The texture of a cosmetic product is paramount, alongside fragrance and colour. You could even say that texture is more important than efficacy when it comes to the first point of sale; how a product feels on application could make or break a sale. So what exactly is texture and how can we quantify it?
From a technical point of view, texture is a function of viscosity and rheology. But texture is much harder to describe in terms of our perceptions. We use many terms to try to qualify how textures feel, such as watery, sticky, gloopy, jelly-like, ‘as thick as treacle’, and ‘like whipped cream’. It can therefore be a real challenge for formulators to satisfy a customer’s requirements when asked to create a product with (or without) certain textures.
If a customer just wants viscosity, this is fairly easy to quantify in terms of standard units (usually millipascal-seconds or centipoise), such as: “We need a viscosity of 2000 mPa”. But formulating becomes more difficult when the customer also has criteria based on how the product needs to feel and how it should interact with the skin
Shampoos
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