Let's Talk Pigment!

What is pigment?
A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption.


Why is pigment used in makeup?
It is the process of light interaction with a hard substance that actually creates the coloring of your  favorite makeups!


How are pigments used in my makeup?
Most cosmetic versions of pigment  start as a fine dry powder. This is then added to a binding solution to essentially enable the intense color to stay on your eyelashes, eyelids, lips and more, depending of the product you are using.

I talked about hyper pigments in my "High End vs. Drug Store - the facts" blog and so I wanted to explain a littler further on what a hyper pigment is. A hyper pigment is the cosmetic industry's way of saying a synthetic pigment. All throughout history pigments have been used for many things but up until just a few years ago they were all naturally occurring pigments such as ocher or iron oxides, Recently science has found a way to take those naturally occurring pigments and turn them into synthetic pigments or as they are known in the cosmetic industry - hyper pigments. Those hyper pigments are created by quickly oxidizing the chemical compounds in naturally occurring pigments, there is no need to worry though many times the oxidation is created by adding something as simple as vinegar and baking at extremely high heat until the color vibrancy desired occurs.


Many times I hear people talking about the pigmentation of a certain brand and they will say "it's not pigmented very well"  There is a reason for that, most drug store brands use natural pigments (also found in mineral makeup) where as high end brands use synthetic pigments (hyper pigments) Although both are chemically the same and neither is more harmful to the skin than the other natural pigments are much cheaper to "produce" because they are simply found in nature, crushed and then treated with other chemicals to render them clean and unharmful to the skin. Synthetic chemicals go through the exact same process with the added cost of oxidation which is why they are most often found High End Brands. Although small amounts of synthetic pigments are found in blue's, red's and green's from even drug store brands! I hope you now understand a little more about pigmentation in your cosmetics as well as the difference between natural pigmentation and synthetic pigmentation .

^Natural Ultramarine Blue Pigment

^Synthetic Ultramarine Blue Pigment