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The color of skincare products

When you make a coffee extract at home (be an espresso or drip) the extract you get is brown. If you make a tea leaf extract, it will be light brown. When you also make fruit extracts, (called smoothies or fruit juices), their colors are similar to the fruits you are using to make the extract.

So how come that when you buy a cream with coffee extract it is as white as snow?

These are the possibilities:

  1. The fruit (or root) it was extracted from is white like snow
  2. The extract was further purified until all colored substances were eliminated (this is OK as long as the active components were not eliminated from the mix!)
  3. There is so little of the extract that it doesn’t affect the color of the final product

I don’t know any white fruit or white root. Some pure chemicals are white. Epidermal growth factor is so powerful and needed in such small concentrations that using it wouldn’t affect the color of the serum or cream.

In most cases, skincare products still look like those in the 1970s,when creams were white and strongly fragranced and that was it.

If many skincare products still look like in the 1970s it’s not for lack of knowledge or effective ingredients: it’s because what sells a skincare product is its smell, texture, and packaging, just like in the 1970s (or 1950s?).

Why are Skin Actives products different color than others?

  1. The fruits (or roots) we use are non-white
  2. Many of the actives we use are non-white even when pure, and some of them don’t smell great either
  3. We use concentrations according to the activity we require, and not depending on the color or smell.

In short, the future of skincare … is already here.

And it may not be white or have a nice fragrance. But it will work!