Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 08:57 pm

What does clean beauty mean? 

You’ve likely heard of clean beauty, but what does that actually mean? Clean beauty products are ones that have been created without additives that typically cause irritation. Ingredients like parabens, phthalates, oxybenzone, and synthetic fragrances. 

But keep in mind, in America we don’t have any ingredients that have been banned from use in beauty products, like they do in other countries. So be cognizant when looking at brands and products that claim to be clean, and the ingredients they do and don’t use. 

Other buzzwords you might hear include – cruelty-free, natural, organic and green. These are different than clean, so make sure you know the difference when looking at products!

**Please Note: This post contains affiliate links and we will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on our links. However, we only recommend products that we truly love. 

Cruelty-Free

Cruelty-free refers to how beauty products are tested. This means products aren’t tested on animals at any point, and they don’t have any ingredients that were taken from an animal at the expense of its health. 

Natural

Natural beauty products refers more to including “natural” ingredients, like essential oils. Essential oils are a bit tricky as far as the quality, and the potential reactions your skin might have. They should be ok to use in beauty products, but be aware if you want to use essential oils on your own. 

Organic

For a beauty product to be considered organic, it has to be composed of at least 95% organic material, free of GMOs, and marked by an official USDA Organic Seal. These products also have to follow specific handling and manufacturing laws.

Clean and organic products tend to go hand-in-hand, but getting approved to use the organic seal can be pretty pricey. So some brands choose to forego an organic label. 

Green

Lastly, green products mean everything through the development, manufacturing, packaging etc., do no harm to the environment. 

Clean Beauty Brands and Products 

Websites like Sephora and Ulta make it easy to find brands with clean beauty. Sephora has a Clean beauty page, and on Ulta it’s an option for search. 

Because there’s no set standard for clean beauty, makeup brands may claim they’re clean. This doesn’t mean they’re bad brands or products though. Just take a look at the ingredients and decide if that’s something you want to use! 

These brands and products have been highly rated in the clean beauty category, but this isn’t the end-all list of clean beauty brands! These are brands that are called clean beauty on either Sephora or Ulta, and/or we’ve used and love! 

Caliray

Ilia

Kosas

Lawless

LYS Beauty

Merit

Rose INC

Saie

Sephora

Supergoop

Tower28

Undone Beauty

W3LL BEAUTY

Jen’s Makeup Look

I had a handful of clean beauty products I’d purchased in the past, so I was on the hunt for a couple more products to do a full-face look. I also didn’t want to spend a ton of money either! 

A brand I discovered recently and absolutely love is Undone Beauty. Their products are beautiful and can multitask in so many ways. Plus, products like their concealer and blush are genius. The product is “split” into three formulas – sheer, medium and opaque. Some days you need a little more concealer, some days you need less. And now you can customize your products and look to what you need that day! 

Undone Beauty is clean, vegan and cruelty free. Plus, they don’t photoshop their images. Heck yes!! 

The Sephora collection has clean beauty products, but not everything is clean. So keep that in mind if you’re searching for clean beauty by brand! 

There weren’t any products I disliked, but my only minor gripe was with the Sephora brow pencil. I had to push pretty hard to get any color payoff, but looked good in the end. 

Overall, I like how my makeup turned out! I totally forgot about an eyeliner, but I used the darkest shade from the eyeshadow palette instead and it looked great! 

Dianne’s Makeup Look

This was my first time using clean beauty products so I had to start from scratch.  It wasn’t because I wasn’t interested, I just might be a little too comfortable using the products I already had.  But I wanted to use this as an opportunity to try some products that looked interesting, so it was a good excuse to buy something new.

Trying New Brands

One of the brands that I had been seeing all over social media it seems is Ilia Beauty.  I didn’t know much about it so I looked into it and decided to try four of their products:  foundation, concealer, blush and mascara. They all seemed to have good reviews.

The other brand I’ve been wanting to try is Supergoop.  I settled on their “Every.Single.Face. Watery Lotion”.  I thought it would be a perfect fit with its SPF 50 and, according to the Sephora website, the skin care concerns it targets is “Fine Lines and Wrinkles, Redness, and Loss of Firmness and Elasticity”.  It’s also something I would use without makeup in the summer to keep my face protected.

I used two products that were the same as Jen’s: LYS Bronzer and Lawless Eyeshadow.  I also forgot to purchase eyeliner and used the shadow from the Lawless palette. So, I will admit to adding a touch of my regular eyeliner (not clean) just to the lash line, just so I had a familiar look.

My last two products were a highlighter by Milk Makeup and my lipstick is from Bite Beauty.  I have been a fan of Bite lipsticks in the past and they completely rebranded in 2020 to become a clean beauty brand. (You may have heard us talk about our trip to the “Lip Lab by Bite” last October where we created our own lipstick shades).

Unfortunately, Bite Beauty is closing so I used this opportunity to get one more tube of their lipstick. The good news is that the Bite Beauty Labs are staying open, so you will still be able to create your own personal shade.

And, if you recall, my eyebrows are microbladed, so I have not needed much in the way of brow products.  This is how they look every day, including when I wake up in the morning (I love it!) 

Final Results

So, how did I like the final result?  Overall, I liked all the products and after wearing them all day, they still looked good.  The only thing that I would have preferred is a more opaque foundation.  I’ve mentioned before that I have a lot of redness in my skin that I try to even out with foundation.  The Ilia foundation was good, but it was more of a medium coverage.  But I knew that when I purchased it, and wanted to try it.  I did get a shade darker than I usually would, hoping that would help with coverage and it seemed to work.

MY PRODUCTS:

Supergoop Every.Single.Face Watery Lotion with SPF 50

Ilia True Skin Serum Foundation in Milos

True Serum Concealer in Lotus by Ilia

Ilia Multi Stick Cream Blush + Lip Tint in Tenderly

Milk Makeup Highlighter in Lit

LYS Beauty Matte Bronzer in Motivate

Lawless The Little One Eyeshadow Palette

Ilia Limitless Lash Mascara in After Midnight

BITE Beauty Soft Matte Lipstick in Chai

Interested in more beauty blog posts? You can check them all our in our Beauty section!

And if you want some EXCLUSIVE content only available to email subscribers, you can sign up for our newsletter.