Science
Our science
How we think about skin, and how we show our working.
This part of the site sets out the thinking behind the products: how we think about skin, what goes into the bottle, and how we decide what to claim. Each page links to the detail, and the detail links to its sources.
Skin is a living system
Your skin is a living system, home to bacteria and other microbes that help keep the barrier working. Most of the time it knows what it is doing.
So we build products to support that system rather than override it. Support, not control. Each page below sets out the reasoning and the sources, so you can check it for yourself.
Formed in nature, led by science, guided by ethics
Three ideas run through everything, from the oils we choose to the bottles we fill.
Nature
The base of every product is cold-pressed and organic plant oils, chosen for the compounds that refining tends to strip away: carotenoids, tocopherols, phytosterols and phenolics. We add no synthetic fragrance, and nothing hides behind a "parfum" catch-all. The range uses one essential oil, vetiver, at a tenth of a percent, named on every label. Bladderwrack ties the range to where it is made. It is the same Atlantic seaweed that grows on the rocks below Welcombe, used as a cold infusion in sunflower oil made in the UK.
Science
Current research treats skin as an ecosystem, and so do we. The decision with the strongest evidence behind it is the product's pH. Ours is slightly acidic (pH 5 to 5.5), close to the pH of healthy skin, which the skin's resident microbes prefer. A plant prebiotic, inulin, feeds beneficial skin bacteria in laboratory studies, and nothing in the formula is there to strip them away.
Biotaderm reviews the published science. It does not conduct it. So we credit the research, never ourselves, and claim only what the evidence supports.
Ethics
Every ingredient is published with its exact percentage, most abundant first, with a plain-English name beside each INCI name. That is unusual in a category that treats formulas as trade secrets. It sits alongside recyclable aluminium bottles, a small range where each product has to earn its place, and a business working toward B Corp certification.
Start wherever you like
Each of these goes a layer deeper.
One level down
Below these pages sits the ingredient library, where each ingredient has its own page and its own references. That is where to check our reasoning.