Why We Avoid Lake Dyes in Our Makeup Formulations
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When creating our cream makeup line at Odin Hollow Farm, we spent a great deal of time thinking about not only what ingredients we wanted to include — but also what we intentionally wanted to leave out. One ingredient category we chose to avoid is lake dyes.
While lake dyes are widely used throughout the beauty industry, we personally preferred to build our makeup line around mineral pigments and iron oxides instead.
What Are Lake Dyes?
Lake dyes are synthetic color additives created by combining dyes with metallic salts to make them insoluble in water. They are commonly used in cosmetics because they can create highly saturated colors, bright pigments, and very vibrant shades. You’ll often see them listed on ingredient labels as Red 6 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Blue 1 Lake, and similar names.
Why We Chose a Different Approach
At Odin Hollow Farm, our makeup philosophy centers around natural-looking tones, skin-like finishes, and thoughtfully selected ingredients. Mineral pigments and iron oxides aligned more closely with the aesthetic and formulation style we wanted to create for our foundation sticks, multi sticks, and cream eye shadows.
The Look We Prefer
Mineral pigments and iron oxides tend to create softer, more muted, and more natural-looking shades. For our brand, this helps support wearable blush tones, natural bronzers, skin-like foundation shades, and cream makeup designed to blend seamlessly into the skin.
Our goal has always been makeup that enhances natural beauty rather than overpowering it — which is why every shade in our color stick collection is designed to look lived-in and luminous, never artificial.
Avoiding Petroleum-Derived Colorants
Another reason we chose to avoid lake dyes is because many synthetic colorants are petroleum-derived. As part of our overall formulation philosophy, we try to minimize the use of petroleum-derived ingredients throughout our makeup line whenever possible. Instead, we prefer working with mineral pigments, iron oxides, botanical oils, waxes, and plant-based emollients.
Final Thoughts
At Odin Hollow Farm, we focus less on chasing trends and more on creating products people genuinely enjoy using daily. Our cream makeup line was designed to feel natural, elegant, comfortable, and thoughtfully formulated from start to finish.
Simple ingredients. Thoughtful formulation. Everyday beauty.