Beard Co-wash
Highlights
Key Ingredients
Other Ingredients
Skim through
| Ingredient name | what-it-does | irr., com. | ID-Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Distilled Water | solvent | ||
| Aloe Vera Juice | soothing, moisturizer/humectant | goodie | |
| Cetyl Alcohol | emollient, viscosity controlling | 2, 2 | |
| Cetearyl Alcohol | emollient, viscosity controlling, emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing | 1, 2 | |
| Hydrolyzed Quinoa Protein | |||
| Polyquaternium-10 | viscosity controlling | ||
| Decyl Glucoside | surfactant/cleansing | ||
| Marula Oil | emollient | goodie | |
| Glyceryl Monostearate | emollient, emulsifying | 0, 1-2 | |
| PEG-100 Stearate | surfactant/cleansing, emulsifying | 0, 0 | |
| D-Panthenol (Pro-Vitamin Vitamin B5) | soothing, moisturizer/humectant | 0, 0 | goodie |
| Babassu Oil | emollient | 0, 1 | |
| Vitamin E Tocopherol | antioxidant | 0-3, 0-3 | goodie |
| Phenoxyethanol | preservative | ||
| Potassium Sorbate | preservative |
Kühn Beard Co-washIngredients 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.
Aloe Vera is one of today’s magic plants. It does have some very nice properties indeed, though famous dermatologist Leslie Baumann warns us in her book that most of the evidence is anecdotal and the plant might be a bit overhyped.
What research does confirm about Aloe is that it’s a great moisturizer and has several anti-inflammatory (among others contains salicylates, polysaccharides, magnesium lactate and C-glucosyl chromone) as well as some antibacterial components. It also helps wound healing and skin regeneration in general. All in all definitely a goodie.
A so-called fatty (the good, non-drying kind of) alcohol that does all kinds of things in a skincare product: it makes your skin feel smooth and nice (emollient), helps to thicken up products and also helps water and oil to blend (emulsifier). Can be derived from coconut or palm kernel oil.
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.
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
A cellulose derived polymer (a big molecule that consists of many parts) that can help to thicken up products, form a nice film on the skin or hair and is considered to be an excellent hair conditioner.
A vegetable origin (coconut or palm kernel oil and glucose) cleansing agent with great foaming abilities. It's also mild to the skin and readily biodegradable.
If you have an interest in elephants and Africa, you have probably heard of elephants getting drunk from the fruit of the Marula tree. Though this seems to be only a legend, what is true is that the Marula fruit is really nice (and elephants do love to eat it) and there is a stone in it with several oil-rich kernels inside.
So the Marula oil - similar to many other plant oils - is a really nice nourishing and moisturizing oil that can improve skin hydration and smoothness and it can even reduce skin redness. It's traditionally used in South Africa to massage babies with and as a body lotion for face, feet, and hands.
As for its composition, it's loaded with skin goodies: it's very rich in fatty acids, including oleic (73%), palmitic (15%), and linoleic (9%) acids. It also contains some natural antioxidants, including Vitamin E and the oil shows an outstanding oxidative stability.
If you have dry skin that needs some pampering, Marula oil is a good choice.
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.
It also occurs naturally in our body and is used as a food additive. As cosmetic chemist Colins writes it, "its safety really is beyond any doubt".
A very common water-loving surfactant and emulsifier that helps to keep water and oil mixed nicely together.
It's often paired with glyceryl stearate - the two together form a super effective emulsifier duo that's salt and acid tolerant and works over a wide pH range. It also gives a "pleasing product aesthetics", so no wonder it's popular.
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.
- 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
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.
It's one of those things that help your cosmetics not to go wrong too soon, aka a preservative. It’s not a strong one and doesn’t really work against bacteria, but more against mold and yeast. To do that it has to break down to its active form, sorbic acid. For that to happen, there has to be water in the product and the right pH value (pH 3-4).
But even if everything is right, it’s not enough on its own. If you see potassium sorbate you should see some other preservative next to it too.
BTW, it’s also a food preservative and even has an E number, E202.
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| what‑it‑does | solvent |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | viscosity controlling |
| irritancy, com. | 2, 2 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | viscosity controlling | emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing |
| irritancy, com. | 1, 2 |
| what‑it‑does | viscosity controlling |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| what‑it‑does | emollient | emulsifying |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1-2 |
| what‑it‑does | surfactant/cleansing | emulsifying |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | soothing | moisturizer/humectant |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 0 |
| what‑it‑does | emollient |
| irritancy, com. | 0, 1 |
| what‑it‑does | antioxidant |
| irritancy, com. | 0-3, 0-3 |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |
| what‑it‑does | preservative |