The Ingredients In Colour Cosmetics - Make Up

I made it my mission to go through the ingredients of cosmetics, so I somewhat neglected to list a colour cosmetics ingredients. Why? You can say I was focusing more on the wild claims made by skincare brands on how different your life would be if you bought into some of those claims.

Colour cosmetics don’t make such claims, not the ones that will stop you from ageing and the like, they do some different ones which I’ll cover at a later date.  Mascara and foundation, I’ll be looking at you soon!

The colour pigments that are used in making the colour cosmetics are the most regulated in the world. Different countries have different rules, but generally you’ll find Japan to have the most stringent safety regulations for cosmetics. The EU and USA are behind and you’ll find that most breakthrough make up innovations come from Asia these days.

The colours come into two groups: organic and inorganic.

Inorganic are the mineral pigments (I bet this inorganic and organic matter confuses people) that are found around the Earth as compounds of transition metals. The inorganic colours are:

Iron oxides (reds, browns, black and yellows that can be mixed and blended together), chromium oxide, (green), ultramarine (blue, purple), titanium dioxide/zinc oxide (white and uv protection).

Organic pigments are organic molecules that start with N or S or similar (not the names but their chemical or dye name). They are anthraquinone (green), AZO colourants (red and yellow), Triarylmethane (blue and green), Xanthenes (red, orange), and some natural colourants such as caramel, caretonoids etc. The problem with these natural ones is that they very often stink and they are unstable.

Then we have fillers and finishers. Those are the ones that make the product “glide” and spread evenly. The most usual of those are talc (a widespread mineral) and mica (potassium aluminum silicate – another mineral).

Fillers and finishers also include emulsifiers, preservatives, fragrance, and so on.

In a nutshell, that’s it. I’ll come back later to discuss mascaras. If any of you want to experiment with making your own lipstick or eye shadow , please make sure that the pigments you use are safe to be used either around eyes or lips!