Beauty Clean Beauty

Sephora Just Launched a Clean-Beauty Seal—Here’s Why That’s a Big Deal (and Our 8 Faves to Shop Now)

Well+Good Editors

June 3, 2018

In your dreams, you have a perfectly curated shelfie filled with the best clean beauty brands. In reality, you're not quite sure exactly how clean the products you're using are (or what "clean" even really means).

In fact, in a Well+Good beauty survey of over 5,000 readers, you agreed that the most important factor you consider before buying a new product (behind how well it works) is its ingredients—but 33 percent of you said the ingredients label is often too difficult to navigate.

If (like us) you've been waiting for a label decoder, we've got big news: Sephora just announced its new Clean at Sephora seal, and it's going to make shopping for clean brands way easier.

"More and more clients are coming into our stores looking for beauty brands that are free of certain ingredients that they may be looking to avoid," says Cindy Deily, Sephora's senior director of skin-care merchandising. "Clean at Sephora is our response to a consumer demand for more transparency and improved navigation."

"Clean at Sephora is our response to a consumer demand for more transparency and improved navigation."

The result is a curated edit of clean skin care, hair, makeup, and fragrance brands. It’s your one-stop shop. The Clean at Sephora seal designates that the brand formulates without sulfates (SLS and SLES), parabens, formaldehydes, formaldehyde-releasing agents, phthalates, mineral oil, retinyl palmitate, oxybenzone, coal tar, hydroquinone, triclosan, and triclocarban. (Say that three times fast.) Plus, all brands with the seal will have less than one percent of synthetic fragrances.

And if reading that list is taking you back to science class, the best part is you don't need to be a beauty expert to decide to go clean. According to Deily, minimizing Google searches (AKA making shopping more fun and less like studying for a chemistry exam) was a main driver behind the clean beauty initiative.

"Consumers have to do a lot of work and research today," says Deily (preach). "Transparency is key. Our goal is to highlight brands that have done some of this legwork, and make those brands easier to find for clients who prefer this type of product."

The verdict: When you're scrolling through the site now, it will be easy to spot brands marked with this green seal, guaranteeing that the brand is free of all the ingredients you might not want. You're about to be one step closer to curating that dream clean beauty shelfie—all you need is a few succulents.