Your questions answered on allergies and shopping with Lush
If you’ve got an allergy, we’ve got the answers to the questions you’re looking for. Read on so you can shop with confidence.
How will I know if an allergen is in my product?
A quick look at a product’s ingredient list will tell you exactly what is in your product in descending order of weight, down to 1% (below which ingredients order may vary). Any known cosmetic allergens present in our confidential ‘perfume’ component will also be declared when present at over 0.001% for leave-on products and 0.01% for rinse-off products. This complies with the rules set out for cosmetics in UK and EU regulation. We will also tell you if these allergens are naturally occurring within the materials used, or are ingredients added to the product by us.
Does this include food allergens?
We handle many beautiful raw materials in our fresh factories, including some nuts, seeds and legumes. On occasion, some food allergens may be contained within the perfumes we make in-house to go into our products and so not present in our ingredients list. Because cosmetics are not designed to be consumed, we are not instructed to indicate food allergens on our labels. Nevertheless, we are very happy to seek further advice on whether a certain ingredient is part of our confidential perfume blend to give you peace of mind – just contact your local Customer Care team.
Can you guarantee the ingredient I’m allergic to isn’t in my product?
If you make us aware of an ingredient you need to avoid, we will always do our best to find you products that do not contain these added ingredients and can seek additional information to ensure a food allergen is not part of our perfume blend if necessary.
We also take care to avoid cross contamination in our manufacturing facilities. Regrettably, however, we are unable to guarantee that any of our products are entirely free of very small traces of some food allergens or contact allergens we handle. This is because we make our fresh products by hand, store them in the same facilities, and sell them with minimal or no packaging in our shops.
Does Lush sell any hypoallergenic products?
If a cosmetic product claims to be hypoallergenic, it should mean it does not contain any known allergens and sensitisers. For context, from July 2026, there will be 82 recognised cosmetics allergens that must be declared in cosmetics in the UK and EU, but only when they are used above a certain level. The capacity of a sensitiser to induce allergy (‘prime’ your immune system to respond with a reaction) is dependent on how much you are exposed to and your individual susceptibility, although individuals who have an existing allergy may react to lower levels.
The use of the claim "hypoallergenic" does not guarantee a complete absence of risk of an allergic reaction and the product should not give the impression that it does. We do not market products as hypoallergenic as we love to work with essential oils and other similar beautiful ingredients that have beautiful benefits for mind and body. Sensitisation is an endpoint robustly considered by our Toxicology team, and we use our human-relevant data and decades of expertise with essential oils to ensure we deliver products that are both safe and scented. We do also sell some products without added fragrance blends (why not try our Ultrabland facial cleanser or Ultrabalm all-purpose balm?), but the beautiful raw materials inside may still impart a subtle scent.
I don’t have an allergy, but I’m sensitive to fragrance - can I use Lush products?
Products for sensitive skin don’t have to be bland and boring and we’re living proof of that!
We source our perfume ingredients meticulously and make our fragrances in-house ourselves, using the finest essential oils, rather than commissioning a fragrance house to do that bit for us. It gives us complete control over exactly what’s in your product and why it’s there.
Like any ingredient, dose determines whether a substance is safe or harmful. We use human-relevant data and work with XcellR8, the UK’s first completely animal-free test house, to assess the fragrance materials we use for systemic toxicity, genotoxicity (the ability of an ingredient to damage DNA), and sensitisation (the initial induction of allergy). We know that essential oils can be used at concentrations that are safe and not irritating and we have the data to support this, meaning we can carefully create blends with holistic and topical benefits.
Every newly created Lush skincare product is thoroughly tested to ensure it is effective and safe to use. Firstly, the product inventor will use the product themselves to assess how it performs. When they are satisfied, the product is then upscaled in our R&D facility and a larger batch is made ready for our testing panel. Currently, we have around 450 volunteer testers who are completely independent of Lush. The product is sent to testers with a variety of skin types and concerns, and we ask them to use the product for a relevant period of time, usually three to four weeks, and then we gather feedback on the efficacy of the product, how it performed on their skin, and whether they experienced any sensitivity or irritation during use. We usually require between 30-100 tester responses for each product, because this gives us a good insight into how the product will work on certain skin types before it is released for sale.
Between 2023 and 2024, we assessed over 50 skincare products for irritancy using sophisticated human skin cell models with XcellR8. The results were clear: every tested Lush skincare product was non-irritating or very mild on human skin in realistic use conditions, apart from our most active scrub, Bright & Beautiful, which was ranked as mild to moderate. (Read more on this here.) In addition, our Self-Preserving Dream Cream body lotion performed beautifully in clinical trials to assess suitability for eczema and sensitive skin – with 85% of parents reporting reduced redness, dryness and irritation on their child’s skin.
So, we’re confident that we can find the perfect product for your needs – and our generous on-skin demos and in-store sampling means you can be just as confident that you’ve found a product that works for you.
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