Every ingredient we decode, on one chart
All 210 ingredients in our glossary, placed by two of the six things we score them on. Search for the one on your bottle and the chart will show you exactly where it sits, and why.
Find yours in it. Type a name, or tap any dot on the chart.
- active
- humectant
- emollient
- antioxidant
- exfoliant
- everything else
Three things this chart shows
Almost nothing does both. Only 15 of the 210 ingredients score 6 or more for hydration and 6 or more for barrier support: Lactobionic Acid, Glycerin, Colloidal Oatmeal, Pro-vitamin B5, Polyglutamic Acid, Ectoin, Beta-Glucan, Tremella Fuciformis Extract, and a few more. If your barrier is struggling and you want one product to do the work, that short list is where to look.
The bottom-left corner is crowded, and that is the honest part. 32 ingredients score zero on both. They are not bad, they are structural: preservatives, cleansing agents, texture. A formula needs them the way bread needs flour. They just are not why you bought the bottle.
One family sits below the line. Retinoids are the only dots under zero, because they ask something of the barrier while skin adjusts rather than giving something back. That is a reason to introduce them slowly and pair them with the ingredients above, not a reason to skip them.
Scores come from our published method, and every dot links to that ingredient's page. Nothing on this chart is hand-placed, and no number in the text above is typed: they are all counted from the same data the dots come from.
Using this chart? Please do. Screenshot it, embed it, put it in a slide. All we ask is a credit and a link back to glowsimplified.com/ingredient-map.