Calculating Ingredient Amounts

When you are creating your ingredient declaration for a cosmetic product, figuring out the order in which to place the ingredients is important. Two rules that affect the order are:

1. ) Ingredients must be listed in descending order of predominance,^1,2 and
2. ) Components of blended ingredients must be listed separately, based on their amount in the whole.

So, how do you calculate that? Short answer? Some pretty simple math!

The Math To Know

First of all, when doing your calculations, make sure everything is measured in terms of weight.

Percentage means per hundred". They can be stated with a percent sign (90%), but in calculations, it's the same as a decimal to the hundreds (.90). When using them in a calculator, it's usually simpler to use the decimal form.

Simple Ingredient Declaration

The ingredient declaration goes in descending order of predominance (largest to smallest). If you don't have any blended ingredients, you can the actual amount in your batch.

Reorder the ingredients into descending order of predominance:

Then use that as the order for your ingredients in the ingredient declaration:

Ingredient Declaration with a Blended Ingredient

Let's say you purchase a quick mix from Brambleberry. This example uses their Lots of Lather Quick MixFirst, get the amountsfor the ingredients per your formulation:

Since the Quick Mix Oil is a blended ingredient, you need to get the percentage of each of the components. The information from Brambleberry gives the percentages of each of the 6 oils in the Quick Mix

The Quick Mix is 33 oz inthe whole formulation, so now you have to figure out how much of each oil is in that 33 oz. We do that by using the percentage calculation. Remember, in calculating, the percentage can be expressed in decimal form (30% = .30).

The reorder the list, based on the calculated amount of each oil in the batch:

Use the order in the list to create the ingredient declaration. Note that Vitamin E Oil should be listed as Tocopherol

Blended Preservatives

When you are making a lotion, cream, or other cosmetic that uses a preservative, you will need to deal with the percentages of the component parts of the preservative. The good news is that you can put ingredients present at 1% or less in any order, following the ingredients present at more than 1%.

Since preservatives are normally used in very small amounts, most of the time the percentage of each component is likely to be under 1%. In that case, you don’t have to go through the entire process, you can just list the components in any order following the ingredients present at more than 1%.

Color Additives

Color additives are also typically used in very small amounts. In some cases, the amount of the color additive is so small that it’s hardto even weigh!

The good news there is that color additives (provided they are approved for use in cosmetics) can be listed at the very end of the ingredient declaration –regardless of the amount.