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12 Best Natural Makeup and Clean Beauty Brands Your Skin Will Love
Updated on Sep. 12, 2024
Make no mistake—natural makeup and clean beauty brands are gaining fans by the day. “Interest in the clean beauty space is growing and not going away as we see people seeking out clean ingredients, cruelty-free and vegan products,” says Deney Adam, Ulta Beauty Pro Team makeup artist. “People are becoming more aware of what they’re putting in and on their bodies and want to make informed product choices that align with their values,” he explains. Add to that all the interest in natural makeup looks and clean skin care right now, it’s only logical that you want to get there with natural ingredients, too.
But there’s a lot to choose out there in the green/clean/natural beauty space. That’s why we narrowed down the field of the best natural makeup and clean skin-care lines (including minority-owned lines like black-owned makeup brands and skin-care lines) to find the best face moisturizers, most natural-looking foundations, best face serums, and more from the all-natural and natural-leaning world.
Ilia
Clean highlights: Natural USDA-certified ingredients with few “safe” synthetics
Best for: Rich pigments and inclusive shade choices
Price: $$
Ilia is proof you don’t have to sacrifice quality to go “clean” thanks to its potent, mostly organic formulas. The line also scores points for partnering with recycling organization TerraCycle to make recycling its packaging by mail a no-brainer. The star product: The Super Serum Skin Tint SPF 40, an innovative formula that wears like a serum but gives your skin a tint to blur perfections. Oh, and it comes in 30 shades—hello, inclusivity!
Kjaer Weis
Clean highlights: Certified organic ingredients and refillable packaging
Best for: Luxe makeup finishes
Price: $$$
Gerstein calls makeup artist-founded Kjaer Weis “an OG [clean] brand continually at the forefront of eco-luxury.” Gerstein’s fave from the line: The Cream Blush, formulated with sweet almond and jojoba seed oils to melt beautifully into the skin. “My new favorite shade is Inner Glow, a stunning sandy pink that looks kind of plain in the compact but transforms on the skin to give an ethereal, Zoom-worthy flush.” Psst…find out how to pick the best blush for your skin tone.
Kosas
Clean highlights: Avoids 2,700 ingredients “suspect” ingredients
Best for: High-performance, skin care-powered makeup
Price: $$ (foundation is $42)
With no parables, phthalates, talc, and formaldehyde, this brand is as gentle as it comes—yet manages to keep the focus on clean actives. Take, for example, one of the brand’s newest offerings, the Air Brow Tinted Volumizing Treatment Gel ($22). It contains biodegradable plant-based microfibers to pump up brows instantly as well as conditioning castor oil and panthenol to help them grow fuller and put perfect eyebrows within your reach.
Pacifica
Clean highlights: 100 percent vegan cruelty-free formulas based in nature
Best for: Wearable, forgiving makeup shades
Price: $
This is a great brand for anyone looking to go clean on a budget since most of its products hit between the $10 and $15 mark. Adam loves the Pacifica Cosmic Reflect Hemp Infused Eyeshadow Palette, which, he says, “not only delivers with beautiful matte and shimmer hemp-infused eyeshadow shades but also includes a luxe vegan brush for an extra smooth application.” Oh, and it’s also free of fillers like talc—and gets in on the benefits of hemp derivatives.
Florence by Mills
Clean highlights: No parabens, sulfates, animal testing, or animal by-products
Best for: Vitamin-packed botanical skincare and makeup
Price: $
Actress Milly Bobby Brown’s line is all about clean beauty formulated for all skin types while giving back to the Olivia Hope Foundation, focused on finding a cure for childhood cancers. One of the products Adam believes works as well as traditional formulas, the Built to Lash Mascara ($14). “It’s all in the name—this mascara is super buildable which is great for customizing lash volume,” he says. Pick up one of the best makeup removers to go along with it.
Youth to the People
Clean highlights: Vegan ingredients with a side of activism
Best for: Antioxidant-rich skin care
Price: $$
This gender-free family-owned line relies on superfood blends and vegan actives to nourish and pamper across all skin types. Even better: by 2024, its To The People Fund will have donated $1 million to organizations supporting women, families, and BIPOC communities. For a true stand-out from the line, pick up the Superfood Antioxidant Cleanser, which features cold-pressed kale, spinach, and green tea for an exceptionally potent antioxidant cocktail.
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Juice Beauty
Clean highlights: Natural, organic vegan ingredients and sustainable farming practices
Best for: Antioxidant-rich skin care and plant-based makeup
Price: $$$
Juice Beauty’s name is a nod to the fact that the core base of the brand’s products is organic juice instead of water, and it gets love for having clinically proven results (especially for its skin care) without offering parabens, petroleum, pesticides, propylene, or butylene glycols, phthalates, sulfates, artificial dyes, or synthetic fragrances. The brand’s Stem Cellular CC Cream is one of Adam’s favorites. “It provides light coverage without being too matte or drying,” he insists. And because of its anti-aging fruit stem cells, he says, “It’s the ultimate multi-tasker—helping to reduce fine lines, smooth uneven texture and improve skin’s elasticity.”
Cadence
Clean highlights: An innovative solution to dealing with plastic waste
Best for: Totally reusable, sustainable travel containers
Price: $$$
If these genius little honeycomb-like magnetic refillable containers haven’t been popping in your social feed yet, well, they’re about to—they’re a darling of Instagram. Made from ocean-bound plastic, the idea is to help the planet and organize your beauty routine at the same time. The design took over 200 prototypes to get right, and the hard work shows in these hard-to-destruct, leakproof wonders that keep your toiletry bag organized. Start with the Build Your 6 Bundle and go from there.
Jillian Dempsey Beauty
Clean highlights: Organic, vegan, and paraben-free
Best for: Sheer wearable non-makeup makeup
Price: $$
This makeup artist brand is based around sheer, forgiving formulas that nourish as they enhance. The Lids Tints have long been a fave of the no-makeup makeup movement, but Gerstein is in love with the Natural Khol Eyeliners. “They’re staples in both my personal and professional makeup bags—as lovely for tight-lining as they are for creating a subtle kitten flick to a full-on rock n’ roll eye,” she says.
True Botanicals
Clean highlights: Sustainably sourced Made-Safe certified ingredients
Best for: Suped-up hydraters
Price: $$$
What you’ll find in this line: potent botanical extracts found by working with researchers at leading universities like Carnegie Mellon and Cornell. What you won’t: 6,500 suspect ingredients, which makes the brand MADE SAFE certified. To see what the mix can do, check out the best-selling moisturizer, the Pure Radiance Oil. It’s clinically proven to reduce the appearance of fine lines and has a luxe scent thanks to jasmine, neroli, and rose.
First Aid Beauty
Clean highlight: Cruelty-free, no artificial or iffy ingredients
Best for: Simple, effective no-frills skin care
Price: $$
The ethos of this brand is to deliver effective skin solutions without 13 additives including parabens, ethyl alcohol, phthalates, formaldehyde, and oxybenzone. A best buy here is the Ultra Repair Cream, a fast-absorbing moisturizer with colloidal oatmeal to soothe on contact and is safe for skin conditions like eczema.
Briogeo
Clean highlights: Naturally based sulfate-free formulas
Best for: Shampoos that don’t strip
Price: $$
BIPOC-owned hair brand Briogeo was started by Nancy Twinewho and uses a base of natural oils, vitamins, and antioxidants that is also free of sulfates, silicones, and parabens. That translates to incredibly nourishing, gentle hair care that won’t lift away color or dry out delicate strands. One star of the line: The Don’t Despair, Repair Super Moisture Shampoo, a fan favorite for smoothing locks with 95 percent natural ingredients, including shea butter.
What’s the definition of a clean beauty brand?
This can vary, as there’s no one official definition of what makes a brand “clean.” Typically it means a line that leaves out certain synthetics that can be harmful or harsh like phthalates and sulfates that make lists like MADESAFE’s Banned List and Ulta Beauty’s Made Without List, and instead focuses on natural and sometimes organic ingredients. There’s often a kindness element there too, in that the products tend to be vegan and cruelty-free and frequently keep environmental impact lower with sustainable farming and packaging. In fact, says celebrity makeup artist Suzy Gerstein (who educates clients on clean beauty by offering one-on-one lessons), “That is largely how I define clean beauty these days—the most conscious treatment of the people and resources used to create it, with the least environmental impact possible.”
What are clean beauty ingredients?
Depending on the brand, think natural (meaning plant-based and mineral-based), often organic, and, increasingly, able to be harvested in a way that’s kind to the earth. Just like the ingredient list, it’s also important to pay attention to the symbols on your beauty products before you purchase them.
How is clean beauty packaged?
Often in alternative packaging like reusable pots that cuts down on waste or in plastic that contains at least some portion of post-consumer-recycled plastic.
Originally Published in Reader's Digest
