Have you ever wondered how your favorite beauty products make it to the shops you purchase them from? We never really think about how our products are made and transported to us, but some items have a really interesting journey through the factory. It’s not just the journey that is interesting though, some of the ingredients used are really surprising – did you know you have beeswax to thank for your latest lipstick buy?
Temperature control is a common method when it comes to plastic manufacturing and is used to create many of our everyday items – we can even make some of them at home! When it comes to making our favorite beauty products, manufacturers must pay careful attention to temperature control, to ensure that the products are perfect every time, and work as they are supposed to.
We know cooling is used to make our favorite beauty products, but one of the most recent beauty trends is seeing people store their lotions and potions in a mini-fridge. Sure, it is Instagram’s most recent trend but Radleys, experts in innovative chemistry equipment and heating and cooling systems, has done some research and discovered that this method actually has scientific benefits.
Beauty experts have recommended that certain items including; face lotion, nail varnish, face mist, sheet masks, and even certain facial tools should be kept in the fridge in order to increase longevity and effectiveness. With that being said, beauty and skin care products have preservatives in them which maximize their lifetime and effectiveness, so don’t feel like you need to be storing them with your milk all of a sudden.
Read on to find out how temperature control helps to create and preserve many products you find in your beauty bag – and how you can make some of them yourself at home:
Soap
Bars of soap come in many shapes and sizes and can include plenty of different ingredients and fragrances.
Regardless of what other fragrances and ingredients are used in the soap, one of the most important factors in soap manufacturing is temperature control.
Heat is an essential part of the soap making process, as the ingredients are heated and combined in a process called saponification. After heating, the mixture is then cooled and poured into molds to set into a bar of soap.
If the mixture gets too hot or too cold during the manufacturing process, it might cause the soap to crack when cooled, or cause issues which affect texture and appearance, leading to wasted materials and an unusable product. Therefore, the temperature of the mixture is monitored consistently throughout the manufacturing process.
Lipstick
With around 900 million lipsticks sold every year, it is without a doubt one of the most sold beauty products of all time. Cosmetics often have low melting points and are sensitive to temperature, which explains the current fad of keeping makeup products in the fridge to increase their shelf life.
In the manufacturing process, the ingredients used to make the lipstick (consisting of a base of waxes and oils) are heated and mixed with pigments and alcohol, and poured into pre-cooled molds, allowing the mixture to cool quickly and set into the desired shape.
Although the lipstick needs to soften when coming in contact with body heat, it is important that the product doesn’t melt too easily, so ingredients with higher melting points such as beeswax and carnauba wax are used to help the lipstick keep its shape in warmer conditions. This doesn’t save your lipstick from melting inside a warm car in the summer though – make sure it is left somewhere cool!
Hair brushes
Plastic items are everywhere in our homes and can be found in everything from our technology to kitchen items, toiletries, and even our clothing.
Many common plastic products, such as hair brushes and make-up packaging, are ‘thermoplastics’, meaning that they are malleable when heated, but then set into the desired shape when cooled.
When making a plastic item such as a hairbrush, the plastic is heated to a high temperature, and then quickly cooled in order to create the perfect product.
Body butter
Body butter is made up of butter(s) and oil(s) and has a very thick consistency in comparison to lotion, which is made up of water and oil. Although both products are used for the same reason, they consist of different ingredients using different methods, and as a result, body butter tends to last longer than lotion.
Shea and cocoa are the two most common forms of butter that are used to make one of the most popular beauty products. The butter should be mixed with oil, often known as a ‘carrier’ oil.
The method of creating the oil is pretty straight forward – so much so that many people tend to make their own body butter at home. The method does include the temperature control method. All ingredients are put together and warmed up, and then put in a fridge to cool and set.
Does making your own body butter sound like something you want to do? Check out this easy to follow, home-made body butter recipe.
Chocolate
Okay, so it’s not necessarily a beauty product but we are all prone to having some chocolate when a pamper night is going on. We’re often concerned with keeping chocolate cool, especially in warmer weather when our favorite sweet treat is more likely to melt.
However, you might not be aware that temperature control actually plays a vital role in creating smooth, glossy chocolate. When it comes to making chocolate, manufacturers use a temperature control process called tempering, which carefully controls the heating and cooling process. This is done in order to avoid an effect called ‘blooming’, where large crystals form within the chocolate, creating a white coating and an uneven, crumbly texture.
In order to avoid this happening, chocolate manufacturers use very exact temperatures and warm and cool the mixture a number of times, in order to break down the sugar and fat crystals within the chocolate.
