Every product we sell prints its full ingredient list on the page. Most people scroll past it, which is fair, because it looks like this: Aqua, Dimethicone, Glycerin, Cetearyl Alcohol, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Hyaluronate. That is not a language anyone speaks.
It is worth ten minutes of your life to learn, because it is the only part of a beauty product that cannot lie to you.
The order is the whole story
Ingredients are listed by weight, highest first, down to one percent. After that they can be in any order. This single rule tells you more than any marketing claim.
If a serum shouts about vitamin C and ascorbate appears second to last, next to the fragrance, you are buying water with a rumour of vitamin C in it. If it appears in the first five, you are buying an actual vitamin C serum.
Six ingredients worth recognising
- Aqua is water. It is first in almost everything and that is normal, not a scandal.
- Glycerin pulls water into the skin. Cheap, ancient, works.
- Sodium hyaluronate is hyaluronic acid in a form that actually penetrates. Holds water in the upper layers.
- Squalane is a lightweight oil, usually from olives or sugarcane, that most skin tolerates including oily skin.
- Niacinamide is vitamin B3. Good evidence for barrier repair, redness and oil control. One of the few actives almost nobody reacts badly to.
- Phenoxyethanol is a preservative. Yes it is synthetic. It is also the reason your moisturiser is not growing a colony of bacteria in a warm bathroom.
Parfum is the one that hides things
The word parfum or fragrance can legally cover dozens of individual compounds that never have to be listed. If you have reactive skin and you cannot work out what is setting it off, this is the first place to look, and it is why fragrance free is a genuinely useful thing to look for rather than a marketing pose.
What the list will not tell you
Concentration, beyond the ordering rule. Formulation quality. Whether two actives cancel each other out. An ingredient list is evidence, not a verdict.
But it will instantly tell you whether the star ingredient on the front of the bottle is actually in the bottle. That is a low bar, and a surprising number of products fail it.
See the skincare range, ingredient lists and all.
