Tested by You may not realize it, but the Good Housekeeping Institute Beauty & Personal Care Lab is an actual place—full of pros, specialized testing equipment, and, for the past seven months, a lot of products! The GH Beauty Awards is the largest and longest-running awards program at Good Housekeeping and involves rigorous testing by our Beauty Lab scientists using both technical equipment in the lab and real-life consumer tester feedback. This year, the Beauty Lab was inundated with a whopping 678 hair, skincare, makeup, oral care, and fragrance submissions. Read all about the results and the in-depth testing behind the winners below!
Meet the Winners
How We Tested
Over the course of seven months, scientists in the GH Beauty Lab evaluated 678 beauty products in seven main categories (face skincare, anti-aging skincare, body skincare, haircare and styling, base and eye makeup, color cosmetics, and oral care) to determine the best on the market. First, they put each submission through an initial screening, considering product claims, features, and innovation as well as reviewing any clinical data.
They then distributed the products to 931 consumer testers across the country with a wide range of ages, skin tones and types, and hair textures and types. Testers used each product in their daily routines for a set time period, then offered detailed feedback. They were surveyed on ease of use of the products (including packaging and application) as well as the products’ attributes (e.g., scent and texture) and performance both immediately and over time.
In the GH Beauty Lab, our scientists assessed product performance for applicable categories using specialized equipment, including the following:
✔️ Courage + Khazaka Corneometer (pictured here) to measure skin moisturization before and after application of a precise dose of a face and body skincare product
✔️ Visia Complexion Analyzer (pictured here) to track changes in wrinkles, pores, dark spots, and other skin attributes over a set time period using face skincare products
✔️ Swatch Wash Station to control water temperature and flow rate, keeping them constant when testing shampoos, conditioners, and haircolor products on human hair samples
✔️ Instron Machine to calculate the force needed to comb through wet hair samples, determining a shampoo, conditioner, leave-in conditioner, or hair mask’s conditioning ability
✔️ Q-Lab QUV Accelerated Weather Tester to expose hair samples to UV light over time to gauge color fading when testing hair dyes and shampoos and conditioners for colored hair
✔️ Verivide DigiEye System to quantify color change in dyed hair samples after washing, drying, and exposure to UV light when testing hair dyes and shampoos and conditioners for colored hair
Finally, they analyzed and tallied thousands of technical data and consumer feedback data points to identify the winners.
Meet the Experts
April Franzino
GH Senior Beauty & Style Director
“In two decades as a beauty editor, I’ve seen almost every makeup, skin, hair, and fragrance launch. For the Beauty Awards, I help the Beauty Lab collect submissions. When testing is done, I pore over hundreds of pages of results to share them in the magazine and beyond.”
Chiara Butler
GH Beauty Lab Reviews Analyst
“I’m a cosmetic chemist who formulated skin and hair products before joining GH. For the Beauty Awards, I evaluated professional treatments, interviewing providers and sending testers to try them. I loved seeing the results!”
Danusia Wnek
GH Beauty Lab Senior Chemist
“My 14 years of experience spans product formulation, development, and performance testing. I led Beauty Awards testing: initial screening, protocols for each category, recruiting 931 testers, and tabulating data.”
Sabina Wizemann
GH Beauty Lab Director
“I lead design and execution of our product testing using advanced instrumentation and consumer testers. My background is in medicinal and cosmetic chemistry, including synthesis of hair dye, so the category will always be a favorite of mine.”
Sabina (she/her) is the director of the Beauty, Health & Sustainability Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute, where she has overseen skincare, haircare and makeup testing since 2012. She also reviews applications, substantiates claims and evaluates products for the GH Seal and the Beauty Awards and Sustainability Awards programs. She has a B.S. in chemistry from Ithaca College and more than 16 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical and personal care industries.
Danusia (she/her) is a senior chemist in the Beauty and Personal Care Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute where she evaluates haircare, skincare, cosmetics and beauty tools. She holds a B.S. in chemistry from St. John’s University and a M.S. in pharmaceutical sciences with concentration in cosmetic science from the University of Cincinnati. Danusia has over 15 years of experience in the personal care industry including formulation, product development, claim evaluation and performance testing. The number one skincare rule she lives by: never go to bed with makeup on.
Chiara (she/her) is a reviews analyst in the Beauty and Personal Care Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute, where she’s been doing hands-on testing of beauty products since 2022. She also covers aesthetic treatments like injectables and lasers. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Columbia University. Before joining GH, she worked as a cosmetic chemist, formulating skincare products for a variety of brands and learning to decode ingredient lists, evaluate ingredient efficacy and scrutinize product claims. When not at GH, you can find her wandering the beauty aisles of the drugstore.
