HOW DO WE TEST BEAUTY PRODUCTS?

It may look appealing, and the claims may sound good, but it’s hard to know whether a beauty product will live up to its promise. At the GHI, our beauty and hair labs are equipped with high-tech gadgets and tools to help us assess thousands of products each year. From measuring changes in the skin’s moisture levels to how well long-wear make-up lasts, these tools help us evaluate whether a product really does what it claims to do.

Before beauty products are sent out for consumer testing, we ‘blind’ them, meaning that any evidence of branding is removed or hidden. This ensures our tests are fair. They’re then sent to a panel of readers to trial at home, in real-life conditions. After their verdicts are fed back to our experts, the scores are added up, combined with our lab test scores and a mark out of 100 is given. The results appear in each issue of

Good Housekeeping and in full online at goodhousekeeping.com/uk.

We also work with our reader panel for our prestigious Reader Recommended testing. Only if the panel scores a product highly enough will it receive our Reader Recommended endorsement: you’ll see the stamp on products, online and sometimes in stores, too.

Some products go through our GHI Approved process. For this, we lab test each product against the claims it makes and against the gold standard of testing set by the GHI. If they pass our rigorous quality assessment, we recommend them to you via the GHI Approved stamp. Recently, it’s been awarded to Prai Ageless Throat & Decolletage Crème, £50, Lancôme Advanced Génifique Serum, from £29, and L’oréal Professionnel Mythic Oil Original, £18.20. The full list of approved products is available at goodhousekeeping.com/uk.

If you’d like to join our testing panel, and have the chance to try out and review new beauty products every month (sometimes before anyone else), sign up at hearst-panel.co.uk.