Cyclohexasiloxane ●
TL;DR. It is a volatile silicone emollient and carrier that gives slip, spreadability, and a dry after-feel in skin care, hair care, and color cosmetics. It can help distribute pigments, oils, and film-formers without adding heavy residue.
What does Cyclohexasiloxane do in a cosmetic formula?
It is a volatile silicone emollient and carrier that gives slip, spreadability, and a dry after-feel in skin care, hair care, and color cosmetics. It can help distribute pigments, oils, and film-formers without adding heavy residue.
Is Cyclohexasiloxane clean?
Clean frameworks commonly flag this ingredient because of persistence and bioaccumulation concerns, especially in rinse-off formats. Skin feel and irritation profile are generally favorable, but environmental restrictions drive its low clean-standard standing.
Is Cyclohexasiloxane sustainable?
This material is synthetically produced from mineral-derived silicon chemistry, with energy-intensive processing and no meaningful renewable sourcing story. It is volatile, poorly biodegradable, and environmentally persistent, so wastewater and air-release considerations matter.
Is Cyclohexasiloxane COSMOS-approved?
It is not permitted under COSMOS-natural or COSMOS-organic because synthetic silicones fall outside the standard’s allowed ingredient set. From a Green Chemistry lens, weak points are persistence, poor biodegradability, and nonrenewable feedstock, despite useful performance at low use levels.
How does Cyclohexasiloxane work chemically?
The molecule is a cyclic siloxane made of a six-unit Si-O backbone with methyl substitution, giving low polarity, high spread, and volatility compared with many linear polymers. It is used as a carrier or sensory modifier, often in the low-to-moderate percent range, is broadly pH-stable in anhydrous systems, and can evaporate during wear while leaving less volatile oils, waxes, pigments, or resins behind.
Last updated 2026-05-13