For many beauty fans, the cosmetic ranges by mainstream brands can seem simultaneously too large and too limited. Foundations don’t quite match, lipsticks miss the mark, palettes come with shades you’ll never touch.
Enter: customised cosmetics. From lab-crafted serums to mix-and-match palettes, customisation is no longer a niche luxury – it’s slowly becoming the new standard. Whether you’re after skincare that actually reads your skin or makeup hues that get tons of wear, these personalisable brands are redefining what it means to get ready.
The Skin You’re In: Customise Your Formula
The magic starts with the formula – not tweaked or adjusted, but created from scratch with your unique complexion in mind. Few companies capture this idea better than Codage Paris. With its roots in French pharmacy tradition, the brand puts a modern twist on a heritage approach: instead of walking into a local apothecary, you fill out a detailed online questionnaire that a real expert, aided by an algorithm, uses to design your perfect serum. Every aspect, from texture to active ingredients and concentration levels, is selected according to your needs, and the result is a product that feels less like a purchase and more like a luxurious prescription.
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Makeup lovers aren’t left out, either. British brand Dcypher has solved one of beauty’s oldest struggles: finding your perfect foundation shade. Directly on their site, you can select your tone, undertone, skin type and even your preferred finish. Whether you’re going for a barely-there glow or all-out glam coverage, every detail can be fine-tuned to your wishes. Add custom-made concealer and tinted moisturiser, and you’ll have a full cosmetic arsenal that actually works for you.
Craving a more tactile experience? Giella – with several locations across the US – lets you watch your product being made right in front of you. Colour, texture, fragrance and extras like sunscreen, glow or oil control are all adjustable. And to make restocking simple, they save your custom blend so you can reorder it anytime. Similarly, Cosmetics à la Carte in London offers a bespoke experience with in-store sessions to create foundations, tinted moisturisers, lipsticks and concealers, all crafted to suit your tone and preferences.
For lip lovers, Lip Lab is built around an immersive custom experience. At over 15 locations across the US and Canada, you start by choosing your product – whether it’s lipstick, gloss, balm or cheek tint – and work with a colour expert to create your own shade. From there, you can infuse it with a scent, pick your case and even have it engraved. Similarly, British brand Chelsie Lane lets you add enhancers like SPF or lip plumper to the formula, while Code8 brings you face-to-face with the actual choosing, mixing and moulding process in their bar.
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While these custom beauty brands focus on skin and makeup routines, Function of Beauty ensures your tresses get some love, too. The hair care startup lets customers create an individually formulated shampoo, conditioner and serum set designed around their specific hair goals. Through a quick online quiz, the brand establishes everything from hair type and thickness to scalp moisture and damage levels, resulting in a science-backed formula designed to bring out the best in every head of hair.
Colour Me Custom: Make-Your-Own Makeup Sets
Half-used, one-size-fits-all colour palettes are perhaps one of the biggest waste stories in the beauty business – everyone has a palette (or five) featuring a handful of shades they love and several that go chronically unused. That’s where the custom set comes in. Subtl. is leading the charge here with their clever “stak” approach, in which customers select specific blushes, concealers, highlighters, bronzers, pressed powders and lip balms in the exact tones they want. After filling out a short online quiz, they can opt for a recommended “stak” or build their own for a lightweight, compact and fully personalised routine – stacked and sorted.
With the same intention but different methods, Inglot makes customisation more accessible with its Freedom System, an online tool that lets you design your entire palette from the ground up. Encompassing eyeshadows, bronzers, blushes, powders and brow products, you choose exactly what goes in, and the configurator offers a live preview so you can see your palette come together in real time.
For a blend of beauty and craftsmanship, Surratt draws inspiration from Japanese aesthetics and focuses on artistry and performance. It’s the same build-your-own palette game with blush and eyeshadow shades, but centring on high-quality, made-in-Japan formulas that achieve pro-level results through effortless curation of colours you’ll wear again and again – because when beauty is made for you, nothing goes to waste.
