If you’ve ever wondered what goes into beauty product testing or want to get into making your own cosmetic items to sell, you’ve come to the right place. Safety testing of beauty products is something that’s necessary for any that are made to be sold. Ensuring that the products are safe protects both those who use them and those who make them. Additionally, in many countries, it’s a legal requirement. To that end, let’s take a look at a few of them.

What Are Beauty Product Safety and 

Testing Assessments and Why Do They Matter? 

Claim Validation

You know you’ve seen it: the beauty claim validation on products. This is the one that says how efficacious a product is. These claims are critical when you’re marketing a product to women. Most women will look for this type of claim before deciding to buy a product and will make their beauty purchasing decisions while they’re standing at the counter where the products are sold. These results are garnered through testing a panel of consumers.

Cosmetic Product Safety

This report is only needed if you’re going to be selling a product, such as a solution for acne, in Europe. The purpose of this safety assessment is to certify that any products you’re selling don’t pose a risk to the health of users under foreseeable and normal conditions of their use. There won’t be any samples of the product necessary for this kind of assessment, but the tester will need compatibility and stability test results. There will only be a need for microbiological test results if the product has water in it.

Preservative Efficacy Testing (PET), aka Microbiological/Challenge Testing

The preservative efficacy test helps to ensure that there are microbial preservation and stability throughout the intended shelf life of a product and consumer usage. This means that it makes sure that mold, yeast, and bacteria won’t begin to grow in your cosmetics and pose a potential danger to your customers. This is another of those tests that are only for products that contain water.

With this type of testing, samples of a finished product will be contaminated with a variety of microbes. The amount of those microbes that survive will be measured at intervals throughout a 28-day period. If there hasn’t been an increase, or if there’s a significant decrease of the microbes, the product will pass this test.

Stability Testing

The goal of a stability test is to make sure that the product in question will maintain its aesthetics and functionality, as well as its microbiological, chemical, and physical quality when it’s stored in the appropriate conditions. While this isn’t something that’s always necessary, it is recommended for every product.