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Hyphen Golden Hour Glow™ Moisturizer

Golden Hour Glow™ Moisturizer

3 times more effective in brightening! Powered by triple power vitamin-c, it targets uneven skin tone, boosts radiance and defends against environmental stressors. It also ensures superior hydration by locking in moisture for a fresh, dewy finish that lasts.
Uploaded by: jennajebin on

Hyphen Golden Hour Glow™ Moisturizer
Ingredients explained

Also-called: Water | What-it-does: solvent

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. 

What-it-does: antioxidant, skin brightening

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

What-it-does: emollient

A nice-feeling, light emollient that makes the skin soft and smooth. It gives a fresh and gliding sensation with a powdery or soft after-feel depending on the exact grade used. It is a popular alternative to replace silicones. 

Chemically speaking, it is an alkane (stable, non-reacting hydrocarbon) that used to be produced from petrochemicals, but today's versions are typically vegetable based. It is readily biodegradable. 

Glycerin - superstar
Also-called: Glycerol | What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0
  • 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
Read all the geeky details about Glycerin here >>

Niacinamide - superstar
Also-called: vitamin B3, nicotinamide | What-it-does: cell-communicating ingredient, skin brightening, anti-acne, moisturizer/humectant
  • 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
Read all the geeky details about Niacinamide here >>

What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant, solvent | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0
  • 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)
Read all the geeky details about Propylene Glycol here >>

What-it-does: emollient

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. 

What-it-does: emollient

An emollient ester with a rich and creamy but non-greasy skin feel. It makes skin supple and protects dry skin. 

A helper ingredient that functions as a film-forming polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits).

It usually comes to the formula as part of a thickener-emulsifier trio paired with Polyisobutene and Polysorbate 20. The three togeather have excellent thickening properties with remarkable emulsifying-stabilising abilities. They also have a nice silicone feel with glide-on spreading. 

What-it-does: emollient, perfuming

A clear, slightly yellow, odorless oil  that's a very common, medium-spreading emollient. It makes the skin feel nice and smooth and works in a wide range of formulas.

Also-called: Form of Vitamin C, 3-O-Ethyl Ascorbate, EAC;Ethyl Ascorbic Acid | What-it-does: antioxidant, skin brightening

A very stable and promising form of the skincare superstar, Vitamin C. If you do not know why Vitamin C is such a big deal in skin care, you can catch up here. In short, Vitamin C has three proven magic abilities: antioxidant, collagen booster, and skin brightener. The problem, though, is that it's very unstable, turns brown and becomes ineffective in no time (after a few month) and the cosmetics industry is trying to come up with smart derivatives that are stable and have the magic properties of pure Vitamin C. 

Ethyl Ascorbic Acid or EAC for short is an "etherified derivative of ascorbic acid" that consists of vitamin C and an ethyl group bound to the third carbon position. This makes Vitamin C very stable and soluble in both water and oil.

Also-called: Form of Vitamin C, THDA | What-it-does: antioxidant, skin brightening

Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate is a stable, oil-soluble form of skincare big shot Vitamin C. If you do not know, why Vitamin C is such a big deal in skincare, click here and read all about it. We are massive vitamin C fans and have written about it in excruciating detail.

So now, you know that Vitamin C is great and all, but it's really unstable and gives cosmetics companies many headaches. To solve this problem they came up with vitamin C derivatives, and one of them is Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate (let's call it THDA in short).

Also-called: Carrot Seed Oil | What-it-does: emollient

The oil coming from the seeds of the carrot, the orange root vegetable we all know and eat regularly. This oil is a really tricky one, as it can refer to two types of oil that can both be extracted from the carrot seeds: the essential oil (about 0.83% yield) and the fixed oil (about 7.84% yield). 

The two seed oils are very different and to make matters even worse these two oils are also very different from carrot root oil, or carrot oil, that is basically carrot root extract macerated in a carrier oil such as sunflower or olive oil and is the one that contains the vitamin A precursor, carotene. 

What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant

A natural high-molecular weight amino acid polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) that is claimed to have awesome, better than IT-moisturizer HA, skin hydrating properties. It is a film-forming polymer that improves both the moisture binding and retention properties of the skin.

What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

What-it-does: viscosity controlling

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.

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

What-it-does: emulsifying

PEG-30 Dipolyhydroxystearate is a popular water-in-oil (w/o) emulsifier, meaning that it helps the oily and watery parts of the formula to mix in a way where water droplets are dispersed in the continuous oil phase and not the other way round. 

Compared to the more commonly used oil-in-water (o/w) emulsions, w/o emulsions tend to be heavier and less cosmetically elegant, but PEG-30 Dipolyhydroxystearate is claimed to help with this and enables a light and elegant skin feel. It also has a molecular structure that creates large anchors both in the water and in the oil phase making the resulting emulsion not only cosmetically elegant but also very stable. 

What-it-does: emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 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: preservative

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. 

What-it-does: preservative, deodorant

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

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

Also-called: CI 77019 | What-it-does: colorant

A super versatile and common mineral powder that comes in different particle sizes. It is a multi-tasker used to improve skin feel, increase product slip, give the product light-reflecting properties, enhance skin adhesion or serve as an anti-caking agent.

It is also the most commonly used "base" material for layered composite pigments such as pearl-effect pigments. In this case, mica is coated with one or more metal oxides (most commonly titanium dioxide) to achieve pearl effect via the physical phenomenon known as interference. 

What-it-does: sunscreen, colorant

Titanium Dioxide is one of the two members of the elite sunscreen group called physical sunscreens (or inorganic sunscreens if you’re a science geek and want to be precise).

Traditionally, UV-filters are categorized as either chemical or physical. The big difference is supposed to be that chemical agents absorb UV-light while physical agents reflect it like a bunch of mini umbrellas on top of the skin. While this categorization is easy and logical it turns out it's not true. A recent, 2016 study shows that inorganic sunscreens work mostly by absorption, just like chemical filters, and only a little bit by reflection (they do reflect the light in the visible spectrum, but mostly absorb in the UV spectrum).

You may also want to take a look at...

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 antioxidant | skin brightening
what‑it‑does emollient
A nice-feeling, light emollient that makes the skin soft and smooth. It gives a fresh and gliding sensation with a powdery or soft after-feel depending on the exact grade used. [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 cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant
A multi-functional skincare superstar that has clinically proven anti-aging, skin lightening, anti-inflammatory and barrier repair properties. [more]
what‑it‑does moisturizer/humectant | solvent
irritancy, com. 0, 0
A common glycol that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products. It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer. [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
An emollient ester with a rich and creamy but non-greasy skin feel. [more]
A film forming polymer that usually comes to the formula as part of a thickener-emulsifier trio paired with Polyisobutene and Polysorbate 20. [more]
what‑it‑does emollient | perfuming
A clear, slightly yellow, odorless oil  that's a very common, medium-spreading emollient. It makes the skin feel nice and smooth and works in a wide range of formulas.
what‑it‑does antioxidant | skin brightening
A stable form of Vitamin C, whose strong point is skin-brightening. It might also have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and collagen boosting abilities. [more]
what‑it‑does antioxidant | skin brightening
A stable, oil-soluble form of Vitamin C, that might have (in-vitro results) all the magic abilities of pure vitamin C (antioxidant, collagen booster, skin brightener). [more]
what‑it‑does emollient
The oil coming from the seeds of the carrot, the orange root vegetable we all know and eat regularly. This oil is a really tricky one, as it can refer to two types of oil that can both be extracted from the carrot seeds: [more]
what‑it‑does moisturizer/humectant
A natural high-molecular weight amino acid polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) that is claimed to have awesome, better than IT-moisturizer HA, skin hydrating properties. [more]
what‑it‑does moisturizer/humectant
what‑it‑does viscosity controlling
A polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) that's used as a gloss improver for lipsticks and lipglosses. Combined with polyacrylate-13 and polysorbate 20, it forms a very effective tickener-emulsifier trio. [more]
what‑it‑does emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing
what‑it‑does emulsifying
PEG-30 Dipolyhydroxystearate is a popular water-in-oil (w/o) emulsifier, meaning that it helps the oily and watery parts of the formula to mix in a way where water droplets are dispersed in the continuous oil phase and not the other way round.  Compared to the more commonly used oil-in-water (o/w) emulsions, w/o emulsions tend to be heavier and less cosmetically elegant, but  [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 preservative
Pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, and can be used up to 1% worldwide. [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 antimicrobial/antibacterial
what‑it‑does colorant
A mineral powder used to improve skin feel, increase product slip, give the product some light-reflecting properties, enhance skin adhesion or serve as an anti-caking agent. A real multi-tasker. [more]
what‑it‑does sunscreen | colorant
A physical/inorganic sunscreen with pretty broad spectrum (UVB and UVA II, less good at UVA I) protection and good stability. Might leave some whitish tint on the skin, though. [more]