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
Lactic acid
The name may make you think of milk or a familiar exfoliating serum. In a solid cosmetic, lactic acid can tell a different story: sugar fermentation, a syrup-like raw material...
Ingredient Atlas
Cornmint essential oil
A familiar mint fragrance with a less familiar journey through steam, cooling and carefully prepared grades.
Ingredient Atlas
May chang essential oil
Small fruit, a bright lemon-like fragrance, and a name that takes you well beyond the citrus bowl.
Ingredient Atlas
Gluconolactone
A white powder dissolves, then the story keeps changing. Gluconolactone gradually becomes gluconic acid in water, a transformation useful in foods and cosmetics for quite different reasons. It is a...
Ingredient Atlas
Lemon eucalyptus essential oil
A lemon scent in a tree with pale, peeling bark: this eucalyptus has an identity worth looking up.
Ingredient Atlas
Dimethyl isosorbide
An ingredient can be useful because it helps another ingredient find its place. Dimethyl isosorbide is that kind of helper: a clear liquid associated with sugar chemistry, selected for its...
Ingredient Atlas
Denatured alcohol in a solid formula
SD Alcohol 40-B looks like a formula code because it is one. The revealing part is that 40 does not mean forty percent in your cosmetic. Decoding the name opens...
Ingredient Atlas
Lavandin Grosso oil
Those beautifully regular waves of purple in a field may be lavandin rather than the lavender you first imagined. Grosso is one of its named cultivars: a vigorous hybrid with...
Ingredient Atlas
Dehydroacetic acid
A good cosmetic has a life beyond the moment it leaves the workshop. It will be opened, touched, stored and used again. Dehydroacetic acid belongs to the ingredients that help...
Ingredient Atlas
Virginia cedarwood oil
The smell of a freshly sharpened wooden pencil can be a surprisingly good doorway into perfumery. Virginia cedarwood has that dry, woody association. Its botanical twist is just as memorable:...
Ingredient Atlas
Coconut fatty acids
A coconut can become an oil, a collection of fatty acids or the starting point for a washing ingredient. Follow the middle chapter: the material called Coconut Acid.
Ingredient Atlas
Cade wood oil
Some fragrances suggest petals or freshly cut fruit. Cade can suggest the other end of a day outdoors: dry wood, smoke and a trace of a distant fire. Its story...
