Traditionally, cosmetics products were available in many categories. The popular ones are skincare, makeup, and hair care. In addition, there are other categories like personal care and fragrance.
Personal care includes products for oral care, body washes, hand washes, medicated soaps, and shaving creams. These help with both hygiene and improve cosmetic appearance and fragrance. In a way, skincare and hair care are the next steps in appearance. They help reverse the effects of some defects like wrinkles, skin darkening, or hair issues.
Fragrances and makeup are categories of products that can enhance and elevate the looks, pleasantness, and beauty of a person. Over time, the variety of products has increased, and so have the benefits that can be delivered through the products.
This has happened due to the various cosmetic active ingredients that have emerged and gained acceptance. Today, a cosmetic product uses a variety of components to deliver a positive benefit to the client. They include:
- Water, moisturizers, humectants, and hydrating agents: These essentially involve water or hydration. Water helps dissolve the various active ingredient components. Also, moisturizing helps in retaining moisture in the skin. Humectants hydrate the skin.
- Emollients: These soften the skin and help prevent water loss. They are used commonly in lotions and lipsticks.
- Thickeners: These help maintain a proper emulsion or consistency in the product. In addition, based on the specific thickener or cosmetic product, they also serve as moisturizers, emulsifiers, and stabilizers.
- Fragrances: These are used to improve the pleasant odor and appeal of the cosmetics and give a positive mood or emotion to the end user.
- pH adjusters: These maintain the proper pH balance, which is important for the chemical stability of the various active ingredients used in the products.
As we can see above, there are a lot of good ingredients that are carefully selected to give positive benefits to the person using cosmetics.
Problem with Using Several Individual Cosmetic Products
However, there is one problem with the use of single ingredient or few cosmetic ingredients products. It requires the use of several products one after the other in a systematic manner, known as cosmetic routines. These routines get very complicated for a person having multiple cosmetic issues and can be frustrating. To make matters worse, many products are available for normal, oily, dry, very dry, and very oily versions. Not just the routine, but the effort required to find a cosmetic product for a certain situation creates a bad consumer experience.
To solve this issue, several all-in-one products that offer several benefits in a single product have been launched and gained much acceptance in the market.
These products are called BB, CC, and DD creams. BB, CC, and DD creams are multipurpose skincare products that offer a blend of makeup and skincare benefits, each catering to different needs. Let us first expand their acronyms:
- BB cream: Stands for Beauty Balm or Blemish Balm.
- CC cream: Stands for Color-Correcting Cream.
- DD cream: Stands for Daily Defense or Dynamic Do-All Cream.
These creams simplify skincare routines by providing multiple benefits in one cosmetic product. A quick summary of each product is as follows:
BB Cream (Beauty Balm or Blemish Balm)
This keeps the skincare routine simple by providing a variety of benefits – in a way, it’s both skincare and makeup. A BB cream is a versatile product that gives combined benefits of skincare and makeup. Combining makeup pigments with facial moisturizer, it is a tinted moisturizer providing benefits of light foundation with moisturizing benefits and sometimes sunscreen protection too!
CC Cream (Color-Correcting Cream)
This is another cream that keeps the skincare routine simple by offering multiple benefits. In addition to the benefits offered by BB cream, it also corrects skin tone issues like dark spots, dullness, and redness. Further, it acts as a lighter substitute for a full skin foundation.
DD Cream (Daily Defense or Dynamic Do-All Cream)
This is another useful product that combines the advantages of BB and CC creams. In addition, they have ingredients that give additional anti-aging properties. This is a suitable option for those concerned with signs of aging.
In this article, we have strived to simplify a fairly complex topic of cosmetic product categories, and their components, as well as a quick look at BB, CC, and DD creams.