What goes wrong

A shared declaration that did not qualify

Updated October 2026

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The first: a non-common brand designation Which is exactly what a range does commercially The second: a non-color ingredient The batch-matching route is the safe one And the assortment route is separate The composite list has its own condition Decide the label architecture before the range grows References

Two failures, and both come from treating the allowance as a convenience.

The first: a non-common brand designation

Both of the "may contain" routes require that all products sharing the declaration are sold under a common trade name and that no designation not common to all appears on any of them. A collaboration or a limited edition name breaks it.

Which is exactly what a range does commercially

Special editions and collaborations are how a shade range stays interesting, and each one risks taking that product out of the shared declaration. The commercial instinct and the condition pull against each other.

The second: a non-color ingredient

Both routes end with the requirement that the ingredient is a color additive. A preservative, an active or a filler present in some variants cannot be declared with "may contain", and doing so is a misdeclaration.

The batch-matching route is the safe one

A color additive added to some batches for purposes of color matching is covered with no further conditions. That is the narrow, robust use of "may contain" and it is the one worth relying on.

And the assortment route is separate

An assortment sold together in one package may use a single composite list of color additives. That is a different provision from "may contain" and conflating the two is common.

The composite list has its own condition

It has to be in a manner that is not misleading and that indicates what it is. A bare list of every pigment in a palette, with no indication that it is composite, does not satisfy that.

Decide the label architecture before the range grows

Whether you are using strict order, the grouping, "may contain" or a composite list. Each has conditions, and a range that grows into one of them by accident ends up out of all of them.

References

21 CFR 701.3(g) and (h), which permit a declaration to include an ingredient not in the product where it is identified by the phrase "may contain" and it is a color additive added to some batches for color matching, or where four stated conditions about shaded products sold under a common trade name are met; and which permit an assortment sold in one package to declare its color additives in a single composite list. law.cornell.edu

21 CFR 701.3(f), the alternative to strict descending order: ingredients other than color additives above 1 percent in descending order, then those at not more than 1 percent without respect to order, then color additives without respect to order of predominance. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal regulation and from measured catalog data, not from a formulation bench. Whether a given color additive is listed for a given use, including use in the area of the eye, is a question about that listing in 21 CFR parts 73, 74 and 82. Nothing here is a determination about a specific colorant.