It’s quite clear—when the eyes are all that remains uncovered during mask mandates, people started placing emphasis on their eyes. From eye creams, makeup, and laser therapies and lifting treatments targeted around the eye area, consumers around the world turned to these products and services in the last two years to enhance their peepers.
When the global beauty industry experienced a collective decline across the world, the categories which experienced the least decline were nails and eye makeup—categories that are unaffected by the wearing of masks, unlike lipsticks and foundations. Eyeshadows, in particular, are projected to grow the fastest when compared to other products like eyeliner, mascara and other lash and brow products in the eye makeup category.
What makes eyeshadows popular?
Eyeshadow palettes are popular for a number of reasons: consumers have all the colours they need on the palette to create certain eye makeup looks, the shades are selected for them, eliminating the bother of having to make the decision of choosing the colours themselves. Lastly, eyeshadow palettes are often packaged beautifully, some of them limited-edition releases, which makes them highly sought after.
Chromotherapy
The use of eyeshadows fall right into 2022’s beauty mega-trends, with the use of colors playing a huge role in uplifting moods and reducing stress. Colors like blues and greens can help calm the mind while pinks and oranges can help energize and boost the mood. Not forgetting Sensient’s Color of the Year 2022 Radiant Pink, a warm pink that can be likened to a sensual touch or warm hug.
Chocolate-inspired Palettes
Chocolate-themed eyeshadows are extremely popular due to the shades featured. They’re often very wearable browns and beige tones, and some of them are even formulated to smell like chocolate bars or resemble melted chocolate in its texture. Packaging plays a huge part in its popularity as well as they’re often really cute to look at.
Nostalgic and Fun
Eyeshadow palettes often form the tentpole product in a themed limited edition launch. These collections sometimes play on the consumers’ love for nostalgia, be it their favourite cartoons, books or movies when they were a child.
More Than Just Colors
Besides just enhancing the eyes with colors, consumers demand more from eyeshadows these days. The formulation should be high performance, non-irritating and with excellent color payoff. They may or may not exist in a powder pan as most eyeshadows do, but rely on ease of use, blendability and vivid colors.
Eyeshadow sticks
Like how multi-use serum sticks gained popularity during the pandemic, this form of “touchless” beauty trend found its way to the makeup category as well. The stick format allows you to work with precision, yet give you full control over how much or little you want to apply.
These eyeshadow sticks can feature a wide variety of shades like those from Ariabel‘s range of organic and lakes. The shimmery and pearly tones can be attributed to Sensient Technologies’ COVAPEARL to achieve a wide range of metallic and pearly textures.
Liquid eyeshadows
Liquid eyeshadows can offer a wide range of textures from matte, shimmery to metallics while offering good blendability. They’re often buildable as well, giving consumers control over whether they would like just a light wash of colour or full vivid looks.
Sensient Technologies offers ready formulations: Bouncy Eyeshadow SCT2377, a cream eyeshadow that imparts a fresh texture while drying to a powdery finish. It uses COVACRYL MV60, a unique thickener that swells with water to give it this bouncy texture and freshness upon application. The SENSIFEEL powders are key ingredients to obtain this bouncy and powdery feeling. A combination of COVARINE and COVAPEARL, you can make this blue shade to highlight your look.
If you’re after a liquid eyeshadow which gives a matte finish, the Natural Eye Cream SCT2378 would be ideal. It gives a high color payoff, with natural moisturization, gliding on the eyelids for easy application. SENSIBEAD SI 175 helps to give it a matte finish.
Colors that care
Some pigments have the bad rep of causing irritation, which is of particular concern when used near the eye. One of the trends that has emerged for eyeshadow are those infused with skin-soothing ingredients like camomile or even skincare ingredients like collagen, silk peptides and SPF so that skin around the eye are is cared for.
Natural pigment extracts like Natpure ColFine, extracted from sweet potato, beetroot, radish and spirulina, can also be used to produce rich and vivid colours that also bear antioxidant properties.
A ready formulation, Cosmos Talc-Free Eyeshadow SCT2369, is as it’s name suggests a talc-free formulation. Talc is a common ingredient used in makeup that may cause irritation to some individuals, and this eyeshadow is formulated with SENSIFEEL MICA E4, a COSMOS-certified Mica and an excellent talc replacement, as well as MICA BA, which allows for a smooth application and texture. This particular shade contains a blend of UNIPURE BA and COVAPEARL to create Radiant Pink, Sensient Technologies’ Color of the Year 2022.
Discover how Sensient Beauty’s expertise in ingredient and formulations can help you create the next hit eyeshadows. Contact us now.
