Turn over almost any moisturiser, shampoo or serum and you’ll find a single word near the end of the ingredient list: “Fragrance” (or its INCI name, “Parfum”). It looks innocent. It isn’t necessarily harmful — but it’s worth understanding, because that one word can hide dozens of undisclosed ingredients and is a leading trigger of skin reactions.
Why “fragrance” is a special case
Most cosmetic ingredients must be listed individually by their INCI name. Fragrance is the big exception. Brands are allowed to bundle an entire scent blend — which can contain anywhere from a handful to over a hundred separate compounds — under the single word “parfum.”
That’s a legacy of protecting perfume formulas as trade secrets. The side effect for you: when you see “fragrance,” you genuinely don’t know what’s in it.
The actual concern: irritation and allergy
Fragrance is consistently among the most common causes of cosmetic contact allergy. The reaction can be obvious (redness, itching, small bumps) or subtle and cumulative — low-grade irritation that builds up over weeks of daily use on a leave-on product.
The EU has identified a set of fragrance allergens (such as linalool, limonene, citronellol and geraniol) that must be declared separately once they exceed a threshold. If you see several of those listed, that’s a signal the product is heavily scented — even if it markets itself as “gentle.”
Two things make fragrance riskier:
- Leave-on products (moisturisers, serums, sunscreens) sit on your skin all day, so there’s more exposure than a rinse-off cleanser.
- Compromised or sensitive skin — eczema, rosacea, a damaged barrier — reacts far more readily.
”Unscented” vs “fragrance-free” — they’re not the same
This trips up almost everyone:
- Fragrance-free means no fragrance materials were added. This is what you want if you’re sensitive.
- Unscented often means fragrance was added — specifically a masking scent to cover the raw smell of the other ingredients. Technically scented to smell like nothing.
Always check the actual ingredient list rather than trusting the front-of-pack claim.
How Eatly scores fragrance
In the Eatly app, fragrance directly affects a product’s rating in two ways:
- It reduces the irritation score for every product.
- It applies an extra penalty to the sensitive-skin match, because that’s where reactions concentrate.
Listed EU fragrance allergens stack additional penalties on top. That’s why an otherwise well-formulated cream can lose meaningful points purely on its scent load.
Take a classic like Nivea Creme: it’s a perfectly decent moisturiser on paper, but its fragrance content is a big reason it lands mid-table rather than near the top. Scan a fragrance-free alternative and you’ll often see the score jump.
Does everyone need to avoid fragrance?
No — and that’s important. If your skin is healthy and you’ve never reacted to scented products, fragrance is a personal preference, not a hazard. Plenty of people use scented products their whole lives without issue.
You should be more careful if you:
- have sensitive, reactive, eczema-prone or rosacea-prone skin
- are layering lots of leave-on products (a full routine multiplies exposure)
- are choosing products for a baby or for very dry, cracked skin
- have reacted to a product before but couldn’t pin down why
A 10-second label check
Next time you’re deciding on a product:
- Scan the barcode with Eatly to see the safety, irritation and skin-type scores instantly.
- If you’re shopping the old-fashioned way, scan the INCI list for the words “Parfum / Fragrance” and any of the named allergens (limonene, linalool, citronellol, geraniol, eugenol, coumarin).
- The further down the list fragrance appears, the less of it there is — but for sensitive skin, “fragrance-free” is the safest bet.
The bottom line
Fragrance isn’t poison, but it is the single most opaque and most reaction-prone thing on most skincare labels. If your skin is happy, carry on. If it’s not — or you’d rather not gamble — checking for “parfum” is the highest-impact habit you can build. Let Eatly do it for you: browse scored cosmetics or scan your bathroom shelf in seconds.