Ingredient lists are not written for shoppers. They are written for regulators, in Latin, in a fixed order, and they take about five minutes to learn to read. Here is that five minutes.
The list is in order of quantity
Ingredients are listed from most to least, down to a concentration of one per cent. Below that threshold they can be listed in any order.
So the first three or four ingredients are most of the product. If a botanical you are paying for sits below the preservative, there is very little of it in there.
INCI is why everything is in Latin
INCI stands for International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. It gives every ingredient one standard name worldwide, so shea butter is Butyrospermum Parkii Butter on a label in Winnipeg and in Lisbon.
It looks intimidating and it is meant to be precise, not friendly. Cocos Nucifera Oil is coconut oil. Sodium Chloride is salt. Aqua is water. A long Latin name does not mean a scary ingredient.
“Fragrance” or “parfum” is a legal catch-all
This is the genuinely useful one. A fragrance blend can contain dozens of components, and manufacturers are permitted to list them under the single word fragrance or parfum, because the blend is treated as a trade secret.
That is not sinister, but it does mean that if you react to something and the label just says fragrance, you cannot work out what you reacted to. For genuinely sensitive skin, fragrance-free is the simplest way to remove a whole category of unknowns.
Anything with water needs a preservative
This one gets misreported constantly, so it is worth saying plainly: a product containing water must be preserved. Lotion, cream, serum, shampoo, anything with Aqua high in the list.
Without a preservative, that product grows mould and bacteria — which is a far more immediate problem than the preservative ever was. “Preservative-free” on a water-based product means either that it will spoil, or that something is preserving it under a friendlier name.
Anhydrous products are the exception. Bar soap, balms, body butters and facial oils contain no water, so they do not need one. That is why our soap ingredient lists are short.
Words that mean nothing on a label
Natural. Clean. Pure. Chemical-free. Non-toxic.
None of these are regulated terms. Anyone can print any of them on anything. We use the word natural ourselves, and it tells you no more coming from us than from anyone else — which is exactly why every one of our product pages carries the full INCI list underneath.
Judge the list, not the front of the pack.
Synthetic does not mean dangerous
It is tempting to sort ingredients into good-natural and bad-synthetic. It does not hold up.
Plenty of plant extracts are potent irritants — essential oils are among the more common causes of contact allergy in cosmetics. Plenty of synthetic ingredients are inert and extremely well studied. Cosmetic ingredients sold in Canada are regulated by Health Canada, and the ones on the Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist are the ones actually restricted.
We make our things from plant oils and butters because we like how they behave and because it is the kind of making we want to do. That is an honest reason. “Everything else is poison” would not be.
If your skin is reactive, shorten the list
The most reliable approach is not avoiding a villain ingredient. It is reducing the number of variables.
- Fewer ingredients means fewer suspects if something goes wrong.
- Fragrance-free removes the largest unknown in one step.
- Patch test on the inside of a forearm and wait a day before using something new on your face.
- Change one product at a time, so you can tell what did it.
What we do
Every Pure Wash product page lists its complete INCI ingredients — the real list, in order, not a selected highlight reel. Our soap is anhydrous and unpreserved. Our water-based products are preserved, and we say so.
This is general information about reading labels, not skincare advice. If you have a diagnosed skin condition or a known allergy, your doctor or dermatologist is the right person to ask.