Listing Colourants and CI Numbers on Makeup Labels

Pick up any eyeshadow palette and flip it over. Below the usual ingredient list you'll see a run of numbers like CI 77491 or CI 15850, sitting apart from everything else. That's not a typo or a batch code. It's the Colour Index system, and it's doing a specific labeling job that INCI names alone can't handle.

Why colourants get their own naming system

Most ingredients on a cosmetic label use INCI names, the standardized nomenclature where water is listed as Aqua. Colourants are the exception. They're identified by their CI (Colour Index) number instead, a system shared with the textile and paint industries that predates modern cosmetic ingredient nomenclature. CI 77491, for instance, is iron oxide red, a common pigment across foundations, blushes, and eyeshadows.

The reason this matters practically: colourants are also one of the most tightly restricted categories in cosmetic ingredient lists, precisely because pigments have a long history of use in industries where purity standards differ from cosmetic-grade requirements. A colourant approved for use around the eyes might not be approved for lip products, and vice versa, so the CI number lets a formulator and a regulator both identify exactly which pigment is in play without ambiguity.

The shade-range problem

Here's where it gets genuinely tricky for makeup brands. A single foundation formula might ship in twelve shades, and each shade uses a different blend of iron oxides and other pigments to hit its target tone. Technically, that's twelve slightly different formulas.

Listing twelve separate ingredient panels, one per shade, is accurate but impractical, and most brands don't do it that way. Instead, the industry convention is the "may contain" or "+/-" listing: the base formula is listed once, and every colourant that appears in any shade across the range is listed together under a "may contain" heading, with the understanding that not every shade contains every listed colourant.

This is legitimate and widely used, but it only works if it's applied honestly. The listing needs to actually reflect the real range of colourants used across the shades being sold under that label, not a padded list of every pigment the brand has ever touched, and not a shortened list missing something present in one shade but not others.

Getting this right when you file

A few practical points for makers building out a shade range:

• Confirm the CI number for each pigment you're using, not just the trade name from your pigment supplier. Trade names never appear on a filing, only the standardized identifier does, so you need the mapping documented for every shade's pigment blend.
• If a supplier sells you a pre-blended pigment dispersion, that blend expands into its component colourants for labeling and filing purposes, the same principle as any other supplier blend. You multiply the component percentage in the blend by the blend's use level in your finished product to know what's actually going into the shade.
• Keep a per-shade record even if your label uses the combined "may contain" list. You'll want that detail if a regulator or retailer asks which specific shade contains which pigment, and you'll need it again if you drop a shade from the range and want to update the label accordingly.

Common CI numbers in makeup

CI Number	Common name	Typical use
CI 77491	Iron oxide red	Foundation, blush, bronzer
CI 77492	Iron oxide yellow	Foundation, concealer
CI 77499	Iron oxide black	Mascara, eyeliner, foundation
CI 77891	Titanium dioxide	Whitening pigment, sunscreen actives in some markets
CI 15850	D&C Red 6/7	Lip and cheek colour
CI 77019	Mica	Shimmer and pearlescent effect

Concentrations and permitted uses vary by market and by product category, particularly for eye-area products, so treat this table as a starting reference, not a substitute for checking the applicable restricted list for wherever you're selling.

Where this connects to filing

When a shade-range product goes through a Canadian CNF filing, the colourants still need to be screened against the Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist like any other ingredient, and a "may contain" list doesn't exempt any individual pigment from that check. Cosmetic Comply's ingredient matching handles CI numbers the same way it handles INCI names elsewhere, mapping each pigment across a shade range and screening every one, which is a lot less error-prone than trying to track twelve shades' worth of pigment math by hand in a spreadsheet.