Mineral powders are increasingly used in cosmetics, such as pigment powders, white powders, filler powders, and pearl powders. Pigment powders adjust the color of cosmetics.
White powders provide coverage, whitening, and UV blocking. Filler powders regulate product spreadability, adsorption, skin adhesion, texture, and active ingredient loading. Pearl powders enhance product gloss and texture.
Physical Powder – Common Inorganic Powder
Skin Care – Scrub, Soap, Shower Gel, Talcum Powder
Mica Powder:
Mica powder is a group of composite hydrated aluminum silicate salts, a light gray, flaky crystalline powder. It has strong adhesion, moderate gloss, and a smooth feel. Special processing creates synthetic mica, enhancing brightness, whiteness, and durability in cosmetics. It is mainly used in face powders, compacts, blushes, and foundations.
Perlite:
Perlite provides gentle physical exfoliation in scrubs, soaps, and shower gels. It also promotes foam formation and is a natural alternative to oil-based beads and pumice.
Calcium Carbonate:
Natural calcium carbonate can be added to skincare lotions and anhydrous formulations.
It provides smooth, comfortable skin feel, reduces stickiness, and speeds up drying. In soaps, it lowers cost, enhances skincare effects, and boosts foam generation and brightness.
Kaolin Clay:
Kaolin clay is ideal for absorbing sebum and giving body powders a soft touch. It has excellent skin adhesion, increases matting potential in powders, and works well in moisturizers, BB, CC creams, and anti-acne creams. It enhances exfoliation, barrier formation, and sebum absorption, and controls product rheology.
Talc Powder:
Talc is a white, fine crystalline powder with a layered structure. It provides good lubrication, softness, moderate adhesion, and high whiteness with some coverage. Talc is commonly used in powders such as face powders, body powders, and baby powders.
Cosmetics – Lipsticks, Foundations, Blushes
Calcium Carbonate:
The brightness and opacity of high-purity calcium carbonate make it ideal for decorative cosmetics such as lipsticks, foundations, blushes, and eyeshadows. It adjusts coverage and provides a matte effect by absorbing sebum. In lipsticks, calcium carbonate enhances coverage and color intensity. In powders, its compressibility, moderate hardness, excellent whiteness, and varied particle shapes make it an ideal choice for pressed powders.
Kaolin Clay:
Natural white kaolin clay provides an instant, natural matte finish in pressed powders. It improves durability, uniformity, and adhesion while reducing the need for titanium dioxide. In lipsticks, kaolin enhances adhesion and oil retention. It is also an ideal filler in products like mascaras and nail polishes.
Silica:
Spherical silica, ultrafine silica, and porous silica have a wide range of applications in cosmetics, offering various functional properties. In lipsticks, it increases viscosity, enhances overall stability, improves pigment distribution, and boosts heat resistance while preventing color fading. In makeup and eye care products (including setting powders, foundations, blushes, eyeshadows, eyebrow pencils, and eyeliners), silica is an effective anti-caking agent and free-flowing agent, improving storage stability and powder dispersion.
Oral Care – Tooth Cleaning, Teeth Whitening
Calcium Carbonate：
High-end calcium powder used in oral care, with a core of calcium carbonate and a shell of hydroxyapatite, is widely applied in toothpaste. Hydroxyapatite is a key component of enamel and dentin in teeth. Calcium carbonate helps repair micro-defects and ensures effective remineralization of tooth enamel, making the surface smoother and whiter.
Kaolin Clay：
Kaolin clay added to toothpaste provides the optimal balance between cleaning power and abrasiveness. Compared to silica-based toothpaste, kaolin-based toothpaste has about half the abrasiveness, helping maintain dental health while still delivering excellent cleaning performance.
Perlite：
Perlite, with its particle size designed for toothpaste, acts as a gentler polishing agent.
Conclusion
Inorganic powders in cosmetics offer several important qualities, such as their natural origin, mineral-based composition, chemical inertness, excellent skin compatibility, and cost-effectiveness. These characteristics make them highly valued in the industry. With the gradual maturation of powder processing and modification technologies, functional mineral powders are increasingly promising as a development direction in the cosmetics sector.
Epic Powder
Epic Powder, 20+ years of work experience in the ultrafine powder industry. Actively promote the future development of ultra-fine powder, focusing on crushing,grinding,classifying and modification process of ultra-fine powder. Contact us for a free consultation and customized solutions! Our expert team is dedicated to providing high-quality products and services to maximize the value of your powder processing. Epic Powder—Your Trusted Powder Processing Expert !