Balea face masks

The short read

• The spread from the cheapest application to the dearest is very wide for a single own-label shelf, and the cheapest of the two ends is one of the estimated figures rather than a counted one.

• Panthenol, phenoxyethanol, citric acid and ethylhexylglycerin are each on well above their catalogue shares. Pantolactone and hydrogenated vegetable glycerides are close to exclusive to this shelf.

• Alcohol denat. is printed on a minority of these lists, which is why rather fewer of them are free of a drying alcohol than are free of an essential oil.

• This shelf names a declared fragrance allergen on more of its labels than any other with a page here, level with Luvos-Heilerde - where every mask names one.

• More masks here are recorded vegan than on any other shelf with a page. The dataset records Balea med and Balea MEN as brands of their own, so neither is counted on this page.

What these lists print that others do not

Not the most common ingredients - water is on nearly every list ever written and tells you nothing about who formulated the mask. These are the entries that appear far more often here than across the 219 masks as a whole, counted by encyclopaedia entry rather than by printed name. A shelf this size makes coincidences cheap, so nothing appears below that is on fewer than four of these lists.

• Hydrogenated Vegetable Glycerides5 of 17 here·7 of 219 overall
• Pantolactone8 of 17 here·14 of 219 overall
• Alcohol Denat6 of 17 here·16 of 219 overall
• Potassium Sorbate5 of 17 here·20 of 219 overall
• Sodium Benzoate5 of 17 here·22 of 219 overall
• Panthenol13 of 17 here·76 of 219 overall
• Phenoxyethanol11 of 17 here·71 of 219 overall
• Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil7 of 17 here·46 of 219 overall

Names without a link have no encyclopaedia entry yet, so we make no claim about them beyond the count.

The 10 side by side

A brand needs 5 masks to carry a page, which is the floor at which a shelf says something a filter could not, and 10 of the 91 brands in the catalogue reach it. The other 81 are still in the catalogue and out of this table: 69 of them hold one or two masks, and 51 hold exactly one, and a median over one product is not a median. This is the one family whose whole partition will not go in a table, so a superlative here scoped to all brands is one a reader has to take on trust - the five that are so scoped are listed in lib/brands.ts for a reviewer to re-check.

What these labels print

Seven readings of the ingredient list, each counted the same way across this shelf and across the whole catalogue, so the second column is the baseline the first is worth reading against. Every one of them is a statement about what is printed on a pack - not about what a mask does, and not a verdict on any of them. The pregnancy flag in particular is a reason to read a list rather than a warning: it marks a mask carrying something the encyclopaedia says to check, which is a different thing from a mask being unsafe.

Vegan status is unrecorded for 7 of the 17 masks here, so that row counts only the packs where we found it stated - unrecorded is not the same as not vegan. How far into a list we can read is its own reading: the encyclopaedia has an entry for a median of 83% of each list here, against 82% across the catalogue. The rest is printed in names the site cannot yet decode, and an undecoded name is one we make no claim about either way - what we do not know.

Which formats these are

A format is the plainest thing about a mask that is not on its ingredient list - what you buy it in and how you use it - and it explains a good deal of what the readings above look like. A shelf of pots and tubes carries longer, oilier lists than a shelf of sachets, and its price per use is worked out rather than counted.

• Cream6 of 17·35%
• Hydrogel3 of 17·18%
• Peel-off3 of 17·18%
• Sheet3 of 17·18%
• Clay1 of 17·6%
• Wash-off1 of 17·6%

Formats without a link have too few masks in the catalogue to carry a page of their own.

All 17 Balea masks

Cheapest use first. Every one is on sale in the EU and has a published ingredient list we could source and check.

• 

  Reinigung, Peeling & Maske hautrein 3in1

  18ingredients

  !3 ingredients we would look at twice

  ≈€0.09 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Peel-Off Aktivkohle

  18ingredients

  !3 ingredients we would look at twice

  ≈€0.21 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Aloe Vera

  21ingredients

  !3 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Glow Peel-Off

  20ingredients

  !4 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Hyaluron

  29ingredients

  !4 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Milch & Honig

  36ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Niacinamide

  17ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Peel-Off Lemon Lover

  23ingredients

  !5 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Retinol

  23ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Totes Meer

  21ingredients

  !1 ingredient we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Vitamin C

  23ingredients

  !5 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.23 per use

• 

  Tuchmaske Aqua

  18ingredients

  !3 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.75 per use

• 

  AHA & BHA Tuchmaske

  16ingredients

  !4 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.95 per use

• 

  Tuchmaske Retinol

  16ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €0.95 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Beauty Hyaluron Hydrogel

  28ingredients

  !3 ingredients we would look at twice

  €1.95 per use

• 

  Glass Skin Collagen Maske

  17ingredients

  !1 ingredient we would look at twice

  €1.95 per use

• 

  Gesichtsmaske Glass Skin Hyaluronic Be You

  30ingredients

  !2 ingredients we would look at twice

  €2.95 per use