilizers. If the product is too runny, a little xanthan gum will make it more gel-like. Used alone, it can make the formula sticky and it is a good team player so it is usually combined with other thickeners and so-called rheology modifiers (helper ingredients that adjust the flow and thus the feel of the formula). The typical use level of Xantha Gum is below 1%, it is usually in the 0.1-0.5% range. 

Btw, Xanthan gum is all natural, a chain of sugar molecules (polysaccharide) produced from individual sugar molecules (glucose and sucrose) via fermentation. It’s approved by Ecocert and also used in the food industry (E415). 

Adenosine is an important little compound in our body that has a vital cell-signalling role. Research on smearing it on our face is also promising and shows so far a couple of things:

• It can help with wound healing
• It’s a good anti-inflammatory agent
• It might even help with skin’s own collagen production and improve skin firmness and elasticity
• It helps with barrier repair and protection
• It might be even useful for the hair helping with hair thickness and hair growth

A little helper ingredient that can be a thickener, a humectant, a foam booster, an adhesion promoter and a filler. It's a blend of polysaccharides that helps to moisturize and soften the skin. 

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.

It is typically used in tiny amounts, around 0.1% or less.

• Green tea is one of the most researched natural ingredients
• The active parts are called polyphenols, or more precisely catechins (EGCG being the most abundant and most active catechin)
• There can be huge quality differences between green tea extracts. The good ones contain 50-90% catechins (and often make the product brown and give it a distinctive smell)
• Green tea is proven to be a great antioxidant, UV protectant, anti-inflammatory, anticarcinogenic and antimicrobial
• Because of these awesome properties green tea is a great choice for anti-aging and also for skin diseases including rosacea, acne and atopic dermatitis

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

A mainly oil-loving, vegetable raw material based ingredient that helps water and oil to mix together, aka emulsifier. It can also function as a wetting and dispersing agent helping insoluble particles such as color pigments or inorganic sunscreens (zinc/titanium dioxide) to disperse nice and even in liquids.  

Chemically speaking, it comes from the attachment of sorbitan (a dehydrated sorbitol (sugar) molecule) with the unsaturated fatty acid Oleic Acid, that creates a partly water (the sorbitan part) and partly oil soluble (oleic part) molecule. 

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

The extract coming from the root of the traditional medicinal herb, Coptis Japonica or Japanese Goldthread. The plant is used traditionally in East Asia for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antimicrobial abilities.

Other than that, there is also an abstract from the International Journal of Cosmetic Science that found Coptis Japonica Root Extract and its active component called berberine to show potent inhibition of triglyceride (aka fat) accumulation and subcutaneous preadipocytes (the cells that become later fat cells) differentiation meaning that Goldthread Extract might also be useful in slimming and anti-cellulite products.

It's a little helper ingredient coming from corn, rice or potato starch that can help to keep skin mat (absorbent), to stabilise emulsions, and to keep the product together (binding). 

It’s a handy multi-tasking ingredient that gives the skin a nice, soft feel. At the same time, it also boosts the effectiveness of other preservatives, such as the nowadays super commonly used phenoxyethanol. 

The blend of these two (caprylyl glycol + phenoxyethanol) is called Optiphen, which not only helps to keep your cosmetics free from nasty things for a long time but also gives a good feel to the finished product. It's a popular duo.

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

A four amino acid peptide that is claimed to mimic the youth hormone called thymopoietin. It works by compensating the loss of thymic factors that come with age and is thought to stimulate the skin immune defenses and to help the skin regenerate. 

If EGCG does not tell you anything, green tea sure does. We have written about green tea in excruciating details, so if you wanna become an expert in the "green tea in skincare" topic,  click here and read it. 

So now you know that EGCG is the magic ingredient in green tea. It's the most active polyphenol that green tea owes most of its magic properties to. It's a fantastic antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticarcinogenic agent. Be happy, if you spot it on the ingredient list. 

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.