29 Clean Makeup Brands That Deserve to Be on Your Radar
APRIL 28, 2022 by TYNAN SINKS, KALEIGH FASANELLA, JENNIFER HUSSEIN
As many of us become more conscious of what we're putting in our bodies, we're also turning to clean makeup brands as we're becoming more aware of what we're putting on our bodies. While the performance of these cosmetics used to pale in comparison to products from our favorite makeup counters, there are many 100-percent plant-based makeup brands creating products that are richly pigmented, apply beautifully, and wear as well as their more synthetic competitors. You may already be using some of them without even realizing they're clean.
But before we get into our favorites, let's get a couple of things straight: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has nebulous criteria on just what constitutes a natural product ("natural" isn't regulated for cosmetics, so it can be used purely as a marketing term). That means that a product being classified as "natural" in brand marketing doesn't automatically mean a product is better or safer for you.
Cosmetic chemist Ginger King tells Allure that though there isn't regulation on the term "natural" in the beauty industry, a more accurate term might be "natural-based," as long as the bulk of the ingredients are naturally-derived. "The true naturals have seals like COSMOS Natural or Ecocert — European organizations that allow up to five percent synthetics," King explains.
The FDA does not have a definition for the term "organic," either, as it is not defined by either the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act or the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, which it uses as guidelines. "'Organic' usually means USDA-certified food grade. There are limited numbers of products you can make to be classified as organic green," King says.
"'Clean beauty' is a much better term for the consumer as the products are non-toxic and still effective," says King. "'Non-toxic' means free from undesirable ingredients listed by the Environmental Working Group." She adds that this is better than claiming 'natural' or 'organic' as they are products that perform without compromising safety.
This brings us to another point: An ingredient might be naturally-derived or organic, but that doesn't mean that there's no chance you'll have an adverse or allergic reaction to it, so it's important to be aware of what you're using and how your body responds. "People want natural because they assume natural ingredients are safe, which is not necessarily the case," King explains. "They also may not be as effective as synthetic materials."
Thanks to growing consumer concern and education, we're definitely seeing an uptick in the use of the phrase "clean beauty." Currently, retailers like Sephora, Ulta Beauty, and Target have established seals of approval for products and brands they have deemed "clean" by implementing their own formulation guidelines. Since Credo Beauty is known for having particularly rigorous standards, many brands choose to follow its standards when formulating their products. The Credo Clean Standard includes a so-called Dirty List that includes over 2,700 ingredients that the retailer prohibits due to safety or sustainability.
Sephora isn't the only one establishing its own criteria for deeming products "clean." In 2019, we created the Allure Clean Standard as our own guideline for navigating the clean beauty space. Any product or brand that's deemed "clean" by our editors is free of 15 ingredient classes: parabens, phthalates, sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, cyclic silicones, polyethylene or polypropylene (microbeads), aluminum salts, formaldehyde, hydroquinone, PEGs, triclosan, talc, mineral oil, petrolatum, formaldehyde, and toluene.
Ingredients aside, one of the benefits of using these products is that many, if not all, ingredients are ethically sourced and cruelty-free. As consumers, it's never been more important to prioritize what we want in our makeup, and our money talks. These days there's a clean option to switch out every product in your makeup routine, so it's never been easier to avoid controversial ingredients.
But we also wanted to help you sort out your options. The following clean makeup brands have received high marks from Allure editors and makeup artists — who have seen and used it all — so you can start cleaning up your cosmetics bag.
LYS Beauty
LYS Beauty — which stands for "love yourself," by the way — has a lineup of clean makeup products that are as pigmented and high-performing as they are non-toxic. (The Triple Fix Serum Foundation did win an Allure Best of Beauty award, after all).
Founded by Tisha Thompson in 2019, this independent and clean beauty brand was the first Black-owned company to launch under Sephora's Clean Color Cosmetics program. The line contains complexion products with wide shade ranges and each formula is made with plant-based ingredients that are free of gluten, talc, SLS, fragrance, and mineral oil.
Rose Inc.
Yes, a celebrity beauty brand found its way onto this list, but Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's makeup and skin-care line, Rose Inc., deserves every bit of praise. Each product under Rose Inc, including the silky Blush Divine Radiant Lip & Cheek Color and creamy Satin Lip Color Rich Refillable Lipsticks (seen above), have impressively opaque yet blendable formulas. The formulations leave out over 2,000 ingredients, and the brand even offers a virtual ingredient gallery to learn about each one that did make the cut.
Freck Beauty
Have you seen faux freckles taking over the faces of nearly every beauty vlogger? You can thank Freck Beauty for that. The clean makeup brand's biggest claim to fame is the Freck OG, an inky stain that Freck claims is "the world's first freckle cosmetic." Every product in Freck's collection, including Freck OG, meets the Allure Clean Standard as well as the Clean at Sephora guidelines, plus they're also free of alcohol and gluten.
Victoria Beckham Beauty
Victoria Beckham has always been a style icon, and now her namesake cosmetics line has made her a legend in beauty as well. Victoria Beckham Beauty is as luxe as luxury beauty gets, except, unlike a few department store name stays, it follows a rigorous formulation guideline called The V-Standard. Under this initiative, the Posh Spice-founded brand vows to leave out ingredients including mineral oil, synthetic fragrances, and more than 1,300 other additives that the European Union has banned. You can see the full list of VBB's excluded ingredients here.
These formulas aren't just clean — they look and feel pretty darn good, too. For an instant smokey eye, grab one of the brand's easy-to-glide Satin Kajal Liners, which blend effortlessly without completely rubbing away. Don't forget to top off your eye look with the smudge-proof, ink-Black Future Lash Mascara, which is one of our favorite mascaras.
Tower 28
Tower 28's ultra-gentle cosmetics and skin-care products were inspired by brand founder Amy Liu's journey navigating the makeup market with sensitive, eczema-prone skin. Since its 2019 launch, the brand has been following the National Eczema Association’s Ingredient Guidelines for formulating each and every product that hits its virtual shelves. FYI: Two of Tower 28's best-sellers — its SuperDew Shimmer-Free Highlight Balm and Save. Our. Skin (S.O.S.) Daily Rescue Facial Spray — have received an NEA Seal of Acceptance.
Need another recommendation from its lineup? We suggest the Allure Best of Beauty Award-winning BeachPlease Luminous Tinted Balm, a multiuse lip-and-cheek tint that glides evenly on your skin for a subtle, radiant finish.
Saie
Saie, pronounced "say," is one of the newer makeup brands that everyone seems to be talking (and posting) about. Founded in 2019 by Laney Crowell, this nine-piece cosmetics collection aims to become your go-to for essential basics — think goof-proof brow gels, lightweight tinted moisturizers, and a cushiony marshmallow-textured highlighter. The fan-favorite brand avoids 59 ingredients like synthetic fragrances (which can cause skin irritation) out of its formulas, which you can read more about here.
Merit
Merit, a thoughtfully curated brand of dew-enhancing products, follows the European Union's cosmetics regulation standards and avoids over 1,300 ingredients in its products. However, it does treat your face to beloved skin-care ingredients like hydrating squalane and moisturizing vitamin B5 in its products. This minimalist beauty brand is great to shop when you're looking for glow-inducers like tinted lip oils and highlighting balms.
Kjaer Weis
Those little chrome swivel compacts you've been seeing all over Instagram are from the luxe beauty brand whose name may give you pause to pronounce (it's kigh-er why-ss). Naturally-derived and organic ingredients meet luxury beauty with quality cream and powder formulas housed in the brand's signature, luxurious, chrome packaging. A bonus, those compacts are refillable, which means sustainable. The whole collection aims for beautiful, glowy makeup that lets your skin shine through. My personal favorites are the cream blushes, which are so dense and richly pigmented you just need a tap or two to blend out with fingers. The cream highlighters are also breathtakingly natural-looking.
New York City-based makeup artist Benjamin Puckey is partial to Kjaer Weis's lip products. "The lip gloss comes in a gorgeous selection of sheer shades, of which the nudes Cherish and Affinity are my favorites. I also really like the Kjaer Weis lip liners."
Axiology
When Ericka Rodriguez founded Axiology, her main goal was to create what she calls "evil-free" and "super ethical" lipstick that wasn't just vegan but also harmless to both humans and the planet we live on. The result is way more than just lipstick. Instead, it's a whole slew of makeup products that are always made with 10 ingredients or fewer: mineral pigments paired with botanical extracts like that of elderberry, plum seed, and moringa. In that exclusive ingredient club is also a handful of organic oils like the ones found in the brand's multitasking Balmies, castor and sunflower. And if that weren't appealing enough to your inner environmentalist, the packaging is plastic-free, too.
Ilia Beauty
Ilia Beauty is focused on creating clean, pure products with organic bio-active botanicals that nourish skin as they wear. From lipstick to eye shadow and multiple base products, Ilia's products give you a luxurious feel, look, and wear, while being some of the cleanest makeup you can use.
Puckey is a huge fan of the brand, spotlighting many of its products. "I love how smooth the Fade Into You Powder feels and how it really disappears on the skin. The Illuminators come in three shades that work for a variety of skin tones. It also comes in a stick form for easy application.
Kosas
Each Kosas product is made with active botanicals and balanced with safe synthetics, giving you luxury formulas, beautiful pigments that flatter a multitude of skin tones, and they all look as good as they feel. The beautiful face duos are available in both cream and powder formulas, each including a blush and an illuminator that complement each other and boost your face's luminosity and glow.
The lipsticks are also not to be missed. Puckey tells Allure, "Kosas has a line of all-natural lipsticks in super chic black packaging. Rosewater (a dusky rose) and Thrillest (bright poppy red) are my favorites."
Alima Pure
Portland, Oregon-based Alima Pure hit the ground running back in 2004, and it has only become an even more ingredient- and environment-conscious brand in the years since. Its ingredient transparency is incredibly refreshing — the brand keeps a glossary on its site of what it uses and why, even clearly noting the mere four synthetic ingredients it has welcomed into its otherwise plant-based formulas. (For example, benzyl alcohol is used as a paraben alternative to preserve ingredients.) Alima Pure's Pressed Foundation is a favorite among the brand's fans, garnering rave reviews for both its formula — evening primrose and argan oils are the star ingredients — and its waste-reducing refillable compact.
100% Pure Beauty
100% Pure Beauty has a full collection of skin care, makeup, hair, and body products, all made with naturally-derived ingredients. The brand is serious about the way it sources its ingredients, too, using a strict methodology to determine and confirm that its products contain no synthetic ingredients. The Coffee Bean Caffeine Eye Cream is worth trying to brighten under eyes with its star ingredient. But, as for makeup, the brand's foundations are available in a wide range of shades. If you're on the hunt for a new lipstick, the Fruit Pigmented Cocoa Butter Matte Lipstick in the matte orange-red shade Sonora Red really packs a punch.
Lawless
The Lawless tagline is "Clean AF," and the brand means it. Its liquid lipsticks are formulated without carcinogenic, toxic, hormone- or endocrine-disrupting ingredients. If people ingest up to five pounds of cosmetic chemicals every year, Lawless is trying to make sure that its products — that you put directly on your mouth and skin — are as safe as possible.
Joséphine Cosmetics
Joséphine Cosmetics calls itself "sultry" before "natural" or "vegan," but it's most definitely all three. In fact, it exists to prove just how glamorous, sexy, cool, and runway-worthy 100 percent plant-based cosmetics can be. The brand relies on what it has coined "haute naturals" — thoughtfully selected essential oils, minerals, and herbal extracts — to formulate incredible products, such as Lip/Power The Bold Matte Liquid Lipstick. Available in 10 shades as gorgeous as the names they've been given (like Tiphaine, Philou, and Cloé), it provides remarkable moisture for a matte formula thanks to cocoa butter, olive, rosehip oil, and vitamin E.
Han Skin Care Cosmetics
Han Skin Care Cosmetics, like so many clean beauty brands, is quick to list what its products are free of — synthetic fragrance, parabens, and animal cruelty, to name a few. But what it's full of is just as important. The brand focuses on using plant and vegetable pigments to get the gorgeous colors in products like its All Natural Eye Shadow, as well as ingredients so beneficial, they're often found in high-performance skin-care products, like green tea, argan oil, and shea butter.
Athr Beauty
Athr Beauty (previously known as Aether Beauty) just gets it: "We use natural ingredients wherever possible because we know their transformative power," the brand says, but they forthcomingly explain that they use synthetics when they can't find a naturally-derived ingredient that's truly non-toxic to serve the needed purpose. The result is products like its Gemstone Palettes, which keep selling out despite a not-inexpensive $48 to $58 price point. Made with actual gemstones — the brand, like so many of us, is obsessed with crystals — these palettes also include an impressive percentage of organic ingredients, like shea butter, coconut oil, and rose hip oil.
Antonym
Antonym's Ecocert certification tells those who insist on organic products everything they need to know. But it's the beautiful colors and impressive formula performance that tell everyone else that this brand deserves a spot in your makeup bag regardless of your ingredient priorities. Although there's something for every part of the face, it's Antonym's Baked Blushes that we find truly irresistible. With more than 99 percent of its ingredients being of plant-based origin and 11 percent coming from organic farming, it creates a radiant flush on any and all skin tones, going on smooth and looking just as beautiful on as it does in the compact.
Noyah
Noyah isn't just all about clean makeup — it's all about clean lip products, specifically. In an effort to create the most non-toxic possible products, those products are regularly made with 100 percent food-grade formulas; nearly all are USDA-certified Biobased; and yes, wearing these lip products means wearing a lot of natural and organic ingredients. Noyah's Natural Lipstick, for example, is all about incredible botanical oils, butters, and waxes, like that of castor, shea, and candelilla, which come together to make the resulting color as comfortable as it is alluring.
Bite Beauty
Did you know that Bite Beauty utilizes organic ingredients? I always forget. These luxe lipsticks are made with 12 different oils, as well as while pearl, silk, red wine, and organic butters; the result is a lipstick that's incredibly creamy and hydrating, long-wearing and even has benefits from antioxidants for a product that's actually good for your lips.
"No one does the range of bold color options in the right creamy/waxy base the way Bite does," makeup artist Katey Denno explains. "They also make a lot of corresponding lip crayons, which, until they filled it, had been a big hole in the marketplace."
Beautycounter
With a tagline like #BetterBeauty, Beautycounter strives to use only the safest ingredients possible and none of the nasties. It even has what it calls "The Never List," which includes harsh chemicals, dangerous preservatives like formaldehyde, and synthetic flavors and fragrances. The brand offers makeup, skin-care, and bath and body products, as well as an array of kits for men, babies, and traveling. Los Angeles-based makeup artist Joanna Schlip is especially partial to its eye makeup products, including the Think Big All-in-One Mascara, a jet-black formula that volumizes while it conditions lashes with its unique blend of peptides.
Lilah B.
One of the innovators of the now popular and chic swivel compact, Lilah B. is all about creating simple, multipurpose beauty products with clean formulas. Without gluten, sulfates, or parabens, and packed with aloe and botanicals, these products take to skin beautifully, feel luxurious and nourishing, and look amazing on your face and on your vanity.
Vapour Beauty
Vapour Beauty is one of clean beauty's best-kept secrets, thanks to its organic ingredients, moisturizing bases packed with antioxidants, and beautiful color payoff. This clean collection rivals some of the most luxurious brands in beauty. Many of the brand's products — like primers, foundations, blushes, and illuminators — are available in stick form and the pigments are beautifully buildable.
lus, the brand's stick and liquid foundations are available in 12 shades, which may not be an earth-shattering amount these days, but what sets them apart is that the foundations are available in an inclusive gradient of shades, so no matter what your skin tone, you'll be able to find a match, which many high-end brands still can't claim.
Au Naturale
Au Naturale was created to make skin feel as good as it does when you're not wearing makeup at all. Using naturally- and ethically-sourced ingredients, they set out to create a replacement for every product on your vanity. Without any synthetics, animal byproducts, or harmful chemicals, Au Natural offers a surprisingly large collection of products, many available as a powder or cream, so you don't have to sacrifice quality for clean products.
Denno loves the brand's matte lip stain. "Filling a hole in the marketplace, this line includes mostly neutral shade options," she explains. "[The stain has] a satin-matte formula and comes in a lip gloss kind of tube, which makes it super easy to go on, stay on for a long while, and never bleed."
Well People
Driven by the knowledge that your skin is an organ that absorbs a high percentage of what you put on it, Well People (previously spelled "W3LL People") strives to create products that look and perform as beautifully as they feel. The expansive collection of complexion and color products has something for everyone, no matter what foundation formula you prefer. (Its Expressionist Mascara is even an Allure Best of Beauty winner.) Many of the color products are cream-based to melt onto skin for a natural look that leaves you looking healthy, flushed, and beaming.
Milk Makeup
Since it's inception in 2014, Milk Makeup has become a major power player in the vegan and cruelty-free beauty category. With innovative products that are as pretty and fun to use as they are effective, it's easy to see why so many people adore the brand. Speaking of which, makeup artist Quinn Murphy, who works with stars like Kristen Bell, Julianne Moore, and Karlie Kloss — among myriad others — tells Allure it's one of his top-favorite beauty brands. If you've yet to try anything from Milk, the Hydro Grip Primer and Kush Mascara are both great products to start with.
Pyt Beauty
Pyt Beauty (formerly spelled "P/Y/T") is an extremely well-thought-out collection of versatile products that can be added to anyone’s routine and are made to move. Lipstick and lip gloss duos, attached tools, an inclusive shade range, and an affordable price point, Pyt feels like it came from the future. The line is formulated without any harsh chemicals and, of course, it's cruelty-free.
In the U.S., the FDA's restrictions on what ingredients can and can't be included in a beauty product are a bit lax compared to Europe, so Pyt actually created its line using the European Union’s much more thorough guidelines. You can rest easy knowing that these clean products are created to work with you, no matter your skin tone, budget, level of expertise, or where you find yourself in the world.
Rituel De Fille
Founded by three sisters in Los Angeles, Rituel De Fille is known for its witchy aesthetic and magic-inspired formulas. "They have amazing products with minimal ingredients and really interesting colors," says Black, who's a huge fan of the brand. "Standouts are the Ash and Ember Eye Soots, but the lip and skin products are also great... they hold up well on camera, too, so perfect for Zooming!"
If you love cream-based products, you can't go wrong with any of its Inner Glow Créme Pigments or Enchanted Lip Sheers, both of which come in a variety of mesmerizing shades that suit most skin tones.
Eco Brow
Created by makeup artist and eyebrow expert Marco Ochoa, Eco Brow is one of the only natural brow brands on the market. "The eyebrow pencils are great, with really nice colors and long staying power," says Schlip, who loves using the pencils on her clients, like Denise Richards and Ellen Pompeo. It also offers gels, waxes, and brushes — i.e. everything you need to achieve perfectly defined arches, you know, naturally (wink, wink).