After a year of trying 3 safer mascaras brands, I finally found three excellent recommended options!
10-SECOND SUMMARY:
- Lengthening Mascara from Beautycounter lasts, holds curl, and lengthens with a precision brush
- Marajuca Mascara from 100 Percent Pure lasts and uses super-natural ingredients
- Lash Project by Red Apple conditions and is gluten-free.
THE DETAILS 3 safer mascaras:
Why did it take me so long to find mascaras deserving of an official recommendation? Because mascara poses a significant challenge to those of us who want to use safer makeup.
While many brands market themselves as safer, more natural, and less toxic, which rank very high on the Skin Deep safety evaluation database (many of which indeed are better ingredients than what you’d find at the drugstore), not all of them perform well.
Of the many I tested, most of them either smudged prematurely, made my eyes itch, didn’t maintain the curl in my lashes, or, in one case, the company itself wasn’t entirely forthcoming about its ingredient screening standards.
I was looking for a safer, high-performing, long-wearing, easy-to-apply mascara that held a curl, didn’t irritate my eyes (or cause the dreaded mascara-induced style), and made my lashes look damn good and I wanted all of that from a transparent company that, at the very least, doesn’t use common questionable ingredients like BHA or parabens.
That’s the unicorn. I’ve tried every mascara out there; I swear – and for a long time, I was using the junk from the drugstore (that ranks terribly on the Skin Deep database and left me prone to styes) because I couldn’t find a mascara that worked for me without smudging.
(And in case it’s in doubt that I actually field-tested all of my recommendations, here’s a photo from my Instagram. Below is an impromptu pic with my 3 top choices. Apologies, the kiddo got ahold of my phone a few too many times, and she appears to have compromised the camera!)
From left: Beautycounter’s Lengthening Mascara, 100 Percent Pure Maracuja Mascara, and The Lash Project by Red Apple Gluten-Free Mascara.
Here’s the rundown:
Beautycounter Lengthening Mascara:
Beautycounter’s transparency and ingredient screening process are huge pluses for me since they skew on the science side—meaning, their ingredients aren’t 100% natural. Yet, each ingredient is still screened for safety. Unfortunately, this is not the standard in the high-performing products industry.
Their mascara uses vitamin B5 and shea to condition; it’s free of BHA and parabens and doesn’t smudge. It holds a curl, lengthens, wears well, is water-resistant (I remove it with a swipe of their Baby Balm), and doesn’t irritate my eyes.
While all three brands I highlight here are excellent, I use the Beautycounter mascara the most – simply because the lengthening brush is exact, and very little product goes to waste.
100 Percent Pure Marajuca Mascara:
100 Percent Pure is a truly standout brand. I don’t know how they manage to make such excellent products while keeping their ingredients super-duper natural, but they do a darn good job.
Their mascara uses black tea, aloe, and vitamin B5 to condition lashes. While it once had issues with flaking and smudging, it seems to have completely corrected those problems and made its formulation stronger and longer-wearing.
The brush is a bit softer and bulky than Beautycounter’s, but it’s genuinely a matter of preference and what your lashes like best.
My final field test of the Beauty counter and 100 Percent Pure brands was on a 90-degree day – one brand on the left set of lashes, the other on the right – and after 12 hours of wear in and out of air conditioning, both held my curl and didn’t smudge. It’s a safer mascara miracle!
The Lash Project Mascara, below, wears similarly for me, although it doesn’t hold a curl as well as the others. I have very long lashes, though, which can get quite heavy; this should be an excellent option for most people.
The Lash Project mascara by Red Apple: This brand is dedicated to performance and safety for those with gluten allergies. This mascara helps rebuild lashes that have suffered from long-term exposure to conventional mascaras and volumizes very well.
Keep clicking “refresh” because it should be available this month! Join their waitlist if you need a lash-conditioning, refreshing, and certified gluten-free option.
FYI, the application process with these brands is no different than any other mascara