The Ordinary hair serum: what's in the list

A search for “The Ordinary hair serum” leads to one product in our catalog: The Ordinary Hair Care Multi-Peptide Serum for Hair Density (60 ml). That is honestly the whole comparison, so this page goes through what the ingredient list contains and sets it beside three other hair or scalp serums we have.

What we have and what we do not

The Ordinary has other hair and scalp products too, but the SkinIndex catalog holds only this one at the moment. We do not write about products whose list we have not read.

The list in short

The list has 35 ingredients. First come Aqua (Water), Propanediol, Butylene Glycol and Glycerin, which are solvents and humectants. Caffeine is at position 5, followed by the peptides Biotinoyl Tripeptide-1 and Acetyl Tetrapeptide-3 at positions 6 and 7. Then comes a run of plant extracts: Larix Europaea Wood Extract, Pisum Sativum Extract, Scutellaria Baicalensis Root Extract, wheat germ extract, soy germ extract, Trifolium Pratense Flower Extract and Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract. Toward the end are, among others, Lactic Acid and Gluconolactone (AHA acids and PHA), and the preservative system is Sodium Benzoate and Phenoxyethanol.

A practical note: the list includes extracts of wheat (Triticum Vulgare) and soy (Glycine Soja) germ, which is good to know if you avoid either.

Fragrance, essential oils and our other flags

The list has no fragrance, no essential oil, no volatile alcohol and no silicone, so the product carries none of our flags. That only means the list has nothing we flag; it is not a verdict on what the serum does. The name says “Hair Density”; that is the maker's product name, and we do not assess whether the product does that. Directions for use are on the package.

Three other serums to compare

Ida Warg Beauty scalp serum (100 ml, full name on its card below). Aqua, Glycerin, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract and Piroctone Olamine at position 4. Acetyl Tetrapeptide-3 is at position 8, and the list has 19 ingredients. Toward the end of the list there is also Alcohol. The list has no fragrance.

Ida Warg Beauty Repair Hair Serum (100 ml). The list starts with Aqua and Cetearyl Alcohol. It has Parfum and several fragrance allergens, such as Limonene and Linalool, which makes it the one in this comparison with fragrance.

Redken Acidic Grow Full System Scalp & Hair Serum (100 ml). Aqua, Glycerin and Hydroxyethylpiperazine Ethane Sulfonic Acid, then Caffeine at position 4. The list has fragrance allergens (Linalool, Limonene, Citral) and citrus oils (Citrus Limon Peel Oil, Citrus Aurantium Bergamia Peel Oil, Citrus Aurantium Peel Oil).

The most interesting difference in this comparison is not price but the list: The Ordinary and the Ida Warg scalp serum have no fragrance in the list, while the Ida Warg Repair serum and Redken do. More hair and scalp products are on Hair masks and hair serums and Scalp care.

What a list cannot tell you

We compare ingredient lists. We take no position on whether a hair serum gives thicker or fuller hair, and a list cannot predict it. If hair loss or scalp symptoms worry you, a doctor is the right person to ask. The basics of reading a list are in the guide How to read an ingredient list.