Ep 36: The Complex World of Color Cosmetics

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When we tell people we work in cosmetic formulation, the first question is almost always "oh so you make makeup?" and the answer is not really. We've worked on some color projects before, but we've primarily worked on personal care products - however, there are some products where these two worlds collide.

How a product actually gets made

Most people picture a brand coming up with an idea, formulating a product, and shipping it out the door, that's rarely how it works in practice. What usually happens is that a brand writes a product brief outlining their concept, ingredient restrictions, and desired marketing claims, then hands it off to a contract formulation lab where cosmetic chemists actually make and refine the product. The brand has the idea, and the lab brings it to life. Sometimes a brand will even send the same brief to multiple labs simultaneously to see who gets closest to what they were envisioning.

Before anything hits a shelf, it goes through a long chain of steps: concept, formulation, stability testing, packaging compatibility testing, safety testing, production, and distribution. A single brand might only be responsible for one or two of those steps, with everything else outsourced to specialists who are often entirely different companies. There are separate labs just for stability testing, for heavy metals testing, and for microbial testing. It's a much bigger operation than most people realize, and formulation is just one piece of it.

Formulation itself is also more specialized than you might expect. Some labs work exclusively in liquids, some in hot-fill solids, some in wipes or pouches, some only in oral care or OTC drug products, and some specifically in color cosmetics. A lot of that comes down to equipment: the machinery needed to manufacture a liquid foundation is completely different from what you'd need for a pressed powder, and it's expensive enough that most facilities don't try to do everything.

Why makeup is its own category

What sets color cosmetics apart from other skincare isn't just that they look pretty; it's that color is the entire point, and that creates a very specific set of challenges.

If your moisturizer is slightly greener than the last bottle, you'll probably never notice because it disappears on application. But if your foundation is even a little lighter than your usual shade, you'll catch it immediately. And if your favorite lipstick comes back from the manufacturer slightly more cool-toned than it was before, it's going to look wrong and you're going to know. Color consistency in makeup has to be extremely tight because any variation is visible to the customer in a way that's basically impossible to hide or blame on something else.

With something like a niacinamide serum, if a batch comes out slightly under-concentrated, most people won't realize it. The product might not work quite as well, but since the mechanism is happening at a molecular level inside your skin barrier, there's no immediate visual feedback. You could literally blame it on a stressful week. With color, there's no such excuse.

Why most makeup isn't also great skincare

This is a question we get a lot, and the honest answer mostly comes down to stability and cost. A lot of effective skincare actives are not very stable, and they have a habit of causing color changes in a formula base, which is fine in a serum but a big problem when color is the product.

On top of that, high-quality pigments and good active ingredients are both expensive, and trying to optimize for both at the same time usually means you're not doing either particularly well. It's more cost-effective for a product to commit to one or the other, which is why most great skincare products aren't pulling double duty as a makeup product and vice versa.

The one category where this overlap actually works is tinted SPF, which sits at the intersection of color cosmetic and OTC drug product and comes with its own very specific formulation challenges as a result. But that's a whole other conversation that we'll have next week on Episode 37!