Frequently Asked Questions

Upsalite® is a mineral, not a plastic. Its INCI name is Magnesium Carbonate, and it is made without microplastics. It contains nothing of animal origin — that is part of what ECOCERT verified when they certified it to the COSMOS Standard. To check a product yourself, look for 'Magnesium Carbonate' on the ingredient list.

Two things happen at once. Upsalite®’s particles are riddled with microscopic pores, and that structure scatters light in every direction instead of bouncing it straight back — the same soft, diffused light that makes skin look smoother in a well-lit photograph. At the same time it absorbs the oil that creates glare, and glare is what exaggerates texture. Less hard shine, more soft diffusion: fine lines and pores read as softer, without anything being covered up.

It’s most noticeable on oily and combination skin, simply because there’s more oil for it to absorb — that’s where the shine control and the blurring do the most work. But it’s an inert mineral with no fragrance, oil or preservative of its own, so it isn’t limited to one skin type. Very dry skin will prefer it in a formula with more emollients, since absorbency is the whole point. What suits you comes down to the finished product, not the ingredient alone.

Most powders sit on top of your skin’s own oil, and as the day goes on that oil loosens them — they slide, patch, or disappear into the creases. Upsalite® does the opposite: it absorbs the oil rather than floating on it, so the thing that normally breaks a powder down is the thing that holds it in place. Its rough, porous surface also makes far more contact with skin than a smooth particle can, so it grips instead of dusting off.

No. Upsalite® contains no film formers, waxes or polymers — nothing designed to make it cling through washing. It’s a mineral powder that takes up water readily, so water and your usual cleanser lift it away. If a product feels hard to remove, that’s the rest of the formula, not the Upsalite®.

It returns to what it was made of: magnesium and carbonate, two of the most ordinary substances on earth, already present in seawater, soil and rock. Upsalite® is a mineral, not a plastic, so there’s no fragment left behind to persist. Water breaks down its porous structure — the very thing that makes it work is undone by the water it meets down the drain.

Chafing is friction, and friction gets worse when skin is damp — moisture makes surfaces drag instead of glide. Most anti-chafe powders take up a little moisture and then they’re full, and once they’re saturated the protection quietly stops. Upsalite® holds far more for its weight and keeps absorbing rather than giving up early, so the surface between skin and skin stays dry for longer.

If your scalp reacts to dry shampoos, the amount of powder is often the culprit. Dry shampoos work by absorbing oil, and many need a lot of starch or clay to do it, plus alcohol, propellant and fragrance to carry it. Because Upsalite® absorbs several times more per gram, a formula can reach the same result with far less powder — less residue sitting on the scalp, and less to wash out later. Upsalite® itself is an inert mineral with no fragrance or preservative, and it has been through published skin tolerability testing. Whether a particular dry shampoo suits a sensitive scalp still depends on the whole formula rather than any single ingredient, so check the full list and patch-test first.

Upsalite® shines brightest in the steps that prep and set the skin: primers, setting powders and setting sprays. It also earns its place wherever blurring and shine control matter — blushes, highlighters, bronzers, concealers, balms, pomades, and anhydrous tints and foundations.

Upsalite® came out of the lab of Maria Strømme, Professor of Nanotechnology at Uppsala University, who was appointed in 2004 — at the time, the youngest woman in Sweden ever to hold a full professorship. She and her colleagues spent years on a material chemists had called impossible for over a century, and found it more or less by accident.