Articles and guides
Practical advice, ingredients and stories about solid cosmetics.
In-depth guides
Choose a topic and find practical answers.
Ingredient Atlas
Ingredient origins, textures and practical answers about cosmetic labels.
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Solid Cosmetics School
Practical lessons for using, storing and travelling with solid cosmetics.
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Which One? Comparison Studio
Clear comparisons for the cosmetics you use, the routines you enjoy and the gifts you give.
Read the guideArticles: 776
Ingredient Atlas
CI77288 · chromium oxide green
A green made from an inorganic oxide has a different story from a green made by blending blue and yellow dyes. CI77288 introduces that distinction, giving a solid's colour an...
Ingredient Atlas
CI77289 · chromium hydroxide green
A green shampoo bar may suggest a leafy ingredient, but its shade can have a different source. CI77289 is a prepared inorganic green pigment. Its closest-looking numerical neighbour, CI77288, is...
Ingredient Atlas
Black cumin seed oil
A pale flower makes an inflated pod, and the pod holds the small black seeds familiar from food. Following their oil gives a practical story about aroma, preparation and why...
Ingredient Atlas
Beta-sitosterol
Plant oils contain a quieter cast beyond their main fats. Beta-sitosterol belongs to that smaller cast: a plant sterol whose cosmetic jobs can involve both feel and keeping a mixture...
Ingredient Atlas
CI 42090 · blue colour
A blue ingredient need not make a blue bar. CI 42090 can join other colours in a carefully balanced mixture, giving a familiar-looking solid a colour story that is more...
Ingredient Atlas
Vinegar
Before vinegar becomes a familiar sour liquid, two different microbial transformations have taken place. Its appearance in a shampoo bar adds another chapter: a kitchen-familiar material becomes one part of...
Ingredient Atlas
Babchi or bakuchi seed oil
Babchi, bakuchi, Psoralea and bakuchiol can sound like variations of one beauty ingredient. They are not. This seed-oil story is valuable precisely because it separates the plant, the oil and...
Ingredient Atlas
Apricot kernel oil
Before there is apricot oil, there is spring blossom, soft orange fruit and a stone most of us leave on the plate. Inside that stone is another useful part: the...
Ingredient Atlas
Tetrasodium glutamate diacetate
The long name hides a very practical task: keeping metal ions from making mischief in a formula. Once you recognise the shorter name GLDA, it becomes easier to spot this...
Ingredient Atlas
Sodium thiosulfate
The same name turns up in the history of photography and near the end of a soap label. The connection is chemistry: a modest salt can be useful for what...
Ingredient Atlas
Amla seed oil
Amla can mean a sour fruit, a powder, an infused hair oil or the oil from its own seeds. Following that last route reveals why a familiar traditional name can...
Ingredient Atlas
Açaí sterols
The familiar purple açaí story takes an unexpected turn here. A selected fatty fraction can become a pale, waxy cosmetic material—far removed from the fruit bowl that its name first...
