Label Literacy

How to read an INCI list when your skin reacts to everything

The order means something. So does what the list leaves unnamed. A practical guide to the back of the bottle, for people who read it before they read the front.

August 22, 2026 · Indiefog Naturals

There is a particular pause before you put something new on your face.

You have earned that pause. You have done the patch test, waited the twenty four hours, and still spent the next day checking. You have bought something labelled for sensitive skin and reacted to it anyway, and then had to work backward through a list of thirty ingredients to guess which one it was.

The ingredient list is the part of the packaging that is required to tell you the truth. Here is how to read it, including the parts it is allowed to leave out.

First, what INCI is

INCI stands for the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. It is a shared naming system, which means water is listed as Aqua or Water depending on the market, and shea butter is Butyrospermum Parkii Butter on every label in every country that uses it.

That consistency is the useful part. The name on the front of a bottle is free text, written by whoever wanted to sell it. The INCI is a fixed vocabulary, so a list from one brand can be laid next to a list from another and actually compared.

Rule one · The order carries information

In the United States, the rule is set out in 21 CFR 701.3. Ingredients appear in descending order of predominance, so the first name on the list is the largest part of what you are holding.

There is an alternative arrangement most brands use, and it works like this. Ingredients present at more than 1% come first, in descending order. Ingredients present at 1% or less follow, in no particular order at all. Colour additives come last, also in no particular order.

So the top of a list is a measurement. The bottom of a list is a set.

Rule two · Find where the 1% line falls

Nothing marks that line on the label, and you can usually locate it anyway. A few ingredients are almost always used below 1%, so spotting one tells you roughly where you are.

Once you have found one of those, everything from there downward is likely at 1% or less, in whatever order the company felt like typing it. Two things follow from that.

The first is that an ingredient named on the front of a package can sit below the line, which is why a percentage stated plainly is worth more than a name printed large. The second matters more if you are reading for a trigger. Below the 1% line, position tells you nothing, so a small amount of something you react to can appear anywhere down there.

Rule three · One word can stand in for a list

Under the same US regulation, fragrance may be declared simply as fragrance. The individual materials that make it up do not have to be named. One word on a label can represent dozens of separate ingredients, and you have no way to see any of them.

The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act directed FDA to write a rule requiring fragrance allergens to be disclosed. As of 2026 that rule has not been issued. Until it is, the single word stands.

The European Union does name them. Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 revised the allergen list, adding 45 entries, with declaration thresholds of 0.001% in leave-on products and 0.01% in rinse-off products. New products placed on the EU market had to comply by 31 July 2026, and products already on the market have until 31 July 2028.

If a brand sells on both sides of the Atlantic, its European ingredient list may name materials its American one does not. That is occasionally worth a look.

Rule four · The Latin is not decoration

Plants appear under their species names, and this is where careful readers still get caught. Searching a list for the word fragrance and finding nothing does not mean the product is unscented. It may simply mean the scent came from botanicals, which are listed as botanicals.

Read for the Latin as well as the English. If a list is long and you are tired, that is the single highest-value second pass you can do.

Rule five · Families travel together

Botanicals belong to plant families, and a reaction to one member is worth treating as a question about the rest. The Asteraceae family is the one that comes up most in skincare, because so much of it is soothing-adjacent and appears everywhere.

Chamomile (Anthemis nobilis and Matricaria recutita), calendula, arnica, yarrow, echinacea, and ragweed all sit in it. If ragweed is a problem for you in August, the rest of that list is worth reading for in December.

Sourcing works the same way, and it is invisible on a label. Tocopherol is Vitamin E, and the INCI name says nothing about which plant it was derived from. Ours is sunflower-derived, which is worth knowing if sunflower or ragweed is on your list, and it is never soy.

Where a derived ingredient could have come from more than one source, the source is a fair question to ask a brand. A brand that cannot answer it quickly is telling you something.

Rule six · A short list is easier to work with

This one is arithmetic rather than philosophy. If you react to a product with thirty four ingredients in it, you have thirty four suspects and no order to work through them in. If you react to a product with nine, you have nine.

That difference has nothing to do with how well anything works. It is about what happens on the day after, when you are trying to narrow down what to avoid for the next several years.

The five-minute version

When you are tired, which is most of the time, this is the short pass.

What we do about it

The complete INCI is published on every Indiefog product page, before you put anything in a cart. Underneath it sits the reason each ingredient is there, the allergen notes, and the sourcing where sourcing matters.

What we leave out is named on the same page, in the same plain words. Synthetic fragrance, fillers, and the extras a sensitive body has to work to tolerate, each one left out on purpose.

Our formulas are made for sensitive, reactive skin, including skin navigating eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, or MCAS. They soothe the look and feel of stressed skin. They do not treat any condition, and where a claim cannot be supported, we do not make it. If you are navigating a diagnosis, skincare belongs alongside your doctors, never instead of them.