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Skincare ingredient dictionary

28 cosmetic ingredients by their INCI name: what each one is, what it does, how good the evidence is, whether it needs care in pregnancy or sunlight, and how the EU rules treat it. Paste an ingredient list and see which ones you recognise.

This is an ingredient reference, not a diagnosis and not a treatment plan. It describes what substances are and what the published evidence supports; it does not tell you what your skin has or what to put on it. A rash that spreads, hurts, weeps, does not settle, or comes with feeling unwell is a reason to see a doctor or pharmacist, not to change serum.

Paste an ingredient list

Copy the INCI list off a carton or a shop page and paste it in. Every ingredient this dictionary knows will be pulled out and linked, with a flag against the ones that need care in pregnancy or sunlight. Nothing is uploaded — the matching happens in your browser against the table further down this page, which is also why it works only for the 28 ingredients listed here and will simply ignore the rest.

The decoder recognises names, it does not judge products. An ingredient being in this dictionary says nothing about whether a formula is good, and an ingredient being absent from it says nothing at all.

The dictionary

Grouped by the job the ingredient does in a product rather than alphabetically, because that is how a routine is actually assembled. The evidence column grades what is published behind the main claim, not how popular the ingredient is.

Exfoliating acids

Retinoids and retinol alternatives

Pigment and brightening

Hydration, emollients and barrier repair

Soothers, protectants and acne actives

Preservatives, surfactants and fragrance

How to read an ingredient list

Four rules get you most of the way. First, the list runs in descending order of weight only down to 1%; below that the order means nothing, so an active at the tail is not necessarily a token amount and one near the middle is not necessarily generous. Second, water is nearly always first and that is not a criticism — most cosmetics are mostly water, and the interesting question is what is dissolved in it. Third, the run of names at the very end — limonene, linalool, citronellol, geraniol and their relatives — are fragrance allergens the EU requires to be named individually above a threshold; they are there because of disclosure rules, not because the product suddenly became more complicated. Fourth, plant ingredients appear under a Latin species name and a plant part, so Avena Sativa (Oat) Kernel Flour and "soothing oat complex" on the front of the box are the same thing.

Two things a list cannot tell you. It cannot tell you concentration, except that everything before the 1% break is above 1%. And it cannot tell you pH, which for an acid product decides how much free acid is available and therefore how strong it actually is. A brand that publishes both is telling you more than a brand with a bigger number on the front.

Pregnancy at a glance

Computed from the same rows: the ingredients in this dictionary that are usually stopped or that need a conversation with the person looking after your pregnancy. Everything not listed here falls into the "generally considered fine" group, which is most of the table.

This table is a prompt for a conversation, not a clearance list. Pregnancy advice depends on what else you use and what stage you are at, and your midwife or doctor is the person who decides. If you have used a retinoid before you knew you were pregnant, that is a question for them and not a reason to panic.

Related on this site: pregnancy nutrition week by week · can I eat that?

What changes how your skin handles sunlight

Some of these make skin burn more easily while you are using them, and a few days after. One of them is a sunscreen filter. The rest do nothing either way. This surface covers what is in the bottle; how much ultraviolet you are getting, and what that means for vitamin D, is a separate subject.

Condition guides

Four longer pages where skin and hair meet what you eat, each written to the same rule as the dictionary: what the evidence supports, what it does not, and the point at which a website is the wrong place to be looking.

Where this comes from

Every statement about what is permitted, restricted or banned is the EU Cosmetics Regulation and its annexes — the same annexes the Commission publishes through the CosIng database, which is also where the INCI names themselves come from. Concentration positions attributed to a committee are those of the EU's Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety or of the Cosmetic Ingredient Review. Mechanisms, tolerability and contact-allergy patterns come from standard dermatology reference material.

Where a figure could not be confirmed it is absent rather than approximated, and where a source could not be linked to a URL that was certain to exist, it is named in words instead. Percentages that appear are either the published regulatory limit or the concentration range in normal use, and each item page says which.

Sources: EU Cosmetics Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 and its annexes, as published in the European Commission's CosIng database, for every statement about what is permitted, restricted or banned · opinions of the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS) and safety assessments of the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) for the concentration positions · standard dermatology reference material for mechanism, tolerability and contact-allergy patterns · checked 2026-09-06. Deep links are deliberately omitted where a stable public URL could not be confirmed.

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