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Lip care
All Containers›Shop by use case›Lip care›The balm itself›Color and pigmentShop all lip care →
The balm itself

Color and pigment

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5

Adding color is the point where a lip balm business becomes a cosmetics business with an ingredient regime attached.

Color is a regulated ingredient

Color additives are the one cosmetic ingredient category FDA approves in advance. A color has to be permitted for the intended use, and the use that matters here is the strictest one: lips are an area where the product is ingested in small amounts, and not every color approved for external cosmetics is approved for lip use.

Some permitted colors are also subject to batch certification, which means the specific lot you buy must have been certified. That is a question for your supplier and a document to keep.

So a color is not a shade decision with a compliance footnote. It is a compliance decision that happens to produce a shade.

What is permitted

Buy from a cosmetic ingredient supplier who states the approved uses and supplies the certification where it applies, and keep that paperwork with the batch record.

Not from a craft supplier selling pigment for soap, candles or resin. The material may be identical and the documentation is what you are buying.

Mica and iron oxides are the usual starting point for a natural-looking tint. Lakes give stronger, flatter color and behave differently in an anhydrous base.

Pigment changes the formula

Pigment is a solid. Adding it stiffens the balm, dulls the gloss and makes the mix want to settle while it sits in the pouring pot.

Castor oil is the usual answer: it wets pigment, restores gloss and holds the dispersion. A tinted formula normally carries more castor than its plain sibling.

And pigment has to be properly dispersed rather than stirred in. A grinder, a mill or a long patient blend, then a screen. Undispersed pigment shows on the lip as speckle.

Matching a shade

Judge color on a lip or on white card, never in the pot. A tinted balm always looks four times stronger in the melt than it does applied.

Make a swatch set, keep it, and match new batches to it under the same light. Daylight and a warm kitchen bulb disagree enough to fail a batch.

References

US Food and Drug Administration. Summary of Cosmetics Labeling Requirements. fda.gov
Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, and INCI nomenclature for cosmetic ingredient declaration in descending order of predominance. fda.gov
Written from the federal regulation and FDA guidance named on each page, not from a laboratory or a legal practice. Whether a particular formula and a particular label make a cosmetic or a drug is a determination about your product, and this is not that determination.