Why there are no essential oils in anything I make

Every face and scalp product I make is formulated without essential oils. Not fewer of them. None.

The honest reason is less noble than people expect. My own skin left me nowhere else to go.

How I ended up here

My skin reacts to essential oils. Nothing on the market worked for it, including a great deal of what is sold specifically for sensitive skin.

Reactions like that are easy to misread, because they are often not dramatic and not immediate. It takes a while to stop assuming you are the problem and start reading ingredient lists instead.

The common thread, once you do, is the fragrance component. Sometimes named as an essential oil, sometimes just the word "parfum".

That is the whole origin of Seed Glow. I did not set out to start a skincare brand. I set out to have something I could put on my face.

Essential oils are fragrance

This is the part that surprises people most.

An essential oil is a concentrated aromatic extract. Its job in a formula is almost always to make the product smell like something. That is fragrance, whatever the front of the box calls it.

The regulatory position is a useful reality check. The European Union requires 26 specific fragrance allergens to be declared by name on cosmetic labels, because they cause contact allergy often enough to warrant it. Many of them are not synthetic at all. Limonene, linalool, geraniol, citronellol, citral and eugenol all occur naturally, and in high concentrations, in essential oils. A citrus oil is largely limonene. Lavender oil is largely linalool.

So "no synthetic fragrance, only pure essential oils" is not the reassurance it sounds like. Quite often it means the same allergens from a different source, at a less predictable concentration.

And oxidation makes it worse over time

Here is the part almost nobody mentions.

Several of those compounds become more sensitising after exposure to air. Limonene and linalool oxidise, and the oxidation products are more likely to provoke a reaction than the fresh material was.

Which means a bottle that suited you in month one can stop suiting you by month eight, with nothing on the label having changed. If you have ever had a long, happy relationship with a product that turned on you, this is one of the more likely explanations. I wrote about the wider version of that problem in when skincare actually goes off.

What I use instead

Nothing. There is no fragrance component in the face oil or the balm, natural or otherwise.

Both formulas do have a smell, because unrefined botanical materials smell of themselves. The Universal Balm carries the warm, faintly nutty note of unrefined shea and cocoa butter. Seed Glow smells green and seedy. Neither smell was designed. It is simply what the ingredients are, and it settles within a minute or two on skin.

I know this is a loss for some people. A beautiful scent is a real part of why skincare feels good, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. It was just not a trade I could make, because the people I was formulating for are the ones most likely to react to it.

Common questions

Is "natural fragrance" the same as essential oil?
Not necessarily, and that is the problem. The term is not tightly defined, so it can cover essential oils, extracts or blended aroma materials. If it matters to you, look for the individual allergen names in the ingredient list. I went through how to do that in sixty seconds.

Is unscented the same as fragrance-free?
No, and the difference matters. Unscented can mean the opposite.

My skin has become reactive to things it used to tolerate. Why?
That pattern is common and it has a name. Sensitised skin is not the same as sensitive skin, and unlike the skin you were born with, it can improve.

Will you ever release a scented product?
Not for the face or scalp. That is a formulation rule, not a phase.

Continue reading

• Fragrance-free vs unscented: the label difference that matters
• Is your skin actually sensitive, or is it sensitised?
• Ten ingredient names that sound alarming, and what they actually do