Preservative-Free Skincare

Waterless formulas with no preservative on the label, kept cold from the day they are made

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7 products

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7 products

Questions people ask us about this line

Which Wild Ice products are preservative-free?
The ones on this page: Cryo-C, Berry Boreal Bod, Rarify, Wintry Fix and Laurel, plus the mini sizes of Cryo-C and Berry Boreal Bod. Each is waterless, so its label names no preservative.
Four of our water-based formulas (B-Meltee, D.B.T. Baba Yaga, Yuki-Onna and Eyecicle) list benzyl alcohol, salicylic acid and sorbic acid, and two (Gaea's Gala and 7 Winters) are built on ferments and glycerin, with no self-preserving claim from us. Those six are sold elsewhere on the site and are left off this page on purpose.
Do I need to refrigerate my Wild Ice products?

Short answer: Nope!

If you're using your products daily (like you should), they'll be gone in 2-3 months – not enough time for any meaningful breakdown. The real magic happened before they reached you: cold-preserved from ingredient to delivery.

The only exception: Planning to save products for later? Pop them in your kitchen fridge until you're ready to use them.

What about beauty fridges? Skip it. Cold can't reverse decay that's already occurred. What matters is receiving fresh products and using them consistently. Beauty fridges are cute, but they're solving the wrong problem.

Do I need to keep Cryo-C cold?

More than 95% of a typical skincare product's lifecycle consists of everything that happens before it gets into your hands (and onto your skin).

So, while chilling your products is never bad, we want to emphasize that the important thing is using fresh products frequently. They do no good as museum pieces on your vanity.

So if chilling your products gets in the way of performing a consistent routine, or is too much of a hassle, don't stress about it. You're still getting 95% of the benefit so long as you're using them daily, in which case they should be finished within two to three months.

If you want the absolute freshest skincare possible, then chilling them is helpful. The caveat is that you'll need to thaw them fully before each use.

So the short answer is no, you don't have to chill them. And you should not stress about it. But, if you're hardcore, then you certainly can, so long as you thaw fully before use.

Note that if for some reason you plan to wait a month or more before you actually start using your products, then do go ahead and put them in your kitchen refrigerator at least until you begin using them.

Do I need to keep Berry Boreal Bod cold?

No! Because our products are made fresh and kept cold until we send them to you, they won’t begin to degrade for several months. With regular use, you’ll run out of Berry Boreal Bod before it degrades.

Just remember to keep Berry Boreal Bod (and all of your other skincare products!) out of direct sunlight.

Does Cryo-C contain synthetic dyes or fragrances?

Absolutely not! Like all Wild Ice products, Cryo-C’s beautiful scent and color comes from botanicals and other natural ingredients.

Do you outsource formulation or production?

The industry norm is to outsource production to one of a very small number of specialist agencies.

In fact, there's a good chance that any two competing brands on a store shelf were made under the same roof by the same agency.

We're not typical. How could we be? In order to cold-preserve all of our ingredient and product inventory we need complete control of every step.

So no, we don't outsource formulation or production. And, as you can probably tell, we're pretty darn proud of it :)

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What preservative-free means on our labels

Whether a formula needs a preservative comes down to water. Microbes need it to multiply, so an oil, a butter or a sugar scrub gives them almost nothing to grow in and can go without a broad-spectrum preservative system. That is the sense in which every product on this page is preservative-free: Cryo-C and Berry Boreal Bod are built on botanical oils, Rarify on a botanical oil blend, Wintry Fix on sugar, oils and butters, and Laurel is a cured bar of saponified olive and laurel oils. Their labels name no preservative because there is no water phase to guard.

Preservative-free describes part of our line, and we would rather say so here than let you find out from a label. Four of our water-based formulas, the B-Meltee cleanser, D.B.T. Baba Yaga cream, Yuki-Onna mask and Eyecicle eye serum, name a short trio near the end of their lists: benzyl alcohol, salicylic acid and sorbic acid. Water needs guarding once a jar is open, and we chose a short system with published safety reviews rather than none; the article on how preservative-free skincare is kept safe walks through each one with its sources. Two more, Gaea's Gala and 7 Winters, are built on ferments and glycerin rather than one of those preservatives. We make no self-preserving claim for either, and we advise refrigerating them after opening for best freshness. None of the six appear on this page.

Cold does a different job. Every ingredient and every finished bottle here is kept refrigerated at about 4 C in our studio from formulation until the day it ships, because cool temperatures slow the chemistry that ages fragile actives like the vitamin C ester in Cryo-C and the blue tansy in Berry Boreal Bod. That argument is about potency rather than safety, and the evidence sits in our science hub, Why Your Skincare Loses Potency, and What Actually Protects It. Once a bottle is home, a cool, dark cabinet is all these oils ask for; the fridge is optional and can cloud jojoba harmlessly.

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