Mica (CI 77019): Filing Sparkle Pigments and Their Coatings

Mica shows up in an enormous share of handmade products, bath bombs, soap toppers, lip products, eyeshadow, anything that needs shimmer, and it's also one of the more commonly mis-declared colorants because makers list the shimmer product's brand name instead of what's actually inside it.

What mica actually is

Mica is a naturally occurring mineral, a silicate that forms in thin, flat sheets, which is exactly what gives it that light-catching shimmer when it's ground into fine particles. Its INCI name is simply Mica, and its Color Index number is CI 77019. On its own, plain mica is typically a translucent to grey-white shimmer with no strong color of its own, which is why almost nobody sells raw uncoated mica as a cosmetic colorant. Instead, mica gets coated.

Why coated mica needs more than one line on your ingredient list

Here's the part that trips people up. A shimmer pigment sold under a name like "Sunset Copper Shimmer" or "Iridescent Blue Sparkle" is almost never just mica. It's mica coated with one or more actual colorants that give it its color and sometimes its opacity. Common coating colorants include:

Coating colorant	INCI / CI reference	What it adds
Titanium Dioxide	CI 77891	Opacity, white base, brightens the mica's shimmer
Iron Oxides	CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499 (red, yellow, black respectively)	Red, yellow, or black tones
Ultramarines	CI 77007	Blue or violet tones
Chromium Oxide Greens	CI 77288	Green tones
Ferric Ferrocyanide	CI 77510	Blue tones

So a shimmering copper-toned pigment might declare as Mica, Titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxides (CI 77491), in that order by concentration, not as one mysterious line item under its trade name. This is exactly the same principle as any supplier blend: the brand name is marketing, the INCI declaration needs the real components underneath it.

Getting the coating breakdown from your supplier

Because coated mica is a supplier product, not something most small makers manufacture themselves, the coating breakdown has to come from whoever sold you the pigment. A reputable cosmetic-grade mica supplier should be able to provide a specification sheet listing every colorant used in the coating and its approximate percentage within that pigment blend. If a supplier can't produce this, that's worth treating the same way you'd treat a fragrance house that won't share an allergen breakdown: ask for the right document by name, specifically a colorant composition or specification sheet, and escalate to a regulatory or technical contact if the sales channel can't produce one.

Why this matters for concentration math

Once you know a shimmer pigment is, say, 90% mica and 10% titanium dioxide by weight of the pigment blend, you still need to carry that through to your finished product. If you're using that pigment at 2% in a bath bomb, the real finished-product concentrations are roughly 1.8% mica and 0.2% titanium dioxide, not "2% shimmer pigment" as one undifferentiated line. This is the same supplier-blend math that applies across fragrance blends, botanical extract complexes, and any other pre-mixed ingredient you buy rather than formulate from scratch: multiply the component percentage within the blend by the blend's use level in your product.

A note on mica sourcing and ethics

This is outside the strict regulatory scope, but worth a mention since it comes up constantly in the handmade community: mica sourcing has genuine ethical supply chain concerns in some regions, and many makers now specifically seek out suppliers who can document ethical sourcing alongside the colorant specification sheet. It doesn't change your filing requirements, but it's worth asking your supplier about both at the same time since you're already requesting documentation from them.

Filing it correctly

For your Cosmetic Notification Form, mica and each colorant in its coating need to be declared by INCI name (and CI number, where applicable) with their actual concentration in the finished product, checked individually against the Hotlist since certain colorants carry their own restrictions around purity or permitted use categories, like whether a colorant is approved for eye area use.

Untangling a coated pigment into its real components and correct finished-product percentages is a fiddly but very doable part of formulating with mica. Cosmetic Comply expands supplier blends like coated micas into their actual INCI components and carries the percentage math through automatically, so a shimmer pigment's trade name doesn't end up standing in for what's really in the jar.