The influence of Instagram on our lives means we often go to extraordinary measures to make our homes aesthetically pleasing. Doing it for the ‘gram takes on new meaning when talking about beauty.
Curated “shelfies” full of skincare products are commonplace on social media, with beauty lovers stacking their bathroom cupboards with products organised by colour, or in some instances, uniform glass bottles in which various lotions and creams have been decanted into.
Decanting your beauty and bathroom products into clear glass or plastic bottles that match your decor might look great but aren’t so good for the products themselves. If you’re swapping the packaging of skincare and bathroom products that are sensitive to light into clear containers, it could be making them ineffective.
“Light exposure through a clear bottle could affect the quality of the product,” Leanne Stapf, chief operating officer of The Cleaning Authority, told Apartment Therapy. “The less transparent the container, the more it will preserve the product.”
When you’re forking out money for skincare, you want them to be as effective as possible — for the sake of your skin. Clear packaging allows UV rays to penetrate products and can impact their efficacy. This is why when you buy products, you can’t see what’s inside as the packaging is created to protect it.
“In regard to light protection, the darker and more opaque the glass, the more protection it offers against oxidation,” packaging company Carow Dispensing Services said. “This oxidation process can ultimately affect the useable shelf life of things like makeup and skincare products, particularly if they sit in a location that’s exposed to UV rays.”
If you are set on decanting your products, Apartment Therapy recommends seeking out amber glass bottles, which protect against visible light and UV rays. Blue and green glass also protect against visible light but not UV so best to give these a miss.
It’s also handy to look at the packaging your product comes in and follow suit. For example, if a lotion or cream product is housed in clear packaging already, then it’s OK to swap it into something similar. But, if your serum comes in light-protective packaging, it’s probably best to leave it as is.