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Rae really wants to know…Hi, in your blog you talked about the 1% line. I’m not a cosmetic chemist and I kind of always wondered how to guestimate where the 1% line is. So my question is, if you’re not a cosmetic chemist, what’s a good guide to know more or less the ratio of an ingredient to the whole product?
The Right Brain responds:
This is a really tricky question because there is no single answer that covers all products. But we can give you a very rough, general rule of thumb to follow.
Ingredients in Cosmetics
The vast majority of cosmetic products are water based. These include emulsion products (oils mixed with water) like skin lotions and hair conditioners as well as surfactant products (detergents mixed with water) like body washes, shampoos and facial washes. In these product water, of course, will almost always be the first ingredient in the list. After that, the next 4 or 5 ingredients are usually the ones responsible for the primary functional properties of the product – in other words they are the cleansers that make it foam or the conditioners that make your hair and skin feel soft. The same principle applies to powder based products (like eyeshadow, foundation, and baby powder) as well as solvent based products (like water-free hairsprays and silicone shine sprays.) So the magic rule of thumb is the first 5 ingredients are the ones that matter the most. After the fifth ingredient everything else is probably below the 1% line. This is where a lot of “snake oil” ingredients hide.
The 1%
Now, before you start an “Occupy Cosmetics” movement to complain about the 1%, let me point out that this doesn’t mean that none of the ingredients below the 1% line matter. For example, pigments are used at very low levels yet they are critically important to color cosmetics. And preservatives are only used at a few tenths of percent, yet I wouldn’t want to buy a product without them! There are many exceptions to this “First Five” rule.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
This rule of thumb is about the best guideline we can give to help you guestimate the level of ingredients in cosmetics. But that’s just our humble opinion: If there are any other cosmetic scientists reading this post we’d love to hear if you have a different perspective. And if anyone has a question about a specific ingredient in a particular product, we’d be glad to help answer any questions. Just leave a comment on this post or start a thread our Forum.
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Hi Brains, you know what I dont like about this issue? as a consumer, knowing ingredients concentration is not easy and it gets worst when most of companies dont want to reveal information. For example, a product is advertised as “firming and brightening” and you ask that company which is the ingredient responsable for that effect, they say Vitamin C, you say ok how much of it does the product have? and they say “we cant tall you due to propietary reasons”.
Come on!! its not fair, i want to know how much of that especial ingredient (that THEY ADVERTISE) the product im investing money in and applying to my skin has.This happened to me with Paula’s Choice products -when I asked her costumer service about one of their antioxidant serums- she is the first to advocate for consumers educated choices (I really admire her but i dont think she is being consistant in this point).
After all, if products come with the ingredients list but the concentrations of each ingredient are not known, it wouldnt be hard for a cosmetic chemist to find it out anyway, right??. I really dont understand it.
Thanks so much for answering my question! I think that’s good enough guide for me.
And oh, I think get your statement on not all ingredients that fall under the 1% line doesn’t matter. I think tretinoin is an example.
P.S. I hate it when ingredients are named something like “special-concoction-of-something”. I’m referring to those covered under a patent and they name a group of ingredients in a cool sounding science-y name that when you google it, you won’t have an idea what it is.
Although I’m not a true cosmetic scientist, I’m an educator and journalist to the pet grooming industry and an avid student of cosmetic science. I use the first-five rule and also look at anything below “fragrance” as likely being less than one percent or “fairy dust” ingredients. The notable exception to the first-five rule is when manufacturers use an herbal infusion in the product’s water. That allows them to list the botanicals first and bury the surfactants. There is no way to know whether the botanicals form a weak tea or a strong tea, but none will be one percent of the formula. Look below the list of botanicals for the first detergent surfactant (shampoo) or fatty alcohol (conditioner/lotion) and count from there.
@Barbara: Excellent comment! Listing an herbal infusion instead of water as the first ingredient is technically illegal (at least in the US) but a lot of smaller companies do it. You’ll never see that from a large, reputable company.