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
Lemon essential oil
A curl of lemon peel can leave more fragrance on your fingers than you expect. In a solid bar, that familiar scent may meet a spice fruit and another citrus...
Ingredient Atlas
Lemongrass essential oil
Lemongrass brings a citrus-like fragrance from long grass leaves rather than a fruit rind.
Ingredient Atlas
Lavender essential oil
Open a lavender-scented drawer and a whole summer can appear in a moment. Behind that familiar fragrance is a working harvest: flowering stems, a loaded still and a condenser that...
Ingredient Atlas
Kaolin clay
Pale clay behaves differently from the butters beside it. Its fine particles stay particles, helping explain the softly opaque look and mineral feel of a blend.
Ingredient Atlas
Hydrolyzed keratin
A wool fibre and a liquid protein ingredient can look worlds apart. Hydrolyzed keratin follows the work between them: breaking protein chains into useful fragments, specifying the resulting mixture and...
Ingredient Atlas
Jojoba
Jojoba offers a pleasing surprise: a liquid that belongs to wax chemistry. Its desert shrub, seed reserves and processed derivatives let you follow the difference between what a material is...
Ingredient Atlas
Illite
A green clay can look familiar long before its mineral name does. Illite gives that colour story a firmer foundation: fine, layered particles with a different relationship to water from...
Ingredient Atlas
Jojoba wax
Jojoba’s familiar flowing material is rich in wax esters. Hydrogenation gives it a firmer preparation, useful for building a different kind of texture.
Ingredient Atlas
Hectorite
Some of a product’s most useful work happens while it is standing still. Hectorite can help organise a mixture so that particles stay distributed, then let that mixture move differently...
Ingredient Atlas
Glycerin
A glycerin droplet is glossy and syrupy, yet it readily joins water. Following that small surprise leads from fat chemistry and old soap-making records to the moisture-related work happening inside...
Ingredient Atlas
Grapefruit peel essential oil
Cut a grapefruit and the juicy centre takes the attention. The essential-oil story begins in the rind: a bright aromatic layer with a slightly bitter edge, ready to take a...
Ingredient Atlas
Ghassoul · rhassoul clay
Ghassoul begins with a Moroccan mineral deposit and carries a long association with washing traditions.
