INCI-listed humectants — vegetable glycerin, propylene and butylene glycol, sodium hyaluronate, betaine, zinc PCA, and urea — for moisture control in skin and hair care formulations.
Humectants are hygroscopic ingredients that attract and hold water; in cosmetics their INCI function is moisture control (skin and hair conditioning), not a treatment claim. This range runs from small polyols — vegetable glycerin and propylene, butylene, and pentylene glycol — to the high-molecular-weight water-binder sodium hyaluronate, plus the natural-moisturizing-factor components betaine, zinc PCA, and urea.
Vegetable glycerin is the reference humectant and the usual benchmark for cost and performance. The honest trade-off is humectant load against skin feel: above roughly 5 to 10 percent, polyol humectants can feel tacky, so formulators blend in an emollient or shift part of the humectancy to butylene or pentylene glycol for a lighter finish. Set the glycerin level by sensory testing rather than by maximizing humectancy.
Sodium hyaluronate binds a large amount of water and is used at low addition levels, often well under 1 percent. Betaine, zinc PCA, and urea are natural-moisturizing-factor humectants; urea also carries a catalog pH-adjustment role. Two seed labels were corrected to keep this list to INCI function: pentylene glycol is listed for moisture control and solvency only, and the zinc PCA and urea entries drop the sebum-control and keratolytic descriptors.
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