Short answer: the ingredient list tells you the order things were added in, not how much of each one is in the bottle. Below roughly 1% concentration, brands can list ingredients in almost any order they like — so "high to low" only tells you half the story. The other half is knowable too, if you know where to look.

By the LAVOÙE team · Last updated 2026-09-22. General information, not medical or dermatological advice.

What the INCI list actually is

Every cosmetic ingredient list you see on a bottle is an INCI list — International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. In the EU, where LAVOÙE ships to all 27 member states, INCI labelling is a legal requirement under Cosmetic Regulation (EC) No. 1223/2009, Article 19, issued by the European Commission and fully applicable since 11 July 2013: ingredients above 1% concentration must be listed in descending order by weight. The rule almost everyone has half-heard is correct as far as it goes: highest quantity first, lowest last.

What most people never hear is the second half of Article 19: below 1%, brands can list ingredients in any order. That single clause is why an ingredient list can be both legally accurate and functionally uninformative about dose. It's not a loophole so much as a practical concession — measuring exact fractions of a percent for regulatory listing purposes would be its own industry. But it means the list alone can't tell you concentration below that line. You have to find the line first.

Finding the 1% line: the marker-ingredient method

Because ingredients under 1% don't have to follow concentration order, you can't read them directly. But you can usually find where the 1% line falls, because certain ingredient categories are almost always used at less than 1% by formulation convention — written here in the Title Case they conventionally appear in on an actual INCI list:

  • Preservatives — Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate. Effective at well under 1%; used at higher doses only in rare, unusual formulas.
  • Chelators and pH adjusters — Disodium EDTA, Sodium Hydroxide, Citric Acid in small amounts.
  • Thickeners in light formulas — Xanthan Gum, Carbomer. A few tenths of a percent goes a long way.
  • Fragrance and essential oils — Parfum rarely exceeds 1%, often far less.
  • Vitamin E as an antioxidant (not as the headline active) — Tocopherol used to stabilise oils, typically under 0.5%.

Find the first one of these in the list, and everything from that point onward is reasonably assumed to sit below 1%. Everything before it — the ingredient(s) sitting between the base (water, glycerin) and that marker — is where the real concentration range lives, roughly 1% to whatever the water/glycerin share leaves available.

Here's what that looks like on one of our own labels, published in full on the Niacinamide Barrier Drops page: Niacinamide (3%), Panthenol (2%), Beta-Glucan (1%), Sodium Hyaluronate, then Phenoxyethanol + Ethylhexylglycerin. The preservative pair is the marker. Everything from Sodium Hyaluronate down sits at or under roughly 1%; everything above it is where the stated percentages live. Read that way, the list and the printed numbers agree with each other — which is the entire point of publishing both.

A second example, from the Deep Vita C Capsule Serum, shows where the method gets fuzzier rather than cleaner: Ascorbic Acid (15%), Ferulic Acid (0.5%), Vitamin E / Tocopherol (1%), then Squalane. There's no preservative or fragrance ingredient in this four-ingredient list to use as a marker — the single-dose capsule format skips them entirely — so Squalane's exact concentration isn't pinned down by position alone. It's almost certainly the largest remaining share of the formula, since it's typically used as a carrier oil rather than a trace additive, but "typically" is doing real work in that sentence. When a clear marker ingredient isn't present, the method still narrows the range; it just can't finish the job on its own.

Front-of-pack percentages vs. list position: checking a brand's claim against itself

A front-of-pack claim like "10% niacinamide" is a marketing statement, not a regulated one — nothing forces it to match the ingredient list. But you can cross-check it yourself in about ten seconds: find the ingredient in the INCI list, and count how many ingredients sit above it.

If a product claims a headline active at 10% but that ingredient sits eighth in the list, behind water, three emollients, glycerin, and a thickener, the numbers strain against each other. It isn't proof of a false claim — formulas vary — but it's a legitimate reason to ask the brand how the two facts reconcile. A genuinely 10%-dosed active, in a typical serum base, should be sitting at or near the top of the list, usually second or third after water.

This is the cross-check we'd want applied to our own labels, so we'll point you at ours as the example rather than a competitor's: on Niacinamide 101 we explain why 3% is the concentration we chose over the higher numbers some brands lead with, and the ingredient list on the product page backs that number up directly — Niacinamide is the first listed active, ahead of everything except water.

ppm, %, and PDRN: the same number in three costumes

Percentage isn't the only unit you'll run into. PDRN (polydeoxyribonucleotide) concentrations are frequently marketed in parts per million — "20,000 ppm PDRN" is a phrase you'll see often. Parts per million and percentage are the same kind of measurement, just at different scales: 1% is equal to 10,000 ppm, per the standard unit conversion used throughout cosmetic chemistry. So 20,000 ppm converts to 2% — a real, meaningful concentration, but a much less impressive-looking number once converted.

This isn't a criticism of ppm as a unit; it's genuinely more precise for very small concentrations. But when a brand chooses to market in ppm specifically because the ingredient reads more dramatically that way, that's a marketing decision, not a scientific one — worth doing the conversion yourself before deciding how impressed to be. Our own PDRN formulas, detailed in our full PDRN breakdown, are printed in percentage terms for exactly this reason rather than dressed up in the larger-looking unit.

What "fairy dusting" looks like on an actual label

"Fairy dusting" is the industry's own term for adding a trendy ingredient at a cosmetically negligible dose, purely so it can appear on the front of the box and in the ingredient list. It's legal, common, and usually invisible unless you know what to look for.

The tell is positional: the headline ingredient — the one named on the front of the product — sits at or after the marker-ingredient line (the preservatives, the fragrance, the pH adjusters) rather than before it. A "vitamin C serum" where Ascorbic Acid appears two ingredients before the fragrance, rather than near the top after water, is very likely fairy-dusted. The word is on the label. The dose, once you know where to look, usually isn't hiding at all.

This is also why we don't put an ingredient on the front of a box unless we're willing to print the number next to it. If "PDRN" or "niacinamide" is in the product name, the percentage is on the same page, every time — not because we're special, but because that's the only way the front-of-pack name and the ingredient list can be checked against each other honestly.

What a label genuinely cannot tell you

In the interest of not overselling what this method can do: an ingredient list, however carefully read, has real limits.

  • Grade and purity. "Niacinamide" on a label doesn't tell you the raw-material grade or supplier, which can vary in purity between manufacturers.
  • Molecular form. Some actives (hyaluronic acid is the clearest example) come in multiple molecular weights with different skin-penetration behaviour, and INCI naming doesn't distinguish them by default — a brand has to disclose that separately, the way we do on the Hyaluronic Multi Peptide page.
  • Delivery system. Whether an active is encapsulated, buffered, or delivered in a stabilised complex changes how it performs, and none of that shows up as a separate line in an INCI list.
  • Formulation pH. The pH of the finished product affects how well many actives actually work, and it isn't listed anywhere on the packaging.
  • Batch-to-batch consistency. A printed percentage reflects the current batch's certificate of analysis, not a permanent guarantee across every future batch, unless a brand explicitly says otherwise.

None of this makes the label-reading method useless — it just means "I can find the 1% line" and "I now know exactly how this product performs" are two different claims, and only the first one is really available from packaging alone.

A 60-second label check you can run in a shop

  1. Find the headline active named on the front of the pack. Locate it in the INCI list.
  2. Count how many ingredients sit above it. Near the top (right after water/glycerin) suggests a meaningful dose; buried past ten or more ingredients suggests otherwise.
  3. Find the marker line — the first preservative, fragrance, or pH adjuster in the list. Everything from there down is roughly sub-1%.
  4. Check whether the headline active sits above or below that marker line. Above it, it's plausible. At or below it, be skeptical of a strong front-of-pack claim.
  5. If a percentage or ppm figure is printed anywhere on the box, convert ppm to percentage (divide by 10,000) and sanity-check it against where the ingredient sits in the list.

Frequently asked questions

Does ingredient order tell me exact percentages? No. It tells you relative order above roughly 1%, and nothing reliable below it. Order plus a marker ingredient gets you a rough concentration band, not an exact number — only a brand's own disclosure does that.

Is a longer ingredient list worse than a shorter one? Not inherently. Length says nothing about dose or safety on its own; a 20-ingredient list with a clear marker line can be more informative than a 6-ingredient list with no printed percentages at all.

Why do some brands use ppm instead of percentage? Both are legitimate units. Ppm is more precise for very small concentrations, but it also produces bigger-looking numbers for the same real dose, which is a genuine incentive to prefer it for marketing.

Can I trust a brand that doesn't publish exact percentages at all? You can still apply the marker-ingredient method to estimate a band. What you can't do is verify an exact number — that only exists if the brand chooses to publish it.

Sources

  • EU Cosmetic Regulation (EC) No. 1223/2009, Article 19 — labelling requirements and the 1% ordering threshold.
  • See our PDRN and niacinamide breakdowns for the ingredient-specific evidence referenced above.

Worked examples reference LAVOÙE's own published ingredient lists, current at time of writing. Concentrations reflect supplier certificates of analysis for the current batch.