3 Ways to Make Surfactant Free Emulsions
Emulsifiers are great for keeping mixtures of oil and water together but they do have a number of downsides that has prompted researchers to look…
Category: Formulating
How to be a Complete Cosmetic Chemist
To be a complete cosmetic chemist you need to have a wide range of knowledge and skills not taught in college. Here are the 5…
When do you need to add a cosmetic preservative
[s3video s3url=”Preservative-vid1.mp4″ splash=”https://chemistscorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-08-at-3.09.48-PM.png” /] Join the Cosmetic Preservative Webinar Webinar begins July 15, 2015! What is it? We’re hosting for a limited time a webinar…
What is the best ingredient to use?
On a few occasions we’ve gotten a question that goes something like this…. “What is the best preservative to use?” or “What is the best…
Does alcohol cause skin irritation?
I recently received an email asking me about why a company would include alcohol (denatured) in their skin care formulas. They were under the impression…
5 Steps For Getting Replacement Raw Materials
There are a number of reasons why you might want to find a replacement for a raw material you currently using. It could be because…
Which cosmetic ingredients are animal derived?
When the INCI Dictionary was first published there were about 2000 cosmetic ingredients listed. The latest edition has over 14,000 ingredients. Hundreds of new raw…
Types of Peptides in Cosmetics
There are a number of types of ingredients offered to formulators as “active ingredients.” You can find molecules claimed to boost collagen production, turn off…
What to ask about your new cosmetic raw material
At some point in your cosmetic chemistry career, if you haven’t already, you’ll be introduced to new ingredients. The supplier will probably furnish you with…
5 Things That Cosmetics Can Do
While there are hundreds of types of cosmetics and thousands of cosmetic brands, there are really only 5 things that cosmetics do. If you want…
Why formulators should pay attention to beauty bloggers
In the cosmetic industry beauty bloggers seem to be gaining in their influence and big brands are beginning to take them more seriously. This is…
What is Polyquaternium?
This is a post by Nitesh Rajput A product is considered to be a conditioner if it improves the quality of the surface to which…
Types of Water Used in Cosmetic Formulating
There are a wide variety of water types that you can use when formulating cosmetics. Distilled, deionized, purified or tap water are all options for…
Controlling Cosmetic Product Quality
A question was posed to us recently about creating consistent cosmetic products and formulations. Basically, the reader wanted to know how you do it. The…
Figuring out the 1% line
A fun activity for any cosmetic chemist is to look at a list of ingredients (LOI) and try to determine where is the 1% line.…
What are cosmetic product specifications?
When you create a formula in the lab it’s rather easy to create batches that are consistently the same in terms of their physical and…
Surfactants - Does the counterion matter?
There was an interesting discussion on LinkedIn about whether Magnesium Laureth Sulfate was more gentle than Sodium Laureth Sulfate. It’s a pretty good question and…
So you want to formulate sulfate free?
Somewhere along the line surfactants which contain the name “sulfate” got a bad name. It’s difficult to say exactly how this negative reputation was developed…
Cosmetic Formulating - Working with Base Formulas
When you start out as a cosmetic formulator you will not be asked to come up with your own formulas. There may be some exceptions…
The Three Types of Cosmetic Raw Materials
Did you know that there are only 3 main categories of cosmetic raw materials? Really all of the ingredients used in cosmetics can be put…