The truth about 'natural' skincare labels (and how to spot the ones that mean it)

Walk into any pharmacy and pick up a men's moisturiser at random. There's a reasonable chance the word 'natural' appears somewhere on the packaging. There's a much smaller chance that word means anything enforceable.

'Natural' in skincare is not a regulated term in the UK or EU. There is no legal standard a product has to meet to use it. A formula with one plant extract among thirty synthetic ingredients can call itself natural. A product with mineral oil, PEG compounds and synthetic polymers as its primary base can put 'contains natural ingredients' on the label, because technically it does.

This is worth knowing before you spend money on something based on what the front of the tin says.

What the label is actually telling you, and what it isn't

The front of a skincare product is marketing. The back, specifically the INCI ingredient list, is the actual formula. These two things are sometimes connected and sometimes not. Learning to read the ingredient list takes about five minutes and is considerably more useful than reading any claim on the front.

A few basics worth knowing:

• Ingredients are listed in descending order by concentration. The first ingredient is present in the largest quantity. The last is present in the smallest. An ingredient listed seventeenth out of twenty is in there in trace amounts.

• Water (Aqua) is almost always first, because most skincare is predominantly water. That's not a problem, water is a necessary carrier. But it means a product that's 70 percent water and 30 percent everything else is presenting that 30 percent as its selling point.

• If the ingredient you're buying the product for appears near the bottom of a long list, there's very little of it in there. Jojoba oil at position nineteen is doing considerably less work than jojoba oil at position three.

• Latin names are standard INCI nomenclature, not an indication of naturalness. Butyrospermum Parkii is shea butter. Cocos Nucifera is coconut oil. Aqua is water. The Latin doesn't tell you whether an ingredient is natural or synthetic, you have to know what you're looking at.

The front of the packaging is written by the marketing department. The ingredient list is written by the chemist. Read the chemist's version.

The ingredients that signal a conventional formula

These aren't dangerous, most are widely used and considered safe. But they're synthetic, and their presence in a formula should make you question any 'natural' claim on the front.

Mineral oil - Petroleum-derived. A cheap emollient that coats the skin surface rather than genuinely moisturising. Very common in budget formulations. The ingredient most explicitly avoided by genuinely natural brands.

PEG compounds (PEG-7, PEG-16, etc.) - Synthetic ethoxylated emulsifiers derived from petroleum. Common in mainstream cosmetics, prohibited in certified organic formulations. The ethoxylation process can leave trace contaminants.

Ceteareth-20 and Ceteareth-25 - Synthetic ethoxylated emulsifiers. Same family as PEG compounds. Cannot appear in certified organic products.

VP/VA Copolymer and PVP - Synthetic plastic resins used to provide hold in styling products. Entirely synthetic, no natural equivalent.

Phenoxyethanol - Synthetic preservative. Widely used and considered safe, but a red flag in products making strong natural claims. Borderline in many natural certification schemes.

Parfum / Fragrance - This single word can cover dozens of undisclosed synthetic compounds. One of the most common causes of skin sensitivity reactions. Natural fragrance (listed separately) is better but still worth scrutinising.

A product with several of these ingredients in the top half of its list is a conventional synthetic formulation regardless of what the packaging says.

What genuine natural looks like

There are two things worth looking for: certified organic status, and an ingredient list where you can identify what most things are and where they came from.

Organic certification - from bodies like the Soil Association, Ecocert, or COSMOS - requires meeting a defined standard. COSMOS Organic, for example, requires that at least 95 percent of plant-based ingredients are organically produced, prohibits petrochemical ingredients, and restricts synthetic preservatives and fragrances. These standards are independently audited. A product carrying a legitimate organic certification has been checked by someone other than the brand that made it.

Without certification, you're relying on the brand being honest. Some are. The tell is the ingredient list: a genuinely natural formula will have ingredients you can mostly identify, plant oils, butters, clay, botanical extracts, naturally-derived emulsifiers, with synthetic content limited to preservation (unavoidable for shelf life and safety) and, even then, using the milder options.

Certification is audited by someone else. A 'natural' claim on the label is audited by nobody. That distinction matters.

A real example: what two ingredient lists actually tell you

We looked at two hair clay products recently as part of our own research. Both are marketed as natural. Here's what the lists showed:

Product one - the first five ingredients included mineral oil, a PEG compound, and two synthetic polymers. The natural ingredients, horsetail extract, lemon peel extract, jojoba, appeared in the bottom third of the list in trace quantities. This is a conventional synthetic formula with a natural marketing layer.

Product two - the base was water, kaolin clay, carnauba wax, candelilla wax, shea butter, and plant oils. Synthetic content was limited to one emulsifier and a mild preservative system. This is a genuinely natural leaning formula.

Neither had organic certification. But the difference between the two formulas is significant, and it's visible only if you read the ingredient list rather than the front of the tin.

Where Hardwick & Co. sits on this

We're 99 percent natural. Our formulations use organic and naturally derived ingredients, shea butter, jojoba, aloe vera, plant-based emulsifiers, and our preservative system is among the milder options available. We don't use mineral oil, PEG compounds, synthetic fragrance, or petrochemical ingredients.

We're honest about the one percent. Safe, effective preservation requires some synthetic input, that's a reality of making a product that's stable and safe to use over months, not days. Anyone claiming 100 percent natural in a water based formula with a twelve month shelf life is either using an unconventional preservation method worth scrutinising, or being economical with the truth.

The standard we hold ourselves to is simple: would we be comfortable putting this on our own skin, every day, knowing exactly what's in it? For everything we make, the answer is yes. That's where the formulation starts, and it's the question worth asking of anything you put on your head.