Surfactants are the raw materials used to formulate cleansing products like face cleansers, body washes, and shampoos. They make foam (bubbles), bind themselves to the oil and dirt on our skin and hair and suspend them. This way, water is able to sweep them away from the surface of the skin or hair.
Naturally, these raw materials are powerful, especially the anionic variants. However, they are not very intelligent in the sense that they are unable to differentiate between good lipids that should remain on your skin and the bad lipids that you want to remove. Our skin has a lipid layer as well as sebum, which helps protect the skin from environmental stressors and keeps our skin moisturized and supple. Stripping these off the skin can make it feel tight, dry, itchy, and inflamed. As a formulator, it’s important to ensure that your formulas are mild and non-irritating. You want a good clean, but you don’t want to leave the skin in a worse state than you found it. In this article, I will share several ways of formulating mild cleansers.
- Reduce your Anionic Surfactant Input
As earlier mentioned, your anionic surfactants are the strongest class of surfactants. They depend on when you want a good clean. However, their strength makes them especially irritating. To formulate mild cleansers, you need to keep your anionic surfactant input on the lower side of the use rate. It may mean that you would have to depend on a polymer for thickness, but if that means a more tolerable product, that’s a win.
- Go for a less irritating anionic surfactant
All surfactants are not created equal – the stronger their cleansing power, the more irritating they can be. The strongest cleanser is SLS, and therefore, the most irritating. Alternatives to SLS include SLES (milder alternative to SLS), AOS 40 (A mild & effective anionic surfactant that can be formulated with Alpha Hydroxy Acids), SCI-85 (very mild to the skin and eyes), Sodium Methyl Cocoyl Taurate (High-foaming with an elegant and conditioned after feel. Not much of a cleaner), Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate (an extremely mild, amino-acid surfactant).
- Always pair anionic surfactants with Amphoteric surfactants.
Amphoteric surfactants are almost always found when you see the addition of an anionic surfactant. They do not clean as well but they help support viscosity and greatly reduce the irritation profile of anionic surfactants. Having said that, not all amphoteric surfactants are created equal – Coco betaine, for example, although naturally derived, is more irritating than cocamidopropyl betaine. And SoftFoam CHS (Cocamidopropyl Hydroxysultaine – Excellent mildness, thickening and stability) is exceptionally mild on the skin.
- Add a nonionic surfactant, such as Caprylyl Glucoside, (A superior nonionic surfactant and solubulizer with excellent sensories and anti-irritation properties) coco glucoside, or decyl glucoside, etc, significantly reduce the irritation profile of a cleansing formula. While they add to the cost of production, if your brand is to stand out as a gentle and caring product line, then it’s in your best interest to make the investment to formulate mild cleansers
- Add a mildness additive
Some additives, such as glyceryl oleate and Trehamoist, are especially good when formulating mild cleansers. The addition of glyceryl glucoside at something as low as 0.3 can make a difference. If transparency is a factor, you can go for Trehamoist.
Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein PG-Propyl Silanetriol
